This article focuses on the role of analogy, transgression, and contagion in the workings of the zombie as a cultural form. This study of the zombie-as-analogy also opens a way towards a different understanding of media populism, as more than a mirror of political populism, but as a problem unique to the representation, reproduction, and proliferation of sameness in mass media and culture.
Prevailing approaches to populist media in political theory remain narrowly focused on what populists say and do in the media, as if the media was merely a container of information or an ideology to be debunked. In contrast, this special issue aims to bring media studies into conversation with debates in social and political theory, among other fields, and to explore the centrality of media, meant in a broader sense than just neutral channels for direct and unmediated exchange between demagogues and receptive audiences, for apprehending populism.