The Crisis of Political Representation

Abstract

To begin to understand why the realm of public affairs which television news reports on has a declining grip on the popular imagination, we need to situate television news within a much wider context than television journalism itself. We have to begin with the whole fabric of our political culture and what has been happening to it in recent decades if we are to understand why news about public affairs seems increasingly disconnected from the lives of various groups within society, including young people. For it ought to be clear that the crisis around watching news about public affairs is connected with the crisis around public and political life itself.