Can real news survive in an era of social media and spin? An updated edition of the "smart, provocative introduction to media and American politics."—Paul Freedman, author of Campaign Advertising and American DemocracyFor over thirty years, News: The Politics of Illusion has not simply reflected the political communication field—it has played a major role in shaping it. Today, the familiar news organizations of the legacy press a...

This book covers various aspects of political communication in dissonant public spheres and their impact on democratic processes. It expands research on campaigning beyond assumptions of well-functioning political systems, to better understand how the erosion of institutional legitimacy and trust affects communication processes.The volume approaches the concept of dissonant public spheres from four divergent perspectives: as instrumental threats to democracy, as communication perfo...

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...

We are facing an unprecedented environmental crisis. How can we communicate and act more effectively to make the political and economic changes required to survive and even thrive within the life-support capacities of our planet?This is the question at the heart of W. Lance Bennett’s much-anticipated book. Bennett challenges readers to consider how best to approach the environmental crisis by changing how we think about the relationships between environment, economy, and democracy....

Coauthored by W. Lance Bennett and Martha S. Feldman, '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...

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 su...

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 grass roots, 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 distingui...

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...