Disintermediation: Political Communication Beyond Interpretation

Today, politicians and communicators can get a message out, untouched by any distorting interpretation. Journalists, mainstream media and intermediary bodies are struggling to maintain their prominence in the public debate. While technology has given politicians powerful means to bypass the old media and become themselves a medium, disintermediation cannot be seen just as a technological phenomenon, but as a cultural phenomenon. Disintermediation may be the chance for a renovation of the decayed relationship between politics and public opinion, allowing an informal and direct dialogue and generating interactive proximity, positive re-intermediation, restored inclusion of innovative and web-savvy cultural intermediaries, and the rise of new forms of political and social organisations. The very concept of disintermediation needs to be questioned and 'debunked': is that only a method of message delivery, or a complex phenomenon including a wider range of agents and processes?