Media and Political Engagement: Citizens, Communication and Democracy

by Peter Dahlgren

• ISBN13: 9780521527897
• ISBN10: 0521527899
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-02-23
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

One of the most difficult problems facing Western democracy today is the decline in citizens' political engagement. There are many elements that contribute to this, including fundamental socio-cultural changes. The book summarizes these contexts and situates itself within them, while focusing on the media's key role in shaping the character of civic engagement. In particular, it examines the new interactive electronic media in terms of their civic potential. Looking at the evolution of the media landscape, the book interrogates key notions such citizenship, public sphere, agency, identity, deliberation, and practice, and offers a multi-dimensional analytic framework called 'civic cultures'. This framework is then applied to several settings, including television, popular culture, journalism, the EU, and global activism, to illuminate the role of the media in deflecting and enhancing political engagement, as well as in contributing to new forms of political involvement and new understandings of what constitutes the political.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Protean Democracy	p. 2
The Media Connection	p. 2
Useful Theories	p. 3
Democracy and the Media: Three Traditions	p. 4
The Chapters Ahead	p. 6
A Note on Terminology	p. 10
Democracy in Difficult Times	p. 12
Elusive Engagement	p. 13
Structural Snapshots	p. 14
Socio-Cultural Turbulence	p. 26
Civic Regeneration: Two Fronts	p. 30
Media Alterations	p. 34
The Evolving Media Landscape	p. 35
The Twilight of Journalism?	p. 41
Political Communication in Flux	p. 48
The Late Modern Media: Logics of the Matrix	p. 52
Citizens and Agency	p. 57
Citizenship: An Expansive Terrain	p. 58
Becoming Citizens, Doing Citizenship	p. 68
The Knowledge Problem: Opinions and Experts	p. 76
Engagement, Deliberation, and Performance	p. 80
Democracy, Engagement, and Passion	p. 80
Deliberative Democracy - and Its Limits	p. 86
Civic Agency as Agonistic Performance	p. 97
Civic Cultures: An Analytic Frame	p. 102
A Dynamic Circuit	p. 102
Knowledge: Active Appropriation	p. 108
Values: Substantive and Procedural	p. 110
Trust: Optimal and Directed	p. 112
Spaces: Communicative Access and Contexts of Action	p. 114
Practices: Embodied Agency and Skills	p. 116
Identities: Heterogeneity, Empowerment, Community	p. 118
Civic Cultures, Networks, and the Media Matrix	p. 123
Television and Popular Public Spheres	p. 126
Television Logic and the Civic Ideal	p. 127
Popular Engagement: Locating Democracy	p. 136
Television, Popular Culture, and Civic Culture	p. 141
Internet and Civic Potential	p. 149
Taking Stock of the Net: Civic Horizons	p. 150
Public Spheres Online: Social Contexts and Media Logic	p. 159
Online Practices and Civic Cultures	p. 172
Journalism Transformed - To a Degree	p. 172
NGOs as Civic EU Networks	p. 181
Online Activism: Global Horizons	p. 190
Media Generations	p. 200
References	p. 203
Index	p. 229
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