In a chapter co-authored with Martin Montgomery (University of Macau) and Michael Higgins (Strathclyde University) entitled 'Political offensiveness in the mediated public sphere: the performative play of alignments', Professor Angela Smith explores developing concerns about the rise of offensiveness in the political public sphere and more especially in social media. The authors argue that current iterations of purposeful political offence should be considered in the context of a number of factors. One is the ascendency of short-form social media such as Twitter and Instagram, which disperse and fragment the discourse of political elites, enabling multi-articulated tactics of address that are subject to processes of remediation. A second factor is the rise of “post-truth” politics (Montgomery, 2017), in which impressions of personal authenticity take the place of facts, and truth becomes less important than ‘speaking your mind’. The chapter shows that several significant cases of political offence take form and shape along an axis between ’authentic' expression (or ‘speaking your mind’) and submission to political correctness.
'Political offensiveness in the mediated public sphere: the performative play of alignments' can be found in Anne Graefer (ed) Media and the Politics of Offence. Palgrave, 2019.
