Abstract

The electoral success of Donald Trump has fuelled once again the suggestion that political communication is intimately linked to popular culture. In this article, I trace the different routes taken by this connection – from the representation of politics in popular culture to the rise of celebrity politics and the idea of citizens as «fans». My suggestion is that our understanding of contemporary political communication needs to take account of its affinities with popular culture, but that we are still some way from substantiating how the relationship operates in practice.