First in a trilogy on Communication and Democracy. Also fits with Gonzenbach, Semetko, and Protess/MccOmbs. For grads and beyond in journalism, poli comm, and mass comm.

This book examines the media's role in shaping civic engagement and enhancing political engagement.

An updated edition of the “penetrating study” examining how the current state of mass media puts our democracy at risk (Noam Chomsky). What happens when a few conglomerates dominate all major aspects of mass media, from newspapers and magazines to radio and broadcast television? After all the hype about the democratizing power of the internet, is this new technology living up to its promise? Since the publication of this prescient work, which won Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize and the Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award, the concentration of media power and the resultant “hypercommercialization of media” has only intensified. Robert McChesney lays out his vision for what a truly democratic society might look like, offering compelling suggestions for how the media can be reformed as part of a broader program of democratic renewal. Rich Media, Poor Democracy remains as vital and insightful as ever and continues to serve as an important resource for researchers, students, and anyone who has a stake in the transformation of our digital commons. This new edition includes a major new preface by McChesney, where he offers both a history of the transformation in media since the book first appeared; a sweeping account of the organized efforts to reform the media system; and the ongoing threats to our democracy as journalism has continued its sharp decline. “Those who want to know about the relationship of media and democracy must read this book.” —Neil Postman “If Thomas Paine were around, he would have written this book.” —Bill Moyers

The loss of credibility of traditional media and democratic institutions points to the important challenges for the democratic system. Social networks have allowed new political and social actors to disseminate their messages, which has raised diversity. However, it has also lowered the standards for the circulation of messages and has increased disinformation and hate speech. Contemporary Politics, Communication, and the Impact on Democracy addresses communication and politics and the impact on democracy. This book offers a valuable contribution regarding the challenges and threats faced by traditional and stable democracies while disinformation, polarization, and populism have a main role in the present hybrid communicative scenario. Covering topics such as digital authoritarianism, emotional and rational frames, and political conflict on social media, this is an essential resource for political scientists, communication specialists, analysts, policymakers, politicians, critical media scholars, graduate students, professors, researchers, and academicians.

The global explosion of online activity is steadily transforming the relationship between government and the public. The first wave of change, e-government, enlisted the Internet to improve management and the delivery of services. More recently, e-democracy has aimed to enhance democracy itself using digital information and communication technology. One notable example of e-democratic practice is the government-sponsored (or government-authorized) online forum for public input on policymaking. This book investigates these online consultations and their effect on democratic practice in the United States and Europe, examining the potential of Internet-enabled policy forums to enrich democratic citizenship. The book first situates the online consultation phenomenon in a conceptual framework that takes into account the contemporary media environment and the flow of political communication; then offers a multifaceted look at the experience of online consultation participants in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France; and finally explores the legal architecture of U.S. and E. U. online consultation. As the contributors make clear, online consultations are not simply dialogues between citizens and government but constitute networked communications involving citizens, government, technicians, civil society organizations, and the media. The topics examined are especially relevant today, in light of the Obama administration's innovations in online citizen involvement.

Media and Democracy addresses key topics and themes in relation to democratic theory, media and technology, comparative media studies, media and history, and the evolution of media research. For example: How does TV entertainment contribute to the democratic life of society? Why are Americans less informed about politics and international affairs than Europeans? How should new communications technology and globalisation change our understanding of the democratic role of the media? What does the rise of international ezines reveal about the limits of the internet? What is the future of journalism? Does advertising influence the media? Is American media independence from government a myth? How have the media influenced the development of modern society? Professor Curran’s response to these questions provides both a clear introduction to media research, written for university undergraduates studying in different countries, and an innovative analysis written by one of the field’s leading scholars.

According to Deetz, our obsolete understanding of communication processes and power relations prevents us from seeing the corporate domination of public decision making. For most people issues of democracy, representation, freedom of speech, and censorship pertain to the State and its relationship to individuals and groups, and are linked to occasional political processes rather than everyday life decisions. This work reclaims the politics of personal identity and experience within the work environment as a first step to a democratic form of public decision-making appropriate to the modern context.

Government interventions in media markets are often criticized for preventing audiences from getting the media products they want. A free press is often asserted to be essential for democracy. The first point is incorrect and the second is inadequate as a policy guide. Part I of this book shows that unique aspects of media products prevent markets from providing for audience desires. Part II shows that four prominent, but different, theories of democracy lead to different conceptions of good journalistic practice, media policy, and proper constitutional principles. Part II makes clear that the choice among democratic theories is crucial for understanding what should be meant by free press. Part III explores international free trade in media products. Contrary to the dominant American position, it shows that Parts I and II's economic and democratic theory justify deviations from free trade in media products.

Exciting intellectual frontiers are open for exploration as agenda-setting theory moves beyond its 25th anniversary. This volume offers an intriguing set of maps to guide this exploration over the near future. It is intended for those who are already reasonably well read in the research literature that has accumulated since the publication of McCombs and Shaw's original 1972 Public Opinion Quarterly article. This piece of literature documented the influence of the news media agenda on the public agenda in a wide variety of geographic and social settings, elaborated the characteristics of audiences and media that enhance or diminish those agenda-setting effects, and cataloged those exogenous factors explaining who sets the media's agenda. In the current volume, a provocative set of maps for explicating new levels of agenda-setting theory have been sketched by a new generation of young scholars, launching an enterprise that has significant implications for theoretical research and for the day-to-day role of mass communication in democratic societies. At the first level of agenda setting are agendas of objects--the traditional domain of agenda setting research--represented by an accumulation of hundreds of studies over the past quarter century. At the second level of agenda setting are agendas of attributes--one of the new theoretical frontiers whose aspects are discussed in detail in the opening chapters. Other chapters offer maps of yet other theoretical frontiers, including political advertising agendas and their impact on behavior, the framing of various agendas in the mass media and the differential impact of print and TV, the theoretical role of individual differences in the agenda-setting influence of the news media on the public agenda, methodological advances for determining cause and effect roles in agenda-setting, and the application of agenda-setting theory to historical analysis. This volume is an invitation to others to become active members of the invisible college of agenda-setting scholarship. As such, the goals of this book are threefold: * to introduce a broad set of ideas about agenda-setting; * to enrich the exploration of these ideas by enhancing scholarly dialogue among the members of this invisible college; and * to enhance the discussion of agenda-setting research in seminars and research groups around the world. Agenda-setting has remained a vital and productive area of communication research over a quarter century because it has continued to introduce new research questions into the marketplace of ideas and to integrate this work with other theoretical concepts and perspectives about journalism and mass communication. Understanding the dynamics of agenda- setting is central to understanding the dynamics of contemporary democracy. This book's set of theoretical essays, grounded in the accumulated literature of agenda- setting theory and in the creative insights of young scholars, will help lead the way toward that understanding.

The 1980s witnessed a rapid growth of communication technology and an immense expansion of new media around the globe. The development of new information and communication technologies has emphasized again the importance of economic, social, political, and cultural institutions associated with the definitions of new technologies. Many of the traditional conceptions of the relation of the media to democracy were predicated upon a certain perception of communication technology and the major contemporary debates related to democratization have to do, again, with the deployment of technologies. How do all these developments affect society? How is the communications explosion related to democracy? What are the implications for the social functions of communications, people's activities, consciousness and values, media ownership and control, both nationally and internationally? These are some of the questions discussed in this volume.