Author: Jim Willis Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 027599497X Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 179
Book Description
In a postmodern age where the media's depictions of reality serve as stand-ins for the real thing for so many Americans, how much government policy is being made on the basis of those mediated realities and on the public reaction to them? When those mediated depictions deviate from the truth of the actual situation, how serious a situation is that? Time and again, both anecdotal evidence and scientific research seem to confirm that the news media often influence government action. At the least, they speed up policy making that would otherwise take a slower, more reasoned course. Sometimes the media serve as the communication link among world leaders who may be ideological enemies. Because of the enduring popularity of television news, government leaders monitor the networks' story selections and track public opinion trends generated by interviews done in these stories. These then become the substance of proposed legislation and/or executive action, as politicians strive to prove themselves able listeners to the heartland of America and also prove themselves worthy of re-election. This book examines many specific events that show how major news operations either painted a truthful or distorted picture of national and international events, and how governmental leaders responded following those representations.
Author: Gadi Wolfsfeld Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136887679 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 172
Book Description
Politics is above all a contest, and the news media are the central arena for viewing that competition. One of the central concerns of political communication has to do with the myriad ways in which politics has an impact on the news media and the equally diverse ways in which the media influences politics. Both of these aspects in turn weigh heavily on the effects such political communication has on mass citizens. In Making Sense of Media and Politics, Gadi Wolfsfeld introduces readers to the most important concepts that serve as a framework for examining the interrelationship of media and politics: political power can usually be translated into power over the news media when authorities lose control over the political environment they also lose control over the news there is no such thing as objective journalism (nor can there be) the media are dedicated more than anything else to telling a good story the most important effects of the news media on citizens tend to be unintentional and unnoticed. By identifying these five key principles of political communication, the author examines those who package and send political messages, those who transform political messages into news, and the effect all this has on citizens. The result is a brief, engaging guide to help make sense of the wider world of media and politics and an essential companion to more in-depths studies of the field.
Author: Robert D. McChesney Publisher: NYU Press ISBN: 1583671064 Category : Current Events Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
The symptoms of the crisis of the U.S. media are well-known—a decline in hard news, the growth of info-tainment and advertorials, staff cuts and concentration of ownership, increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. McChesney's new book, The Problem of the Media, gets to the roots of this crisis, explains it, and points a way forward for the growing media reform movement. Moving consistently from critique to action, the book explores the political economy of the media, illuminating its major flashpoints and controversies by locating them in the political economy of U.S. capitalism. It deals with issues such as the declining quality of journalism, the question of bias, the weakness of the public broadcasting sector, and the limits and possibilities of antitrust legislation in regulating the media. It points out the ways in which the existing media system has become a threat to democracy, and shows how it could be made to serve the interests of the majority. McChesney's Rich Media, Poor Democracy was hailed as a pioneering analysis of the way in which media had come to serve the interests of corporate profit rather than public enlightenment and debate. Bill Moyers commented, "If Thomas Paine were around, he would have written this book." The Problem of the Media is certain to be a landmark in media studies, a vital resource for media activism, and essential reading for concerned scholars and citizens everywhere.
Author: Maria Repnikova Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107195985 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 287
Book Description
Maria Repnikova offers an innovative analysis of the media oversight role in China by examining how a volatile partnership is sustained between critical journalists and the state.
Author: Eva Anduiza Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107379830 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
This book focuses on the impact of digital media use for political engagement across varied geographic and political contexts, using a diversity of methodological approaches and datasets. The book addresses an important gap in the contemporary literature on digital politics, identifying context dependent and transcendent political consequences of digital media use. While the majority of the empirical work in this field has been based on studies from the United States and United Kingdom, this volume seeks to place those results into comparative relief with other regions of the world. It moves debates in this field of study forward by identifying system-level attributes that shape digital political engagement across a wide variety of contexts. The evidence analyzed across the fifteen cases considered in the book suggests that engagement with digital environments influences users' political orientations and that contextual features play a significant role in shaping digital politics.
Author: Jeremy Mayer Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages ISBN: 9780072877885 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
Part of the McGraw-Hill Critical Topics in American Government series, American Media Politics in Transition blends coverage of the historical evolution of American political journalism with theories about its current practice and the emerging technological changes that have begun to bring media power back to the people. Its flexible, self-contained chapters feature discussion questions, suggestions for further readings, online resources, and a list of key terms and figures - all of which come together to make this an ideal supplement for any introductory American Government course, as well as courses on the media and communications.
Author: Amber E. Boydstun Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022606560X Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 275
Book Description
Media attention can play a profound role in whether or not officials act on a policy issue, but how policy issues make the news in the first place has remained a puzzle. Why do some issues go viral and then just as quickly fall off the radar? How is it that the media can sustain public interest for months in a complex story like negotiations over Obamacare while ignoring other important issues in favor of stories on “balloon boy?” With Making the News, Amber Boydstun offers an eye-opening look at the explosive patterns of media attention that determine which issues are brought before the public. At the heart of her argument is the observation that the media have two modes: an “alarm mode” for breaking stories and a “patrol mode” for covering them in greater depth. While institutional incentives often initiate alarm mode around a story, they also propel news outlets into the watchdog-like patrol mode around its policy implications until the next big news item breaks. What results from this pattern of fixation followed by rapid change is skewed coverage of policy issues, with a few receiving the majority of media attention while others receive none at all. Boydstun documents this systemic explosiveness and skew through analysis of media coverage across policy issues, including in-depth looks at the waxing and waning of coverage around two issues: capital punishment and the “war on terror.” Making the News shows how the seemingly unpredictable day-to-day decisions of the newsroom produce distinct patterns of operation with implications—good and bad—for national politics.
Author: Timothy E. Cook Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 9780226115009 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 308
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.
Author: Jim Willis
Author: Gadi Wolfsfeld
Author: Robert D. McChesney
Author: Shanto Iyengar
Author: Maria Repnikova
Author: Nathaniel Persily
Author: Eva Anduiza
Author: Jeremy Mayer
Author: Amber E. Boydstun
Author: Timothy E. Cook