Digital TV offers many advantages over analog TV, but the transition process is complex and costly. This book explains how the process is unfolding in the U.S. and Britain and explores the changes in the legal framework and the industry structure associated with it. It is a unique study about the technological, political, and social factors shaping the emergence of the Information Society in the U.S. and Europe.

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.

How do citizens and leaders in democratic nations communicate about their problems and prospects for the future? What can be learned from other nations about how to communicate in more effective and satisfying ways? This book explores the institutional links between society and government that shape political communication. These regulators of national communication include parties and electoral representation systems, interest group processes, campaign finance mechanisms, and the media. The authors show how these core elements of political systems affect the ways in which people communicate,...

The Logic of Connective Action explains the rise of a personalized digitally networked politics in which diverse individuals address the common problems of our times such as economic fairness and climate change. Rich case studies from the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany illustrate a theoretical framework for understanding how large-scale connective action is coordinated using inclusive discourses such as We Are the 99% that travel easily through social media. In many of these mobilizations, communication operates as an organizational process that may replace or supplement familiar...

A sobering look at the intimate relationship between political power and the news media, "When the Press Fails" argues the dependence of reporters on official sources disastrously thwarts coverage of dissenting voices from outside the Beltway. The result is both an indictment of official spin and an urgent call to action that questions why the mainstream press failed to challenge the Bush administration's arguments for an invasion of Iraq or to illuminate administration policies underlying the Abu Ghraib controversy. Drawing on revealing interviews with Washington insiders and analysis of...

For over thirty years, News: The Politics of Illusion has not simply reflected the political communication field--it has played a major role in shaping it. Today, the familiar news organizations of the legacy press are operating in a fragmenting and expanding mediaverse that resembles a big bang of proliferating online competitors that are challenging the very definition of news itself. Audience-powered sites such as the Huffington Post and Vox blend conventional political reporting with opinion blogs, celebrity gossip, and other ephemera aimed at getting clicks and...