1st Edition

Remaking Media The Struggle to Democratize Public Communication

By Robert Hackett, William Carroll Copyright 2006

    Remaking Media is a unique and timely reading of the contemporary struggle to democratize communication.

    With a focus on activism directed towards challenging and changing media content, practices and structures, the book explores the burning question: What is the political significance and potential of democratic media activism in the western world today?

    Taking an innovative approach, Robert Hackett and William Carroll pay attention to an emerging social movement that appears at the cutting edge of cultural and political contention, and ground their work in three scholarly traditions that provide interpretive resources for the study of democratic media activism:

    • political theories of democracy
    • critical media scholarship
    • the sociology of social movements.

    Remaking Media examines the democratization of the media and the efforts to transform the machinery of representation. Such an examination will prove invaluable not only to media and communication studies students, but also to students of political science.

    List of Tables and Figures.  Foreword by Robert W. McChesney.  Acknowledgements  1. Introduction: Beyond the Media’s Democratic Deficit?  2. What is at Stake? Power and the Media Field  3. Democratizing Society: Social Movements and Public Communication  4. Visions and Divisions: Normative Commitments of Media Democratization  5. The Long Revolution and the Media Alliance  6. Campaigning for Press and Broadcasting Freedom in the UK  7. Challenges for Media Activism: Obstacles and Opponents  8. Springboards for Media Activism: Opportunities, Resources, Strategies and Allies  9. Movement Formation and Counter-Hegemony in a Global City  10. Identity, Vision, Strategies: Media Democratization as Counter-Hegemony  11. Conclusion: Media Activism as Movement-Nexus?  Bibliography

    Biography

    Robert Hackett, William Carroll

    'A meticulously researched work... [which] is also absolutely timely in its analysis of the preconditions for successful media activism.' - Global Media and Communication