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Defining Moments in Journalism
by Nancy J. Woodhull Robert W. SnyderMost great transformations are not apparent as we live through them. Only in hindsight do individual moments acquire layers of meaning that give them great significance. Looking back is not something that comes naturally to journalists, immersed as they are in breaking events and relentless deadlines. But there is still good reason for journalists, scholars, and people who care about journalism to think about the critical episodes in its recent evolution. In Defining Moments in Journalism, such authors vividly describe episodes of this kind. Some of the chapters and contributors include: "The Lessons of Little Rock" by Harry S. Ashmore; "Vietnam and War Reporting" by Peter Arnett; "Photo-journalists--Visionaries Who Have Changed Our Vision" by Jane M. Rosett; "The Weight of Watergate" by Ellen Hume; "Women Sportswriters--Business as Usual" by Mary Schmitt; "The Connie Chung Phenomenon" by Somini Sengupta; and "Covering Politics--Is There a Female Difference?" by Judy Woodruff. The years since the Great Depression and World War II have seen vast changes in America and also in its journalism. Journalists' relationship to power and authority is more complex; the press corps has become more diverse; the technology of news reporting is almost unrecognizably different from that of fifty years ago; and economic reorganization of the media has bundled news and entertainment organizations into conglomerates of extraordinary size. 'Defining Moments in Journalism' is a fascinating read for communications scholars and professionals, historians, and political scientists.
Defining Sport Communication
by Andrew C. BillingsDefining Sport Communication is a comprehensive resource addressing core topics and issues, including humanistic, organizational, relational, and mediated approaches to the study of sport communication. It provides foundational work in sport communication for students and scholars, reflecting the abundance of research published in recent years and the ever-increasing interest in this area of study. Bringing together scholars from various epistemological viewpoints within communication, this volume provides a unique opportunity for defining the breadth and depth of sport communication research. It will serve as a seminal reference for existing scholarship while also providing an agenda for future research.
Defining Visual Rhetorics
by Charles A. Hill Marguerite HelmersImages play an important role in developing consciousness and the relationship of the self to its surroundings. In this distinctive collection, editors Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers examine the connection between visual images and persuasion, or how images act rhetorically upon viewers. Chapters included here highlight the differences and commonalities among a variety of projects identified as "visual rhetoric," leading to a more precise definition of the term and its role in rhetorical studies. Contributions to this volume consider a wide variety of sites of image production--from architecture to paintings, from film to needlepoint--in order to understand how images and texts work upon readers as symbolic forms of representation. Each chapter discusses, analyzes, and explains the visual aspect of a particular subject, and illustrates the ways in which messages and meaning are communicated visually. The contributions include work from rhetoric scholars in the English and communication disciplines, and represent a variety of methodologies--theoretical, textual analysis, psychological research, and cultural studies, among others. The editors seek to demonstrate that every new turn in the study of rhetorical practices reveals more possibilities for discussion, and that the recent "turn to the visual" has revealed an inexhaustible supply of new questions, problems, and objects for investigation. As a whole, the chapters presented here demonstrate the wide range of scholarship that is possible when a field begins to take seriously the analysis of images as important cultural and rhetorical forces. Defining Visual Rhetorics is appropriate for graduate or advanced undergraduate courses in rhetoric, English, mass communication, cultural studies, technical communication, and visual studies. It will also serve as an insightful resource for researchers, scholars, and educators interested in rhetoric, cultural studies, and communication studies.
Defining Visual Rhetorics
by Charles A. Hill Marguerite HelmersImages play an important role in developing consciousness and the relationship of the self to its surroundings. In this distinctive collection, editors Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers examine the connection between visual images and persuasion, or how images act rhetorically upon viewers. Chapters included here highlight the differences and commonalities among a variety of projects identified as "visual rhetoric," leading to a more precise definition of the term and its role in rhetorical studies. Contributions to this volume consider a wide variety of sites of image production--from architecture to paintings, from film to needlepoint--in order to understand how images and texts work upon readers as symbolic forms of representation. Each chapter discusses, analyzes, and explains the visual aspect of a particular subject, and illustrates the ways in which messages and meaning are communicated visually. The contributions include work from rhetoric scholars in the English and communication disciplines, and represent a variety of methodologies--theoretical, textual analysis, psychological research, and cultural studies, among others. The editors seek to demonstrate that every new turn in the study of rhetorical practices reveals more possibilities for discussion, and that the recent "turn to the visual" has revealed an inexhaustible supply of new questions, problems, and objects for investigation. As a whole, the chapters presented here demonstrate the wide range of scholarship that is possible when a field begins to take seriously the analysis of images as important cultural and rhetorical forces. Defining Visual Rhetorics is appropriate for graduate or advanced undergraduate courses in rhetoric, English, mass communication, cultural studies, technical communication, and visual studies. It will also serve as an insightful resource for researchers, scholars, and educators interested in rhetoric, cultural studies, and communication studies.
The Definitive Book of Body Language: How to read others' attitudes by their gestures
by Allan Pease Barbara PeaseThis international bestseller explains everything you need to know about body language, how to read it, and how to put your best self forwards.What people say is often very different to what they think or feel.Now, with THE DEFINITIVE BOOK OF BODY LANGUAGE, you can learn to read others people's thoughts by their gestures. It sounds implausible, but body language is easy to pick up and fun to use. Find out:How to tell if someone is lyingHow to make yourself likeableHow to get co-operation from other peopleHow to interview and negotiate successfullyHow to choose a partnerLearn the secrets of body language with Allan and Barbara Pease, bestselling authors of WHY MEN DON'T LISTEN AND WOMEN CAN'T READ MAPS.
The Definitive Book of Body Language
by Barbara Pease Allan PeaseAvailable for the first time in the United States, this international bestseller reveals the secrets of nonverbal communication to give you confidence and control in any face-to-face encounter - from making a great first impression and acing a job interview to finding the right partner. It is a scientific fact that people's gestures give away their true intentions. Yet most of us don't know how to read body language and don't realize how our own physical movements speak to others. Now the world's foremost experts on the subject share their techniques for reading body language signals to achieve success in every area of life. Drawing upon more than thirty years in the field, as well as cutting-edge research from evolutionary biology, psychology, and medical technologies that demonstrate what happens in the brain, the authors examine each component of body language and give you the basic vocabulary to read attitudes and emotions through behavior. Discover: How palms and handshakes are used to gain control; The most common gestures of liars; How the legs reveal what the mind wants to do; The most common male and female courtship gestures and signals; The secret signals of cigarettes, glasses, and makeup; The magic of smiles, including smiling advice for women; How to use nonverbal cues and signals to communicate more effectively and get the reactions you want. Filled with fascinating insights, humorous observations, and simple strategies that you can apply to any situation, this intriguing book will enrich your communication with and understanding of others as well as yourself.
The Definitive Guide to Strategic Content Marketing: Perspectives, Issues, Challenges and Solutions
by Lazar Dzamic Justin KirbyMarketers everywhere are talking about content, but not everyone is saying the same thing. Some professionals love content and believe it has revolutionized the practice of marketing. To others, it's mere hype: a new name for what marketers have always done. The Definitive Guide to Strategic Content Marketing brings together all of these diverse perspectives, structuring them around useful key topics that provide insight into the multi-faceted nature of content marketing. The editors of The Definitive Guide to Strategic Content Marketing weave different voices together to present a balanced view of content marketing, grouping the discussion around relevant subjects such as content monetization, native advertising, visuals vs video, and the challenge of measuring results. This structure allows readers to move through the book according to their interests, and cherry-pick the most useful aspects of each discussion to apply to their own marketing initiatives. Containing contributions from, and interviews with, leading academics, industry experts, thought leaders and influencers, this book is a truly unique resource.
DEI and Intersectional Social Identities at Work: A Communication Approach
by Donnalyn Pompper Tugce Ertem-ErayThis book equips readers—both students and communication practitioners—with the theoretical understanding and practical skills they need to support nonprofit and for-profit organizations to create and assess their diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and social identity intersectionality goals.Through applied examples of the insider activist role that the communication function plays, the book helps future and current professional communicators navigate organizations toward authentic relationship-building with internal and external audiences. It teaches that embracing DEI includes acknowledging social identity intersectionalities—recognizing that people possess multiple social identity dimensions of age, culture, ethnicity/race, faith/spirituality, gender, physical/psychological ability, sexual orientation, social class, and more. In order to illuminate the theory discussed in the book, each chapter includes thought-provoking situation-opportunity sidebars, discussion questions for drilling deeper into the issues at hand, and case studies with applied lessons about DEI issues.This is an ideal text for advanced undergraduates and graduate courses in organizational communication, strategic communication, marketing communication, human resources, and public relations, as well as for communication practitioners working in these subdisciplines.
Deixis in Narrative: A Cognitive Science Perspective
by Judith F. Duchan Gail A. Bruder Lynne E. HewittThis volume describes the theoretical and empirical results of a seven year collaborative effort of cognitive scientists to develop a computational model for narrative understanding. Disciplines represented include artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, communicative disorders, education, English, geography, linguistics, and philosophy. The book argues for an organized representational system -- a Deictic Center (DC) -- which is constructed by readers from language in a text combined with their world knowledge. As readers approach a new text they need to gather and maintain information about who the participants are and where and when the events take place. This information plays a central role in understanding the narrative. The editors claim that readers maintain this information without explicit textual reminders by including it in their mental model of the story world. Because of the centrality of the temporal, spatial, and character information in narratives, they developed their notion of a DC as a crucial part of the reader's mental model of the narrative. The events that carry the temporal and spatial core of the narrative are linguistically and conceptually constrained according to certain principles that can be relatively well defined. A narrative obviously unfolds one word, or one sentence, at a time. This volume suggests that cognitively a narrative usually unfolds one place and time at a time. This spatio-temporal location functions as part of the DC of the narrative. It is the "here" and "now" of the reader's "mind's eye" in the world of the story. Organized into seven parts, this book describes the goal of the cognitive science project resulting in this volume, the methodological approaches taken, and the history of the collaborative effort. It provides a historical and theoretical background underlying the DC theory, including discussions of deixis in language and the nature of fiction. It goes on to outline the computational framework and how it is used to represent deixis in narrative, and details the linguistic devices implicated in the DC theory. Other subjects covered include: crosslinguistic indicators of subjectivity, psychological investigations of the use of deixis by children and adults as they process narratives, conversation, direction giving, implications for emerging literacy, and a narrator's experience in writing a short story.
Delay Tolerant Networks: Protocols and Applications
by Athanasios V. Vasilakos Yan Zhang Thrasyvoulos SpyropoulosA class of Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN), which may violate one or more of the assumptions regarding the overall performance characteristics of the underlying links in order to achieve smooth operation, is rapidly growing in importance but may not be well served by the current end-to-end TCP/IP model. Delay Tolerant Networks: Protocols and Applicat
Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World
by Jason FarmanA celebration of waiting throughout history, and of its importance for connection, understanding, and intimacy in human communication We have always been conscious of the wait for life-changing messages, whether it be the time it takes to receive a text message from your love, for a soldier’s family to learn news from the front, or for a space probe to deliver data from the far reaches of the solar system. In this book in praise of wait times, award-winning author Jason Farman passionately argues that the delay between call and answer has always been an important part of the message. Traveling backward from our current era of Twitter and texts, Farman shows how societies have worked to eliminate waiting in communication and how they have interpreted those times’ meanings. Exploring seven eras and objects of waiting—including pneumatic mail tubes in New York, Elizabethan wax seals, and Aboriginal Australian message sticks—Farman offers a new mindset for waiting. In a rebuttal to the demand for instant communication, Farman makes a powerful case for why good things can come to those who wait.
#DELETED: Big Tech's Battle to Erase a Movement and Subvert Democracy
by Allum BokhariThe most powerful tech companies in the world are determined to stop Donald Trump.Journalist Allum Bokhari has spent four years investigating the tech giants that dominate the Internet: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. He has discovered a dark plot to seize control of the flow of information, and utilize that power to its full extent - to censor, manipulate, and ultimately sway the outcome of democratic elections. His network of whistleblowers inside Google, Facebook and other companies explain how the tech giants now see themselves as "good censors," benevolent commissars controlling the information we receive to "protect" us from "dangerous" speech.They reveal secret methods to covertly manipulate online information without us ever being aware of it, explaining how tech companies can use big data to target undecided voters. They lift the lid on a plot four years in the making - a plot to use the power of technology to stop Donald Trump's re-election.
Deliberating War
by Patricia Roberts-MillerThis book argues that treating politics as war derails essential democratic processes, including deliberation and policy argumentation, in complicated ways. “Politics is war” is not always just a figure of speech, but often a sincere expression of how people see disagreement—they mean it literally—and they use it to evade the responsibilities of rhetoric. This book takes the metaphor seriously. Using a series of case studies ranging from the 432 BCE “Debate at Sparta” to Bill O’Reilly’s recent invention of a “War on Christmas,” Deliberating War illustrates pathologies of deliberation that arise when a community understands itself to be at political war. This book identifies recurrent rhetorical strategies that constrain or even effectively prohibit deliberation, such as deflecting, reframing, threat inflation, appealing to paired terms, claiming moral license, radicalizing a base. In short, what seems to be an effective solution to an immediate rhetorical problem—using hyperbole and demagoguery to persuade people to adopt a specific leader or policy—is a trap that prevents democratic practices of compromise, deliberation, fairness, reciprocity. Unhappily, threat inflation—even when well-intentioned--At some point, hyperbolic rhetoric becomes threat inflation, and then that inflated threat becomes the premise of policies, both foreign and domestic. And then agreeing as to the obvious existential threat posed by the Other and uniting behind the obvious policy solution is a necessary sign of being on the side of Good. Once communities become persuaded that they are in an apocalyptic battle between Good and Evil, politics as war can quickly become real war—often with far-reaching and catastrophic consequences.
Deliberative Acts: Democracy, Rhetoric, and Rights (Rhetoric and Democratic Deliberation #7)
by Arabella LyonThe twenty-first century is characterized by the global circulation of cultures, norms, representations, discourses, and human rights claims; the arising conflicts require innovative understandings of decision making. Deliberative Acts develops a new, cogent theory of performative deliberation. Rather than conceiving deliberation within the familiar frameworks of persuasion, identification, or procedural democracy, it privileges speech acts and bodily enactments that constitute deliberation itself, reorienting deliberative theory toward the initiating moment of recognition, a moment in which interlocutors are positioned in relationship to each other and so may begin to construct a new lifeworld. By approaching human rights not as norms or laws, but as deliberative acts, Lyon conceives rights as relationships among people and as ongoing political and historical projects developing communal norms through global and cross-cultural interactions.
Deliberative Acts: Democracy, Rhetoric, and Rights (Rhetoric and Democratic Deliberation)
by Arabella LyonThe twenty-first century is characterized by the global circulation of cultures, norms, representations, discourses, and human rights claims; the arising conflicts require innovative understandings of decision making. Deliberative Acts develops a new, cogent theory of performative deliberation. Rather than conceiving deliberation within the familiar frameworks of persuasion, identification, or procedural democracy, it privileges speech acts and bodily enactments that constitute deliberation itself, reorienting deliberative theory toward the initiating moment of recognition, a moment in which interlocutors are positioned in relationship to each other and so may begin to construct a new lifeworld. By approaching human rights not as norms or laws, but as deliberative acts, Lyon conceives rights as relationships among people and as ongoing political and historical projects developing communal norms through global and cross-cultural interactions.
Delicious Words: East Asian Food Words in English
by Jieun KiaerAs societies across the globe are becoming increasingly interwoven at an unprecedented speed and across an impressive scope, so too is the world of food, allowing the English language to develop an ever-widening culinary vocabulary. This book examines the lives of such words in today’s discourse on eating and drinking, focusing on foreign - particularly East Asian - influences on culinary terms in English, and how words are born and evolve in a modern transcultural environment. Through the lens of culinary words, this book demonstrates that foreign-origin and hybrid words, previously considered marginal, have become a main source of new imports into our daily lexicon. With case studies from Japan to Mongolia, Hong Kong to Korea, China to Vietnam, and beyond, this book examines how more and more words are becoming borderless and forming their own new global identities. By showcasing some lesser-known regional cuisines, alongside staple dishes that many of us already know and love, this book offers a wide range of examples in order to illustrate the metamorphosis of the manner in which we engage with food words. This book will be of interest to general readers, as well as those who are engaged in East Asian studies, English linguistics, intercultural communication studies, translation studies, and lexicography.
Delivering Data Analytics: A Step-By-Step Guide to Driving Adoption of Business Intelligence from Planning to Launch
by Nicholas KellyThe importance of data analytics is well known, but how can you get end users to engage with analytics and business intelligence (BI) when adoption of new technology can be frustratingly slow or may not happen at all? Avoid wasting time on dashboards and reports that no one uses with this practical guide to increasing analytics adoption by focusing on people and process, not technology. Pulling together agile, UX and change management principles, Delivering Data Analytics outlines a step-by-step, technology agnostic process designed to shift the organizational data culture and gain buy-in from users and stakeholders at every stage of the project. This book outlines how to succeed and build trust with stakeholders amid the politics, ambiguity and lack of engagement in business. With case studies, templates, checklists and scripts based on the author's considerable experience in analytics and data visualisation, this book covers the full cycle from requirements gathering and data assessment to training and launch. Ensure lasting adoption, trust and, most importantly, actionable business value with this roadmap to creating user-centric analytics projects.
Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service
by Ron Zemke"The best-selling front-line customer service book ever published is now better than ever. More than a decade after the debut of Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service, this newly revised edition introduces readers to the next generation of first-class service strategy. Applying the winning Knock Your Socks Off formula to the new demands of 21st-century business, the third edition features all-new chapters on Delivering Knock Your Socks Off E-Service, Creating Trust with Your Customer, and Service Recovery Expectations, plus new and updated stories, real-world examples, and new illustrations by cartoonist John Bush. And as always, Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service reveals how to: * See things from the customer's point of view * Become a fantastic fixer and a powerful problem solver * Cope with ""customers from hell"" * And avoid The 10 Deadly Sins of Customer Service Today's customer is smarter, more demanding, and more mobile than ever. Once again, Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service delivers the strategies, techniques, and tips that will keep those customers coming back. "
Delivering the Vision: Public Services for the Information Society and the Knowledge Economy
by Eileen M. MilnerPolitical rhetoric surrounding the role of information and knowledge in society in the twenty-first century is often thrown into sharp relief by the realities of practice. Delivering the Vision explores the way in which public service visions have developed globally and how successful they have been in contributing to major social and economic change.This edited text contains a range of case studies from the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Canada, the USA and Australia. Contributors focus both on those factors critical to success and on reasons for failure, but a common theme to emerge across all contributions is the requirement for a clear political vision, commitment and leadership if the shift from traditional forms of social and economic organisation to high-value, knowledge-intensive economies is to be safely negotiated. At the same time, individual case studies provide valuable blueprints for successful implementation of an ambitious public service change agenda.Delivering the Vision is accessible and relevant to all those interested in the management and reform of public sector organisations. It is a companion volume to the editor's earlier text Managing Information and Knowledge in the Public Sector (Routlegde: 2000)
Della Cruscan Poetry, Women and the Fashionable Newspaper (Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print)
by Claire KnowlesThis book explores Della Cruscan poetry in the late eighteenth-century literary scene. A sociable, ornate, and deeply theatrical type of poetry, Della Cruscanism was associated with writers like Robert Merry, Mary Robinson, and Hannah Cowley. While Merry is the poet most commonly associated with the Della Cruscan school, this book argues that Della Cruscanism was a movement dominated by female poets and that this was one of the key reasons for the later disavowal and downgrading of its poetic accomplishments. It offers a close examination of these women writers and their role in shaping the poetic culture of the fashionable newspaper. In doing so, this study offers the first account of the feminization of the fashionable newspaper and of popular literary culture in the final years of the eighteenth century.
Demand for Communications Services - Insights and Perspectives
by James Alleman Áine Marie Patricia Ní-Shúilleabháin Paul N. RappoportThis volume grew out of a conference organized by James Alleman and Paul Rappoport, conducted on October 10, 2011 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in honor of the work of Lester D. Taylor, whose pioneering work in demand and market analysis has had profound implications on research across a wide spectrum of industries In his Prologue, Eli M. Noam notes that demand analysis in the information sector must recognize the "public good" characteristics of media products and networks, while taking into account the effects of interdependent user behavior; the strong cross-elasticities in a market; as well as the phenomenon of supply creating its own demand The second Prologue, by Timothy Tardiff and Daniel Levy, focuses more specifically on Taylor's body of work, in particular its practical applications and usefulness in analyses of, and practices within, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector (known in Europe and elsewhere as the Telecommunications, Media, and Technology (TMT) sector) The remainder of the book is organized into four parts: Advances in Theory; Empirical Applications; Evidence-Based Policy Applications; and a final Conclusion The book closes with an Appendix by Sharon Levin and Stanford Levin detailing Taylor's contributions using bibliometrics. Not only featuring chapters from distinguished scholars in economics, applied sciences, and technology, this volume includes two contributions directly from Lester Taylor, providing unique insight into economics from a lifetime in the field. "What a worthy book! Every applied researcher in communications encounters Lester Taylor's work. Many empirical exercises in communications can trace their roots to Taylor's pioneering research and his thoughtful leadership. This book assembles an impressive set of contributors and contributions to honor Taylor. No surprise, the collection extends far and wide into many of the core topics of communications and media markets. The emphasis is where it should be-on important and novel research questions informed by useful data --Shane Greenstein, Professor of Management and Strategy, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University "For more than 40 years, Lester Taylor has been a leader in the application of consumer modeling, econometric techniques and microeconomic data to understand residential and business user behavior in telecommunications markets. During that time, he inspired a cadre of students and colleagues who applied this potent combination to address critical corporate and regulatory issues arising in the telecommunications sector. This volume collects the recent product of many of these same researchers and several other devotees who go beyond empirical analysis of fixed line service by extending Prof. Taylor's approach to the next wave of services and technologies. These contributions, including two new papers by Prof. Taylor, offer an opportunity for the next generation to learn from his work as it grapples with the pressing issues of consumer demand in the rapidly evolving digital economy. " -- Glenn Woroch, Adjunct Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley
Demarketing: Gezielte Nachfragereduzierung: Typologie und Wahrnehmung einer scheinbar unlogischen Bewegung
by Andreas HesseDieses Buch erläutert die riskante und subtile Strategie des Demarketings. Dabei wird Nachfrage nicht stimuliert, sondern durch verschiedene Maßnahmen gezielt reduziert oder umgelenkt. Die Beweggründe dafür sind unterschiedlich: Sowohl Nachhaltigkeit, soziale Verantwortung, Vertriebssteuerung und Image, als auch Effizienz, Umpositionierung oder schlichtweg Regulierungsvermeidung können Auslöser und Hintergrund sein. Der Autor zeigt strukturiert die verschiedenen Demarketingtypen auf und erläutert die Herangehensweisen und Konsumentenwahrnehmungen aus realen Kampagnen, wie beispielsweise der Marken Patagonia, Bio Company, Levi’s, Heineken, Gustavo Gusto oder KLM.Das erste grundlegende Werk zu Demarketing in deutscher Sprache – theoretisch fundiert und voller praxisrelevanter Hintergründe.
Los demasiados libros
by Gabriel ZaidHay en la experiencia de leer una felicidad y libertad que resultan adictivas. La lectura libera. Se extiende a leer la vida, a leer quiénes somos y en dónde estamos. Anima las conversaciones de lector a lector. Se contagia por los lectores en acción: padres, maestros, amigos, escritores, traductores, críticos, editores, tipógrafos, libreros, bibliotecarios y otros promotores del vicio de leer. Gabriel Zaid es capaz de observar el mundo de las letras desde la perspectiva otorgada por otras disciplinas. Su gran acierto es la virtud del poeta: decir lo que oscuramente habíamos intuido sin alcanzar a formularlo en palabras. Señala que el verdadero problema del libro es que el estrato privilegiado que ha hecho estudios universitarios no lee: nunca le ha dado el golpe a la lectura, nunca ha llegado a saber realmente lo que es leer. Esto, que sepamos, nadie lo había dicho.
Democracy and Its Crisis
by A. C. GraylingThe EU referendum in the UK and Trump&’s victory in the USA sent shockwaves through our democratic systems. In Democracy and Its Crisis A. C. Grayling investigates why the institutions of representative democracy seem unable to hold up against forces they were designed to manage, and why it matters. First he considers those moments in history when the challenges we face today were first encountered and what solutions were found. Then he lays bare the specific threats facing democracy today. The paperback edition includes new material on the reforms that are needed to make our system truly democratic.
Democracy and Media Decadence
by John KeaneWe live in a revolutionary age of communicative abundance in which many media innovations - from satellite broadcasting to smart glasses and electronic books - spawn great fascination mixed with excitement. In the field of politics, hopeful talk of digital democracy, cybercitizens and e-government has been flourishing. This book admits the many thrilling ways that communicative abundance is fundamentally altering the contours of our lives and of our politics, often for the better. But it asks whether too little attention has been paid to the troubling counter-trends, the decadent media developments that encourage public silence and concentrations of unlimited power, so weakening the spirit and substance of democracy. Exploring examples of clever government surveillance, market censorship, spin tactics and back-channel public relations, John Keane seeks to understand and explain these trends, and how best to deal with them. Tackling some tough but big and fateful questions, Keane argues that 'media decadence' is deeply harmful for public life.