Book review: Rowan R Mackay, Multimodal Legitimation: Understanding and Analysing Political and Cultural Discourse

The importance of understanding and analyzing multimodal political legitimation cannot be overestimated. Especially in post-digital times where all kinds of actors - be it politicians, activists, (meta)political influencers, or journalists - try to claim legitimacy and undermine their political adversaries, it is crucial to comprehend how these actors construct and maintain their legitimate status. Legitimacy here can be understood as a process through which something acquires the status of being licit, approved, and allowed (mostly in connection to norms and values in a given society). Mackay's book sets out to
offer us a framework by which we can start to tackle such legitimation across a variety of texts, including online articles, official political broadcasts, community dance productions, and even folk art.