SUPERSTORM. Political Communication and Communication Design in the Age of Information

The present research is founded on the hypothesis that communication design is struggling to find a new agency in the contemporary Western political landscape, causing a stalemate which prevents design from interacting with this field. The second hypothesis is that this stalemate may be caused by a clash between the discourse of design and the tightened relationship between new media technologies and political communication. In order to understand the reasons behind this stalemate, the research is structured as a cross-disciplinary historical and cultural research that outlines the relationship between communication design, political communication and new media technologies over the last sixty years (1960–2020) from the point of view of design culture and through the chronicle of the Superstorm. In the context of this research, the Superstorm is utilized as a conceptual and narrative metaphor to illustrate the evolution of the relationship between political communication and new media technologies, which since the 1960s began to intertwine and give life to the Western political visual culture as it is known today. At last, the present study identifies possible directions, points of discussion and new coordinates which the design discourse might adopt in order to formulate a new understanding of the position that designers can assume towards the Superstorm and, eventually, face its relentless effects.