Political succession as a temporal aporia of digital communications

Abstract

This article explores how various methods of conceptualizing digitalization influence the interpretation of the relationship between digitalization and the dynamics of political continuity. Theoretical and methodological priorities in examining the nature and role of digitalization within political communications significantly affect how its possibilities and risks for maintaining political continuity are understood. Emphasis is placed on overcoming methodological scientistic reductionism in the analysis of digitalization processes. The importance of investigating the political and cultural specifics of the symbolic structures of political memory and their temporal regime is highlighted when assessing digitalization’s influence on contemporary political communications. In discussing both the constructive and destructive aspects of digitalization’s impact on the political traditions of a specific temporal regime, it is crucial to consider parameters such as repeatability, articulation, and controllability. It is asserted that digital communications act as triggers for the crisis of neoliberal forms of political communication and practices aimed at nurturing political traditions. Temporal regimes in political communications predetermine tendencies toward the homogenization of temporal representations within communities, which contributes to the creation of more stable conditions for the integration of representations of the past, present, and future. Traditionalization (continuity) plays a crucial role in the institutionalization and maintenance of models of political solidarity, serving as a major cultural resource for the temporary structuring of the political sphere, counteracting political inversion and arbitrariness in the actions of political actors. The need to address methodological aporias found in modernist and postmodernist research strategies related to communication processes based on principles of contemporary cultural sociology is also emphasized.