Political commentary is a key component of news coverage in any liberal democracy. Yet theorising the role played by political commentators in a rapidly transforming media sphere – further destabilised by voters’ increasing mistrust of expertise and of political and media institutions – is rare in the social science literature. This article adopts a mixed methodological approach to argue that political commentators today perform one or more of three functions – ‘public educator’, ‘value educator’ and ‘polemicist’ – with commentators now falling into one of seven types. Given the broadening and flattening of news media dissemination and consumption – and arguably the ‘dumbing down’ and ‘shallowing out’ of news media coverage in a postmodern social media age where truth and facts are too often subordinated by rhetoric and opinion – this article argues that the role of the academic political commentator is now more critical than ever. It also argues that academic commentators must offer not only objective descriptive analysis of political events but also potentially subjective normative analysis – in effect, narrative ‘guardrails’ – to remind voters of what is and is not acceptable political behaviour in a ‘post-truth’ anti-expert age.

中文翻译：

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筑起护栏：后专家时代政治评论员的角色

在任何自由民主国家，政治评论都是新闻报道的关键组成部分。然而，将政治评论员在迅速变化的媒体领域中所扮演的角色理论化——选民对专业知识以及政治和媒体机构越来越不信任，进一步破坏了稳定——在社会科学文献中很少见。本文采用混合方法论的方法论证当今的政治评论员执行三种职能中的一种或多种——“公共教育者”、“价值教育者”和“辩论家”——评论员现在属于七种类型之一。鉴于新闻媒体传播和消费的扩大和扁平化——以及可以说是在后现代社交媒体时代对新闻媒体报道的“淡化”和“淡化”，在这个时代，真相和事实往往被修辞和意见从属——本文认为学术政治评论员的角色现在比以往任何时候都更加重要。它还认为，学术评论员不仅必须提供对政治事件的客观描述性分析，还必须提供潜在的主观规范分析——实际上是叙事“护栏”——以提醒选民在“后真相”中什么是可接受的政治行为，什么是不可接受的政治行为。反专家时代。