The Media and The Public (eBook)

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).

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

"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