Janowitz examines the societal changes that have weakened the electoral system and contributed to the further decline of social control, and encourages the development of new forms of citizen participation.

All over Europe and the World communication scientists reflect questions on trust in journalism and media. A large scale of analysis and research gives new perspectives of reasons, impacts and consequences of trust or mistrust in media and journalism. This anthology provides an overview on empirical research to trust in media and journalism, new perspectives, methodological approaches and current results, discussed among communication scientists at European and international scientific conferences.

Although opinion leadership has been the subject of numerous studies, in areas ranging from politics to fashion and in many societies and cultures, The Influentials represents the first systematic analysis of the concept. It offers a multidisciplinary presentation of the definitions, typologies, methods, and findings of opinion leadership, from its early formulation, through the emergence of the first empirical evidence, to the most recent research. Weimann examines opinion leadership and personal influence in a number of areas, including marketing, public opinion and elections, education, fashion, science, agriculture, and health care. He also examines the growing criticism of the model based on theoretical and empirical weaknesses of the original concept and evaluates for the first time modifications that have emerged, including a new measure (the PS Scale) and its testing and application. The final chapters for the first time link opinion leadership with the important theoretical and research tradition of agenda setting.

This classic study deals with social control in advanced industrial society, especially the United States, and particularly the half-century after World War I. The United States is representative of Western advanced industrial nations that have been faced with marked strain in their political institutions. These nation-states have been experiencing a decline in popular confidence and distrust of the political process, an absence of decisive legislative majorities, and an increased inability to govern effectively, that is, to balance and to contain competing interest group demands and resolve political conflicts.Janowitz uses the sociological idea of social control to explore the sources of these political dilemmas. Social control does not imply coercion or the repression of the individual by societal institutions. Social control is, rather, the face of coercive control. It refers to the capacity of a social group, including a whole society, to regulate itself. Self-regulation implies a set of higher moral principles beyond those of self-interest.Since the end of World War II, the expanded scope of empirical research has profoundly transformed the sociological discipline. The repeated efforts to achieve a theoretical reformulation have left a positive residue, but there have been no new conceptual breakthroughs that are compelling. This book is a concerted and detailed effort organize and to make sense out of the vastly increased body of empirical research.

In 1897, William Randolph Hearst said that his newspaper did not simply cover events that had already happened. «It doesn't wait for things to turn up», Hearst said. «It turns them up.» This book traces the close relationship between media and the United States' development from the colonial period to the twenty-first century. It explores how the active voice of citizen-journalists and trained media professionals has turned to media to direct the moral compass of the people and to set the agenda for a nation, and discusses how changes in technology have altered the way in which participatory journalism is practiced. What makes the book powerful is that its assessment of the influence and use of media encompasses many levels: it explores the potential of media as an agent for change from within small communities to the national stage.

The Seventy-Sixth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I