Product details
- ISBN 9780745628448
- Weight: 254g
- Dimensions: 154 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 03 Oct 2002
- Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Real power in the media is wielded by an iron triangle committed to the media's logic of up-to-the-minute reportage: media-savvy political elites, pollsters and media executives. Democratic politics with its slow-paced processes has traditionally relied on parties, intermediary actors and the institutions of representative government, but all have been banished to the periphery today.
Meyer shows how media democracy has replaced deliberation – once the lifeblood of democratic public life – with pseudo-plebiscites. Nevertheless, deliberative procedures could regain some influence through local civic participation and a thorough reform of the communicative culture of the mass media. Meyer argues that the culture of the media should be transformed in ways that would serve democracy, enabling citizens to deepen their understanding of political realities.
This powerful critique of media democracy will be of great interest to students of politics and the media and to anyone concerned with the impact of the media on public life.
Lewis P. Hinchman is Professor of Government at Clarkson University. He is the author/editor of three books and nearly twenty journal articles and book chapters on various aspects of political theory. He is also corresponding editor and translator for the Hannah Arendt Newsletter , published in Germany. He is currently working on a book project concerning the intellectual origins of environmental thought
