Is There a Layering of Technology in Politics?

Dr. Ben Epstein, Associate Professor of Political Science at DePaul University, guests to discuss the role of history in understanding contemporary political communication.

We take a deep dive in Dr. Epstein's book The Only Constant is Change: Technology, Political Communication, and Innovation over Time, published by Oxford University Press.

Dr. Epstein explains how the development of newspapers, the radio, and Internet fundamentally changed political communication practices for political campagins, social movements, and interest groups. We then discuss how television and social media were novel technologies for their time, but did not fundamentally establish new political communication orders.