Political communication in times of crisis

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So far, during the 21th century, we have witnessed many unprecedented events that have produced irreversible historical changes. The attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City, the resulting sequence of wars in the Middle East, and the international financial collapse are examples of such events. They have subsequently led to a new dimension of political communication and reoriented some of its traditional meanings, due to the eruption of a new dynamic in our lives: crisis. The dynamic of crisis introduced significant changes and altered the nature of international relations, the processes of policy making, the governmental performances, the citizen's demands, the electoral campaigns, and the geographical tensions, among others. The revolutionary wave of protests, riots and civil wars in the Arab world starting in 2010 (Arab spring); the waves of human asylum seekers as a direct consequence of this reality; the so-called colour revolutions that overthrew governments in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Lebanon; the territorial conflict between Russia and Ukraine; the intensification of the anti-globalisation movements; the conflict between Israel and Palestine, one of the hardest and longest conflicts to date that has been repeatedly reactivated; theterrorist attacks in Madrid, London, Boston and Paris; or the recent global threat created by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS); all this results in an unprecedented realm of political communication. These topics are treated in this volume through the lens of political communication by 30 international contributors from almost 10 different nationalities.