This unusual volume seeks to accomplish three related goals: * to assess the extent and limits of media power in election campaigns * to extend the concept of media agenda-setting to include the contributions of powerful news sources in the process of election agenda formation * to evaluate the impact of national system variables (differences in political and media systems) on the balance of party and media forces in the formation of campaign agendas In the process, it searches for ways of measuring the discretionary power of the media in electoral politics, testing this in terms of the relative ability of journalists and politicians to shape election campaign agendas.

Timely text authored by leading political communication scholars on the effects of tCovid-19 on political communication. How governments, journalists, and the public communicate is of interest within the disciplines of political science, media studies, communication studies, and journalism.

This unusual volume seeks to accomplish three related goals: * to assess the extent and limits of media power in election campaigns * to extend the concept of media agenda-setting to include the contributions of powerful news sources in the process of election agenda formation * to evaluate the impact of national system variables (differences in political and media systems) on the balance of party and media forces in the formation of campaign agendas In the process, it searches for ways of measuring the discretionary power of the media in electoral politics, testing this in terms of the relative ability of journalists and politicians to shape election campaign agendas.

Timely text authored by leading political communication scholars on the effects of tCovid-19 on political communication. How governments, journalists, and the public communicate is of interest within the disciplines of political science, media studies, communication studies, and journalism.

Relations between the public and holders of political authority are in a period of transformative flux. On the one side, new expectations and meanings of citizenship are being entertained and occasionally acted upon. On the other, an inexorable impoverishment of mainstream political communication is taking place. This book argues that the Internet has the potential to improve public communications and enrich democracy, a project that requires imaginative policy-making. This argument is developed through three stages: first exploring the theoretical foundations for renewing democratic citizenship, then examining practical case studies of e-democracy, and finally, reviewing the limitations of recent policies designed to promote e-democracy and setting out a radical, but practical proposal for an online civic commons: a trusted public space where the dispersed energies, self-articulations and aspirations of citizens can be rehearsed, in public, within a process of ongoing feedback to the various levels and centers of governance: local, national and transnational.

How does news circulate in a major post-industrial city? And how in turn are identities and differences formed and mediated through this circulation? This seminal work is the first to offer an empirical examination, and trace a city's pattern of, news circulation. Encompassing a comprehensive range of practices involved in producing, circulating and consuming 'news' and recognizing the various ways in which individuals and groups may find out, follow and discuss local issues and events, The Mediated City critiques thinking that takes the centrality of certain news media as an unquestioned starting point. By doing so, it opens up a discussion: do we know what news is? What types of media constitute it? And why does it matter?

Relations between the public and holders of political authority are in a period of transformative flux. On the one side, new expectations and meanings of citizenship are being entertained and occasionally acted upon. On the other, an inexorable impoverishment of mainstream political communication is taking place. This book argues that the Internet has the potential to improve public communications and enrich democracy, a project that requires imaginative policy-making. This argument is developed through three stages: first exploring the theoretical foundations for renewing democratic citizenship, then examining practical case studies of e-democracy, and finally, reviewing the limitations of recent policies designed to promote e-democracy and setting out a radical, but practical proposal for an online civic commons: a trusted public space where the dispersed energies, self-articulations and aspirations of citizens can be rehearsed, in public, within a process of ongoing feedback to the various levels and centers of governance: local, national and transnational.

This is an important study of the crucial issue of alternatives in commercial and public support of broadcasting in the U.S. and Europe. The Peacock Committee on Financing the BBC, a committee sponsored by the British government, commissioned Jay Blumler and Tom Nossiter to investigate the impact of alternate ways of financing the BBC on the range and quality of broadcasting. They then commissioned papers on broadcasting financing in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan to answer the question: "Should the BBC allow some commercial support in financing?" This is an essential collection for broadcast policy-makers and researchers.

The chapters in this volume provide an excellent overview of the diversity of comparative mass communication research being conducted today. --Contemporary Sociology "Obviously, a "review" cannot do justice to the depth of analysis reflected in each of the individual exemplars. What this review can do, however, is to assure potential readers that Comparatively Speaking generates questions that should stimulate discussion among scholars. The editors encourage other explorations of comparative research and, indeed in their final chapter offer directions for future research. Whether the questions raised focus on theory or methods, Comparatively Speaking will no doubt prove useful to scholars with various emphases in communication studies. The editors should be commended for their quest to help generate at body of literature directly connected to comparative research. And, the individual authors should be commended for engaging in research that directly relates to broader societal issues. This text will answer some questions, but more importantly, it will raise questions, which ultimately will stimulate discussion in this most important avenue of research. Overall, this text most certainly provides the groundwork for a generative approach to comparative studies." --Jeanine Congalton, California State University, Fullerton Comparative research challenges preconceptions about the universal applicability of communication theories. By opening our eyes to communication patterns and problems that may go unnoticed if considering only one time or one place, comparative research forces us to define boundaries of application for these theories. With a wider awareness encouraged by this volume, we can explicitly or implicitly construct larger scale theories within which variations in time, space, and culture contribute. Inspired by the 1989 International Communication Association Conference, Comparatively Speaking both demonstrates how comparative research can be done successfully and provides a variety of analytical structures useful for research and teaching. Exemplar chapters span the range of communication research, from nonverbal expectancies to the economics of media industries--across levels of analysis, and over historical and individual-developmental time. Comparatively Speaking presents the benefits, pitfalls, and trade-offs of comparative research with wit and precision. Scholars and professionals from popular culture, sociology, political science, and all branches of communication will be stimulated to analyze varying exemplars against each other using the analytic structures of the editors and of the critics of comparative research.

Modern broadcasting policy faces a number of challenges: how to regulate the growing commercial sector; the position and funding of public service television; and finding appropriate forms of public accountability in the changed media environment. Television and the Public Interest examines these challenges and how they are being addressed in the media systems of eight European nations. The authors' aim throughout is to identify the basic values that European policymakers, politicians, broadcasters and civic groups of all kinds regard as vulnerable in the new conditions and are striving to protect from market pressures. The book includes a wealth of information on broadcasting policy issues and practice in Western European nations and offers a major appraisal of the values enshrined in such policy, how they are protected institutionally in different systems, and how such systems are coping with the challenges of the new media landscape.