Coming to terms with dysfunctional hybridity: A conversation with Andrew Chadwick on the challenges to liberal democracy in the second-wave networked era

Abstract

Andrew Chadwick’s view of today’s “hybrid media system,” as outlined first in his 2013 book of the same name, has moved scholars to understand how changes in politics are linked to changes in communication infrastructures and tools and to the ways people negotiate power in the networked media environment. His work has provided readers with a blueprint to follow that moves focus beyond the usual categories of media and the usual sites of power. In this interview, conducted in November, 2019, Chadwick discusses what he calls “dysfunctional hybridity” and the urgency that kind of hybridity brings to the need to update our thinking about media, power and society.

Keywords

• dysfunctional hybridity
• networked journalism
• online civic culture
• disinformation