Description: 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.
Brief description: Peter Dahlgren is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Lund University, Sweden. He has also taught at Stockholm University, as well as Queens College and Fordham University in New York City, and has been a visiting scholar at several other universities. He is the author of many articles and author or editor of several books, including Television and the Public Sphere (1995) and Young Citizens and New Media: Learning for Democratic Participation (2007).
Review Quotes: "Media have always had an ambivalent relationship to citizenship and democracy. Sometime promoters of democratic values, often purveyors of their opposite, the role of the press, radio, and television has been fraught. In this important book, Peter Dahlgren shows how the new media context has now changed the dynamics of how citizens use media to advance the democratic project. Brimming with sober analysis and relying on the latest empirical data, Dahlgren explores how the Internet has changed the nature of political engagement - perhaps forever. Far from lauding the Internet as an uncontested new agora, however, Dahlgren explores the paradoxical side of the new technology. The cautionary tone that marks this unsentimental study will inform students of politics and social activists alike."
-Marc Raboy, McGill University