EARLY POLITICAL PARTIES AS MEDIATED COMMUNITIES.

It has been well documented that forms of media help create new communities, such as the public sphere and the nation. However, the origin of one major political institution has rarely been considered in this light: the political party. This paper brings together the theory on early party formation in North America and the theory on mediated communities to argue that the first public political organizations in Canada, which resembled modern parties in many ways, should be seen as constituted by the media. The paper presents the case of Upper Canada (1820–1841) where newspaper distribution linked partisans into new communities, and editors and politicians ‘imagined’ new political communities in the pages of their newspapers. Modern political parties should thus be seen as essentially mediated communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]