The Media and The Public: "Them" and "Us" in Media Discourse

by Stephen Coleman, Karen Ross

Overview

The Media and the Public explores the ways a range of media, from the press to television to the Internet, have constructed and represented the public.

• Provides a new synthesis of recent research exploring the relationship between media and their publics
• Identifies ways in which different publics are subverting the gatekeeping of mainstream media in order to find a voice and communicate with others
• Situates contemporary media-public discourse and relationships in an historical context in order to show the origin of contemporary public/political engagement
• Creates a theoretical expansion on the role of the media in accessing or denying the articulation of public voices, and the ways in which publics are harnessing new media formats to produce richer and more complex forms of political engagement

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781119187394
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	07/13/2015
Series:	Communication in the Public Interest
Sold by:	JOHN WILEY & SONS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	747 KB

About the Author

Stephen Coleman is Professor of Political Communication and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Citizenship, Institute for Communications Studies, University of Leeds. He is the author of The Internet and Democratic Citizenship: Theory, Practice, and Policy (with Jay G. Blumler, 2009) and Public Trust in the News: A Constructivist Study of the Social Life of News (with David Morrison and Scott Anthony, 2009).

Karen Ross is Professor of Media and Public Communication at the University of Liverpool. She has written and edited many books, including Gendered Media: Women, Men and Identity Politics (2009), Popular Communication: Essays on Publics, Practices and Processes (2008), Rethinking Media Education: Critical Pedagogy and Identity Politics (2007), and Women and Media: Critical Issues (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction. Them and Us: Meet Joe the Plumber 1

1 Imagining the Public 8

2 Public Spheres 29

3 The Managed Public 45

4 Counterpublics and Alternative Media 72

5 Virtual Publicness 93

6 Fractured Publics, Contested Publicness 123

Notes 156

Bibliography 169

Index 179

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Stephen Coleman and Karen Ross inspire us to reflect critically on prevailing assumptions we hold about the media and its publics. Their compelling analysis – written in a clear and accessible – charts new directions for understanding the dynamics of contemporary democracy." Peter Dahlgren, Lund University