Democracy and the Media: A Comparative Perspective

by Edited by Richard Gunther , Anthony Mughan

• ISBN13: 9780521777438
• ISBN10: 0521777437
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-08-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book presents a systematic overview and assessment of the impacts of politics on the media, and of the media on politics, in authoritarian, transitional and democratic regimes in Russia, Spain, Hungary, Chile, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States. Its analysis of the interactions between macro- and micro-level factors incorporates the disciplinary perspectives of political science, mass communications, sociology and social psychology. These essays show that media's effects on politics are the product of often complex and contingent interactions among various causal factors, including media technologies, the structure of the media market, the legal and regulatory framework, the nature of basic political institutions, and the characteristics of individual citizens. The authors' conclusions challenge a number of conventional wisdoms concerning the political roles and effects of the mass media on regime support and change, on the political behavior of citizens, and on the quality of democracy.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	xi
Acknowledgments	xv
The Media in Democratic and Nondemocratic Regimes: A Multilevel Perspective	1	(27)
Anthony Mughan
Richard Gunther
The Media and Politics in Spain: From Dictatorship to Democracy	28	(57)
Richard Gunther
Jose Ramon Montero
Jose Ignacio Wert
Institutional Incapacity, the Attentive Public, and Media Pluralism in Russia	85	(37)
Ellen Mickiewicz
Democratic Transformation and the Mass Media in Hungary: From Stalinism to Democratic Consolidation	122	(43)
Miklos Sukosd
The Modernization of Communications: The Media in the Transition to Democracy in Chile	165	(30)
Eugenio Tironi
Guillermo Sunkel
Media Influence in the Italian Transition from a Consensual to a Majoritarian Democracy	195	(46)
Carlo Marletti
Franca Roncarolo
The United States: News in a Free-Market Society	241	(25)
Thomas E. Patterson
Japan: News and Politics in a Media-Saturated Democracy	266	(37)
Ellis S. Krauss
The Netherlands: Media and Politics between Segmented Pluralism and Market Forces	303	(40)
Cees van der Eijk
Great Britain: The End of News at Ten and the Changing News Environment	343	(32)
Holli A. Semetko
Germany: A Society and a Media System in Transition	375	(27)
Max Kaase
The Political Impact of the Media: A Reassessment	402	(47)
Richard Gunther
Anthony Mughan
References	449	(38)
Index	487