There is widespread concern that the explosive growth of the Internet is exacerbating existing inequalities between the information rich and poor. Digital Divide sets out to examine the evidence for access and use of the Internet in 179 nations across the world. A global divide is evident between industrialized and developing societies. A social divide is apparent between rich and poor within each nation. And within the online community, evidence for a democratic divide is emerging between those who do and do not use Internet resources to engage, mobilize and participate in public life.

Giving people the media they want is thought to justify the move toward deregulation that has swept media policy circles. Freedom of the press is thought to require resistance to government interventions in the media realm. This book uses economic and democratic theory to undermine the premises of both beliefs. It also relies on these theories to evaluate journalistic practice, to recommend appropriate governmental policy toward the media, and to defend a preferred constitutional conception of press freedom. These issues should be vitally important to anyone interested in the proper practice...

Aimed at providing a comprehensive understanding of comparative political communication, this volume analyzes the media systems of Europe and America. It considers whether election campaigns around the world have become "Americanized," how international news journalists understand their jobs and produce different forms of television news programs, and how governmental media relations and news management efforts evolve in different political systems. The book analyzes transnational similarities and dissimilarities in the context of their potential effects on society and democracy.

Examining the role that the news media play in peace processes, Gadi Wolfsfeld argues that, although often destructive, the role of the press varies over time and political circumstance. Wolfsfeld analyzes these variations by examining three major cases: the Oslo peace process between Israel and the Palestinians; the peace process between Israel and Jordan; and the process surrounding the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.

Proposing a framework for comparative analysis of the relationship between the media and the political system, this book surveys media institutions in eighteen West European and North American democracies. It identifies the principal dimensions of variation in media systems and the political variables which have shaped their evolution. It then pinpoints three major models of media systems development (the Polarized Pluralist, Democratic Corporatist and Liberal models) and explains why the media play a different role in politics in each of these systems.

This book presents a unique perspective on the relationship between politics and the media in different kinds of political regimes in Europe, North America and Asia. These essays show that media effects on politics are the product of interactions among media technologies, the structure of the media market, the legal and regulatory framework, the nature of basic political institutions, and the characteristics of individual citizens. The authors' conclusions challenge conventional wisdom concerning the political roles and effects of the mass media on regime support and change, on the political...

This book presents a unique perspective on the relationship between politics and the media in different kinds of political regimes in Europe, North America and Asia. These essays show that media effects on politics are the product of interactions among media technologies, the structure of the media market, the legal and regulatory framework, the nature of basic political institutions, and the characteristics of individual citizens. The authors' conclusions challenge conventional wisdom concerning the political roles and effects of the mass media on regime support and change, on the political...

This book explores the changing nature of democracy in light of dramatic changes in the media of mass communication: the Internet, the decline of network television news and the daily newspaper; the growing tendency to treat election campaigns as competing product advertisements; the blurring lines among news, ads, and entertainment. It explores such questions as: Does the Internet make it easier for citizens to find political information? Do today's highly competitive old and new mass media serve the needs of democratic citizenship? Does the new media environment produce public opinion that...

Is the process of political communications by the news media and by parties responsible for civic malaise? A Virtuous Circle sets out to challenge the conventional wisdom that it is. Based on a comparative examination of the role of the news media and parties in postindustrial societies, this study argues that rather than mistakenly "blaming the messenger" we need to understand and confront more deep-rooted flaws in the systems of representative democracy.

Using controversy over abortion as a lens through which to compare the political process and role of the media in these two very different democracies, this book examines the contest over meaning that is being waged by social movements, political parties, churches and other social actors. Abortion is a critical battleground for debates over social values in Germany and the U.S., but the constitutional premises on which arguments rest differ, as do the strategies that movements and parties adopt and the opportunities for influence that are open to them.