How do citizens and leaders in democratic nations communicate about their problems and prospects for the future? What can be learned from other nations about how to communicate in more effective and satisfying ways? These are important questions in an age of instant electronic communication in which the populations of the world's industrial democracies are wired for all manner of input. This book, first published in 1997, explores the institutional links between society and government that shape political communication. These regulators of national communication include parties and electoral representation systems, interest group processes, campaign finance mechanisms, and the media - factors that are familiar to anyone who follows politics yet that may not be recognized for their combined effects on the quality of political discourse. The authors show how these core elements of political systems affect the ways in which people communicate, and how effective that communication is at defining public problems and identifying workable solutions.

The intentional spread of falsehoods - and attendant attacks on minorities, press freedoms, and the rule of law - challenge the basic norms and values upon which institutional legitimacy and political stability depend. How did we get here? The Disinformation Age assembles a remarkable group of historians, political scientists, and communication scholars to examine the historical and political origins of the post-fact information era, focusing on the United States but with lessons for other democracies. Bennett and Livingston frame the book by examining decades-long efforts by political and business interests to undermine authoritative institutions, including parties, elections, public agencies, science, independent journalism, and civil society groups. The other distinguished scholars explore the historical origins and workings of disinformation, along with policy challenges and the role of the legacy press in improving public communication. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The intentional spread of falsehoods - and attendant attacks on minorities, press freedoms, and the rule of law - challenge the basic norms and values upon which institutional legitimacy and political stability depend. How did we get here? The Disinformation Age assembles a remarkable group of historians, political scientists, and communication scholars to examine the historical and political origins of the post-fact information era, focusing on the United States but with lessons for other democracies. Bennett and Livingston frame the book by examining decades-long efforts by political and business interests to undermine authoritative institutions, including parties, elections, public agencies, science, independent journalism, and civil society groups. The other distinguished scholars explore the historical origins and workings of disinformation, along with policy challenges and the role of the legacy press in improving public communication. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The Logic of Connective Action explains the rise of a personalized digitally networked politics in which diverse individuals address the common problems of our times such as economic fairness and climate change. Rich case studies from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany illustrate a theoretical framework for understanding how large-scale connective action is coordinated. In many of these mobilizations, communication operates as an organizational process that may replace or supplement familiar forms of collective action based on organizational resource mobilization, leadership, and collective action framing. In some cases, connective action emerges from crowds that shun leaders, as when Occupy protesters created media networks to channel resources and create loose ties among dispersed physical groups. In other cases, conventional political organizations deploy personalized communication logics to enable large-scale engagement with a variety of political causes. The Logic of Connective Action shows how power is organized in communication-based networks, and what political outcomes may result.

How do citizens and leaders in democratic nations communicate about their problems and prospects for the future? What can be learned from other nations about how to communicate in more effective and satisfying ways? These are important questions in an age of instant electronic communication in which the populations of the world's industrial democracies are wired for all manner of input. This book, first published in 1997, explores the institutional links between society and government that shape political communication. These regulators of national communication include parties and electoral representation systems, interest group processes, campaign finance mechanisms, and the media - factors that are familiar to anyone who follows politics yet that may not be recognized for their combined effects on the quality of political discourse. The authors show how these core elements of political systems affect the ways in which people communicate, and how effective that communication is at defining public problems and identifying workable solutions.

The Logic of Connective Action explains the rise of a personalized digitally networked politics in which diverse individuals address the common problems of our times such as economic fairness and climate change. Rich case studies from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany illustrate a theoretical framework for understanding how large-scale connective action is coordinated. In many of these mobilizations, communication operates as an organizational process that may replace or supplement familiar forms of collective action based on organizational resource mobilization, leadership, and collective action framing. In some cases, connective action emerges from crowds that shun leaders, as when Occupy protesters created media networks to channel resources and create loose ties among dispersed physical groups. In other cases, conventional political organizations deploy personalized communication logics to enable large-scale engagement with a variety of political causes. The Logic of Connective Action shows how power is organized in communication-based networks, and what political outcomes may result.

This book explores the changing nature of democracy in light of dramatic changes in the media of mass communication: the Internet, the decline of network television news and the daily newspaper; the growing tendency to treat election campaigns as competing product advertisements; the blurring lines among news, ads, and entertainment. It explores such questions as: Does the Internet make it easier for citizens to find political information? Do today's highly competitive old and new mass media serve the needs of democratic citizenship? Does the new media environment produce public opinion that is more or less manipulated, or manipulated in new ways?

"Reconstructing Reality in the Courtroom" explains what makes stories believable and how ordinary people connect complex legal arguments and evidence presented in trials to assess guilt and innocence. The explanation takes the core elements of narrative-the who, what, where, when, how, why-and shows how average people who hear hundreds of stories every day use the connections between these elements to assess credibility.

A series of simple experiments outside the courtroom provides evidence for the explanation, showing that there is little relationship between the actual truth of a story and the degree to which the story is believed to be true by an audience of random listeners not familiar with the teller. So, how do jurors make a particular legal judgment? Based on courtroom observation, trial transcripts, and credibility experiments, Bennett and Feldman create a method of diagramming stories that shows exactly what makes some stories more believable than others. Prosecutors and defense attorneys can use this method of analyzing stories to weigh the strategies and tactics available to them; scholars can use it to assess the process of legal judgment.

Now in its Second Edition, this much-cited resource adds a new preface by the authors, as well as new forewords from divergent perspectives. From his experience in law practice, William S. Bailey notes that the authors "adapt a broad structural framework of storytelling to the criminal trial context, making it come alive in the dynamic real world courtroom environment." Law-and-society scholar Anna-Maria Marshall writes that the book's "emphasis on storytelling will resonate with scholars studying legal consciousness, where narrative plays an important theoretical and methodological role. ... This new edition will be a welcome addition to the Law and Society community."

""Reconstructing Reality in the Courtroom "is as timely as it was when this classic was first published. Here Bennett and Feldman provide great insight into the importance of storytelling as a basis of justice in American criminal trials. It deserves very wide readership." - Elizabeth F. Loftus Distinguished Professor, University of California, Irvine Author, "Eyewitness Testimony "(1996)

"This classic law and society study on the power of legal stories is a rich and compelling empirical analysis of the dynamics of story construction in trials. The book remains an essential resource for law students, litigators, academics, and any others who wish to understand the interpretive significance of the stories told in the courtroom." - Jeannine Bell Professor of Law and Neizer Faculty Fellow, Indiana University Maurer School of Law - Bloomington Author, "Hate Thy Neighbor" (2013)

Part of the" Classics of Law & Society" Series from Quid Pro Books.

A sobering look at the intimate relationship between political power and the news media, "When the Press Fails" argues the dependence of reporters on official sources disastrously thwarts coverage of dissenting voices from outside the Beltway. The result is both an indictment of official spin and an urgent call to action that questions why the mainstream press failed to challenge the Bush administration's arguments for an invasion of Iraq or to illuminate administration policies underlying the Abu Ghraib controversy. Drawing on revealing interviews with Washington insiders and analysis of content from major news outlets, the authors illustrate the media's unilateral surrender to White House spin whenever oppositional voices elsewhere in government fall silent. Contrasting these grave failures with the refreshingly critical reporting on Hurricane Katrina--a rare event that caught officials off guard, enabling journalists to enter a no-spin zone--"When the Press Fails" concludes by proposing new practices to reduce reporters' dependence on power.
"The hand-in-glove relationship of the U.S. media with the White House is mercilessly exposed in this determined and disheartening study that repeatedly reveals how the press has toed the official line at those moments when its independence was most needed."--George Pendle, "Financial Times"
"Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston are indisputably right about the news media's dereliction in covering the administration's campaign to take the nation to war against Iraq."--Don Wycliff, "Chicago"" Tribune" " This] analysis of the weaknesses of Washington journalism deserves close attention."--Russell Baker, "New York"" Review of Books"

In the most comprehensive study of the media and foreign policy, twenty distinguished scholars and analysts explain the role played by the mass media and public opinion in the development of United States foreign policy in the Gulf War.
Tracing the flow of news, public opinion, and policy decisions from Sadam Hussein's rise to power in 1979, to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, through the outbreak and conclusion of the war, the contributors look at how the media have become key players in the foreign policy process. They examine the pre-war media debate, news coverage during and after the war, how the news-gathering process shaped the content of the coverage, and the media's effect on public opinion and decision makers. We see what goes on behind the scenes in the high tech world of political communication, and are confronted by troubling questions about the ways the government managed coverage of the war and captured journalists at their own news game.
"Taken by Storm" also examines more general patterns in post-Cold war journalism and foreign policy, particularly how contemporary journalistic practices determine whose voices and what views are heard in foreign policy coverage. At stake are the reactions of a vast media audience and the decision of government officials who see both the press and the public and key elements of the policy game.
The first book to fully integrate our understanding of the news business, public opinion, and government action, "Taken by Storm" transcends the limits of the Gulf War to illuminate the complex relationship between the media, the public, and U.S. foreign policy in the late twentieth century.

In this book, two titans of social movement scholarship bring together the best current research on the nexus between the local and the global in translating the global justice movement into action at the grassroots, and vice versa. Using recent cases of transnational contention_from the European Social Forum in Florence to the Argentinean human rights movement and British environmentalists, from movement networks in Bristol and Glasgow to the Zapatistas_the original chapters by distinguished scholars presented in this volume adapt current social movement theory to what appears to be a new cycle of protest developing around the globe.

Contesting Media Power is the most ambitious international collection to date on the worldwide growth of alternative media that are challenging the power concentration in large media corporations. Media scholars and political scientists develop a broad comparative framework for analyzing alternative media in Australia, Chile, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, Sweden, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Topics include independent media centers, gay online networks and alternative web discussion forums, feminist film, political journalism and social networks, indigenous communication, and church-sponsored media. This important book will help shape debates on the media's role in current global struggles, such as the anti-globalization movement.