Talking Politics

  (By Joshua Babcock) In this roundtable, four scholars— Taras Fedirko , Jessica Greenberg , Sarah Muir , and Yukun Zeng —explored the divergent meanings and historical transformations in the categories of “left” and “right” across global contexts. Panelists did not approach “left” and “right” as a unitary, universal opposition that can be used to categorize all political phenomena, past and present. Instead, they explored how these categories act as a shortcut for accomplishing political ends—even in situations where the binary isn’t regularly or consistently invoked. Overall, the panelists considered how binary logics work to simplify a range of voices, interests, and projects. They connected these considerations to questions of pedagogy, organizing, and the imperative of developing both nonbinary analytics and political metalanguage. The panelists didn’t try to conclusively answer what “left/right” does or should mean, nor did they try to explain why self-styled “leftist” politi...

(By Joshua Babcock) Like other keywords in this series, “media” is a diverse concept and category. At once broad and narrow, “media” can refer to media industries —as in “ the media”—often with added modifiers, like “the liberal media,” “the alt-right media,” or “the media establishment .” Usually, when we talk about media, we assume that we’re dealing with technologies of mass communication: things like TV, radio, podcasts, the traditional press, social media, and even online messaging platforms that disseminate messages and connect large numbers of people simultaneously. These are important, but they’re just part of the story. As a term, “medium” also describes anything that acts as a means of accomplishing something, an intervening substance, or the material that enables something to happen. In this sense, both medium in the singular and media in the plural are always about mediation : how one thing is necessary for another thing to exist, happen, or enable something else to ha...

(By Joshua Babcock)  As Talking Politics 2023 kicks off, we thought it might be helpful to start by answering some of the most basic questions about the series. Questions like: What is talk? What is/are politics? And how do the two connect?  When we say “basic,” we don’t mean these questions are easy or that you’ve never thought about these things before, just that these are some of the important, ground-level concepts and ideas that our presenters will be working with. First, talk/talking .  In this series, when we say “talk” or “talking,” we actually mean “real-world language use” in a broad sense. This could be writing, signing, gesturing, speaking, and/or posting memes, to name a few. People talk about politics and also talk to accomplish things that we think of as specifically or uniquely political, like deciding who to vote for, debating public policies (whether as a policymaker or informally with friends), deciding to support a ballot initiative/referendum, speakin...

  (By Joshua Babcock, Maureen Kosse, and Wee Yang Soh, Lead Organizers, Talking Politics 2023)  What role do media play in shaping global political landscapes? How do media affect who gets included and who gets excluded? Why do some political issues receive attention while others do not?  Talking Politics 2020: The Origin Story  When this series started in 2020, the U.S. was ramping up for a presidential election that would decide whether Donald Trump would spend a second term in the White House. Regardless of political party affiliations or personal values, the stakes felt high. For many people, the stakes felt higher than usual, even if the possibility of his re-election posed different threats to different individuals and groups. The stakes felt high outside the U.S., too. Members of the inaugural Talking Politics 2020 saw, heard, and experienced the many, divergent ways that the U.S. presidential election mattered outside the country. We heard face-to-face talk i...