Once again, Doris Graber brings readers the most thought-provoking and recent scholarship about the actual power of the media in the real world of politics. With approximately 35 essays, half of them new to this edition, the selections reflect the latest changes in American politics, in American media platforms, and in the interactions between political actors and journalists. Examining these changes and assessing their political significance, this new sixth edition includes coverage of: * the influence of non-professional citizen journalists; * a look ahead at media development in the next decade; * the public's growing disdain for the media and its effect on the media's influence; * old and new media's impact on political participation; * media and the 2008 presidential election; * interest groups' power to control news selection; * media happenings at the state and local levels; * lobbyists' efforts to derail updates to media laws and regulations.
Doris A. Graber is professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has written and edited numerous articles and books on the media and public opinion, including Mass Media and American Politics, Seventh Edition (2006), The Power of Communication: Managing Information in Public Organizations (2003), and Processing Politics: Learning from Television in the Internet Age (2001), which won the 2003 Goldsmith Book Prize. This award is given by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
I. PUTTING MASS MEDIA EFFECTS IN PERSPECTIVE 1. How Information Shapes Political Institutions - Bruce Bimber 2. Documenting the Persuasive Power of the News Media - Jonathan McDonald Ladd and Gabriel S. Lenz 3. Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press - Michael Schudson 4. Political Communication - Old and New Media Relationships - Michael Gurevitch, Stephen Coleman, and Jay G. Blumler 5. Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy - Alex S. Jones 6. What Amateur Journalism Means for International Affairs - Steven Livingston, Kaye Sweetser Tramell and David D. Perlmutter II. SHAPING THE POLITICAL AGENDA AND PUBLIC OPINION 7. What Moves Public Opinion? - Benjamin I. Page, Robert Y. Shapiro, and Glenn R. Dempsey 8. Disdaining the Media: The American Public's Changing Attitudes toward the News - Paul Gronke and Timothy Cook 9. How Soft News Brings Policy Issues to the Inattentive Public - Matthew A. Baum 10. News Coverage Effects on Public Opinion about Crime - Frank D. Gilliam Jr. and Shanto Iyengar 11. Wanted, Dead or Alive: Media Frames, Frame Adoption, and Support for the War in Afghanistan - Jill A. Edy and Patrick C. Meirick 12. Audience Fragmentation and Political Inequality in the Post-Broadcast Media Environment - Markus Prior III. INFLUENCING ELECTION OUTCOM 13. News and the Visual Framing of Elections - Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Erik Page Bucy 14. Learning about the Candidates - Darrell M. West 15. The Miscast Institution - Thomas E. Patterson 16. New Media and the Revitalisation of Politics - Rachel Gibson 17. Electing the President 2008: The Insiders' View - Nicolle Wallace and Anita Dunn 18. Open Season: How the News Media Cover Presidential Campaigns in the Age of Attack Journalism - Larry J. Sabato IV. CONTROLLING MEDIA POWER: POLITICAL ACTORS VERSUS THE PRESS 19. The Struggle over Shaping the News - Stephen J. Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter 20. Going Public as Political Strategy: The Bush Administration, an Echoing Press, and Passage of the Patriot Act - David Domke, Erica S. Graham, Kevin Coe, Sue Lockett John, and Ted Coopman 21. Manipulating the Message in the U.S. Congress - Patrick J. Sellers 22. Strategies of the American Civil Rights Movement - Doug McAdam 23. The Al Jazeera Effect: How the New Global Media Are Reshaping World Politics - Philip Seib 24. A Symbiotic Relationship: Bloggers and Journalists - Richard Davis V. GUIDING PUBLIC POLICIES 25. The Politics of Uncertainty: Lobbyists and Propaganda in Early Twentieth-Century America - Christopher M. Loomis 26. Mediating the Public's Influence on Foreign Policy - Robert M. Entman 27. The Real War Will Never Get on Television: An Analysis of Casualty Imagery - Sean Aday 28. Local Media, Public Opinion, and State Legislative Policies: Agenda Setting at the State Level - Yue Tan and David H. Weaver 29. The Soap Opera Path to Health Policy Goals - May G. Kennedy, Ann O'Leary, Vicki Beck, Katrina Pollard, and Penny Simpson 30. End of Television and Foreign Policy - Monroe E. Price VI. REGULATING AND MANIPULATING MEDIA EFFECTS 31. What Makes a Communications Regulator Independent and Why It Matters - Irene Wu 32. Communications Policy and the Public Interest - Patricia Aufderheide 33. The Watchdog Role of the Press - W. Lance Bennett and William Serrin 34. Terrorism, Censorship, and the First Amendment - Doris A. Graber 35. The News Shapers: Strategic Communication as a Third Force in Newsmaking - Jarol B. Manheim 36. The Internet and Public Policy - Helen Z. Margetts
