Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"Mass Media, Politics and Democracy" provides a broad overview of all aspects of the relationship between the media and politics. Drawing its examples from a wide range of developed liberal democracies, the book combines an accessible account of the political impact and regulation of the mass media today with an assessment of the democratic potential and anti-democratic dangers of new media technologies.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements (p. x)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• Part I Representing Politics
• 1 Political Bias (p. 21)
• Why does bias matter? (p. 24)
• Defining bias (p. 26)
• Types of bias (p. 29)
• The Bad News studies (p. 36)
• Manufacturing Consent (p. 40)
• Critiques of bias research (p. 42)
• Constructing reality? (p. 44)
• Conclusion (p. 46)
• 2 Telling Tales: The Reporting of Politics (p. 49)
• Frames versus biases (p. 50)
• Producing news (p. 52)
• Genres and political coverage (p. 58)
• Telling political stories (p. 62)
• We the people (p. 69)
• Explaining political stories (p. 73)
• Conclusion (p. 75)
• 3 It's Just for Fun: Politics and Entertainment (p. 77)
• Political satire: politics as deluded and corrupt (p. 81)
• Politics as conspiracy (p. 90)
• Entertainment as propaganda (p. 93)
• The politics of identity: from soap opera to sport (p. 95)
• Conclusion (p. 99)
• 4 Media Effects (p. 101)
• Seeing is believing? (p. 105)
• Under the influence? (p. 107)
• Press and voting behaviour (p. 108)
• Television and voting behaviour (p. 112)
• Influence beyond the ballot box (p. 113)
• Elite effects (p. 118)
• Media consumption in context (p. 120)
• Conclusion (p. 127)
• Part II The Political Economy of Mass Media
• 5 State Control and State Propaganda (p. 131)
• Systems of control (p. 133)
• Censorship (p. 135)
• Secrecy (p. 139)
• Propaganda (p. 140)
• Regulation (p. 146)
• Comparing media systems (p. 153)
• Conclusion (p. 157)
• 6 Conglomerate Control: Media Moguls and Media Power (p. 159)
• Media empires (p. 161)
• Ownership and control (p. 167)
• The power of Rupert Murdoch (p. 167)
• Readers and viewers (p. 175)
• Advertisers (p. 177)
• Reconsidering media power (p. 180)
• Conclusion (p. 183)
• 7 Watchdogs or Lapdogs? The Politics of Journalism (p. 185)
• The power of the spin doctor? (p. 187)
• The rise of churnalism (p. 191)
• Investigative journalism and the 'dumbing down' of news (p. 192)
• Models of journalism (p. 195)
• Conclusion (p. 206)
• 8 Dream Worlds: Globalization and the Webs of Power (p. 209)
• Global players (p. 211)
• A history of the future (p. 213)
• Globalization or internationalization? (p. 218)
• Conglomerates, governments and identities (p. 220)
• Conclusion (p. 230)
• Part III Mass Media and Democracy
• 9 Transforming Political Communication? The Rise of Political Marketing and Celebrity Politics (p. 235)
• Packaging politics (p. 237)
• Packaging techniques (p. 239)
• Arguing about marketing (p. 242)
• The rise of the celebrity politician (p. 244)
• The critique of celebrity politics (p. 248)
• In defence of celebrity politics (p. 250)
• Judging by appearance (p. 254)
• Politics as media performance (p. 256)
• Conclusion (p. 260)
• 10 New Media, New Politics? (p. 261)
• Transforming politics? A five-step programme (p. 262)
• E-democracy: practice and promises (p. 265)
• The argument for e-democracy (p. 270)
• The argument against e-democracy (p. 271)
• New media and politics (p. 273)
• Conclusion (p. 282)
• 11 Power and Mass Media (p. 283)
• Discursive power (p. 285)
• Access power (p. 287)
• Resource power (p. 288)
• Theories of media power (p. 289)
• Conclusion (p. 301)
• 12 A Free Press: Democracy and Mass Media (p. 303)
• Liberal democracy and the free press (p. 305)
• The value of free speech (p. 308)
• The limits to free speech (p. 309)
• Free press/free market? (p. 311)
• Democratic regulation? (p. 315)
• Conclusion (p. 327)
• Conclusion (p. 329)
• Bibliography (p. 335)
• Index (p. 369)

Author notes provided by Syndetics