Political Communication in Greece.

This is a book that sets two main objectives: on the one hand, it introduces succinctly and systematically political communication as an interdisciplinary academic field and, on the other hand, to deal with a number of highly momentous issues such as risk communication, virtual politics and the nexus of visibility-publicity in the society of the spectacle.

The author, Associate Professor at the Communication and Media Studies at the University of Athens , follows a social constructionist approach embracing, at the same time, concepts and ideas from Medium and Critical Theory. In the first chapter he exposes the international course of political commnication (both as practice and research field). The uses and gratification and the agenda-setting paradigm are scrutinized in the second chapter that leads to the third one where he develops in length his constructionist approach steering clear from both relativism and essentialism. Examining the public-private relation (ch. 4), the social construction of risk and the environmental news (ch. 5) and the politics of identity in the internet Demertzis uses extensive English and Greek literature from media studies, social theory and politics and employs some original empirical research that supports his arguments.