This study explores cultural features in communication and examines language in use by studying the talk within a prominent cultural event, the DONAHUE show. First, the study provides a detailed reading of America today, showing the importance of the individual in American society, the prominence of choice, and the role of the self as an antagonist to traditional social roles and the institutions of society more generally. Similarly, the study explores common ways of speaking such as being honest about who one is, sharing one's thoughts and feelings, and really communicating with others....

The 1980s witnessed a rapid growth of communication technology and an immense expansion of new media around the globe. The development of new information and communication technologies has emphasized again the importance of economic, social, political, and cultural institutions associated with the definitions of new technologies. Many of the traditional conceptions of the relation of the media to democracy were predicated upon a certain perception of communication technology and the major contemporary debates related to democratization have to do, again, with the deployment of...

Within a comparative, theoretical and global network, this volume focuses on the impact of information technologies on the prospects for democratic development. It deals with the hopes as well as the fears for democracy and development that have emerged out of the current technological revolution in information and communication. The volume argues that information technologies have historically played a dual and paradoxical role in political formations. Generally, the Big Media (the national press, broadcasting and mainframe computers) have served the centralizing forces, while the Small...