How Political Actors Use the Media


Book Description

This book investigates how individual politicians and political parties strategically make use of the media to reach their political goals. Looking beyond a purely Americentric viewpoint, the chapters present data from more than ten Western democracies to argue that the media are both a source of information and an arena for political communication. This double functional role of the media is examined from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective, including chapters dealing with different aspects of politics - from campaigning to law making - and within different political contexts. The role of the news media is discussed from the perspective of the political actor, focusing on both the opportunities and the constraints the news media provide, resulting in a multidisciplinary text that will appeal to students and scholars of both communication and political science.




Political Communication Cultures in Western Europe


Book Description

This book offers new and compelling insight into the orientations that shape the cultures of political communication in nine Western democracies. It is a truly comparative account of the views of 2500 political elites and media elites between Helsinki and Madrid on their relationship and their exchanges.




Peripheral Actors in Journalism


Book Description

This book addresses the transformative role that so-called peripheral actors in journalism – emerging outlets diverging from the norms fiercely held by mainstream media outlets – play in today’s news ecosystem. The author charts the rise to prominence of these actors, outlining how they have successfully managed to challenge the authority held by mainstream, legacy outlets, whose claims to be the “storytellers of our time” no longer exclusively pertain to them. Beginning by identifying these peripheral actors specifically, the book then considers whether what they do is “journalism” as traditionally conceived, what their motivations are, and why their role is important in light of journalism’s democratic function in holding power to account. Ultimately, it is argued that, despite the perceived role of peripheral actors as “deviant”, they still demonstrate a surprising degree of ideological continuity in the face of industrial disruption. Drawing on research from Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom, Peripheral Actors in Journalism is an insightful resource for journalism and media scholars with an interest in alternative media sources.




An Introduction to Political Communication


Book Description

In the third edition of this title, the author offers a broad critical preface to the relationship between politics, the media and democracy in the UK and other contemporary societies.




Reading Public Opinion


Book Description

Public opinion is one of the most elusive and complex concepts in democratic theory, and we do not fully understand its role in the political process. Reading Public Opinion offers one provocative approach for understanding how public opinion fits into the empirical world of politics. In fact, Susan Herbst finds that public opinion, surprisingly, has little to do with the mass public in many instances. Herbst draws on ideas from political science, sociology, and psychology to explore how three sets of political participants—legislative staffers, political activists, and journalists—actually evaluate and assess public opinion. She concludes that many political actors reject "the voice of the people" as uninformed and nebulous, relying instead on interest groups and the media for representations of public opinion. Her important and original book forces us to rethink our assumptions about the meaning and place of public opinion in the realm of contemporary democratic politics.







Governing with the News


Book Description

From the opening decades of the republic when political parties sponsored newspapers to current governmental practices that actively subsidize the collection and dissemination of the news, the press and the government have been far from independent. Unlike those earlier days, however, the news is no longer produced by a diverse range of individual outlets but is instead the result of a collective institution that exercises collective power. In explaining how the news media of today operate as an intermediary political institution, akin to the party system and interest group system, Cook demonstrates how the differing media strategies used by governmental agencies and branches respond to the constitutional and structural weaknesses inherent in a separation-of-powers system. Cook examines the news media's capacity to perform the political tasks that they have inherited and points the way to a debate on policy solutions in order to hold the news media accountable without treading upon the freedom of the press.




Journalism and Jim Crow


Book Description

Winner of the American Historical Association’s 2022 Eugenia M. Palmegiano Prize. White publishers and editors used their newspapers to build, nurture, and protect white supremacy across the South in the decades after the Civil War. At the same time, a vibrant Black press fought to disrupt these efforts and force the United States to live up to its democratic ideals. Journalism and Jim Crow centers the press as a crucial political actor shaping the rise of the Jim Crow South. The contributors explore the leading role of the white press in constructing an anti-democratic society by promoting and supporting not only lynching and convict labor but also coordinated campaigns of violence and fraud that disenfranchised Black voters. They also examine the Black press’s parallel fight for a multiracial democracy of equality, justice, and opportunity for all—a losing battle with tragic consequences for the American experiment. Original and revelatory, Journalism and Jim Crow opens up new ways of thinking about the complicated relationship between journalism and power in American democracy. Contributors: Sid Bedingfield, Bryan Bowman, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Kathy Roberts Forde, Robert Greene II, Kristin L. Gustafson, D'Weston Haywood, Blair LM Kelley, and Razvan Sibii




Journalism and Politics


Book Description

Digital media have become an indispensable element of a growing number of human practices that depend on these platforms to a great extent. In consequence, they have been configured as central infrastructures in our lives, with the ability to shape society and politics. These technologies have changed how contemporary politics are performed. This affects the relationship between journalism and politics, which has always played a central role in democratic societies. It is essential for setting the agenda, defining social frames of problems and issues related to the public interest, promoting public debates, as well as shaping public opinion. The emergence of social media has led to many alterations in the communication environment and is redefining the power distribution between journalism and politics. We are immersed in a time characterized by the introduction of large-scale changes that alter what we have taken for granted. This book examines the processes that transform the relationship between journalism and politics in the digital landscape and the nature and consequences of this new scenario in political communication, democracy and society. Through 12 chapters, it explores the core values ​​of political journalism in the digital age, new communication formats and technological platforms for political actors, and the impact of the far right on communication and journalism. This collection of investigations offers an exciting and rigorous vision of one of the main transformations that our society is now facing.




Losing Pravda


Book Description

The story of the spectacular unravelling of journalism as a profession in Russia in the last thirty years.




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