Media Consumption and Public Engagement: Beyond the Presumption of Attention (Consumption and Public Life)

Democracy is based on the belief that the media gets the attention of voters. But is this plausible in an age of multiplying media, disillusionment with the political system and time-scarcity? This book addresses this question, and charts experiences of 'public connection'. Governments in many countries fear voting turnout and political engagement is in terminal decline, threatening the long-term legitimacy of the democratic process. Meanwhile definitions of politics and the public world are changing, while media formats are proliferating and media audiences fragmenting in the age of digital media. How are these important trends related? And what do our everyday habits of consuming media contribute to our possibilities of being effective citizens? Nick Couldry, Sonia Livingstone and Tim Markham address these questions in their pathbreaking new book based on research into the 'Future of Public Connection'. The book reports their findings and explains highly original methodology, involving people across England producing diaries for three months tracking their perspective on the public world. The book includes interviews, a nationwide survey and an authoritative review of the current literature on democratic theory, political sociology and media audiences. The result is a major assessment of the difference that media, and our ways of living with media, make to the condition of democracy Front Matter....Pages i-xviii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Democracy and the Presumption of Attention....Pages 3-22 Media Consumption and Public Connection....Pages 23-41 Tracking Public Connection: Methodological Issues....Pages 42-57 Front Matter....Pages 59-59 Introduction....Pages 61-64 Mediated Public Connection: Broad Dynamics....Pages 65-87 The Variability of Media Use....Pages 88-110 Values, Talk and Action....Pages 111-129 Democracy Seen from Afar....Pages 130-146 Engagement and Mediation: Findings from the Public Connection Survey....Pages 147-176 Front Matter....Pages 177-177 Conclusion: The Future of Public Connection....Pages 179-195 Back Matter....Pages 196-248 Contemporary democracies are based on the belief that media can deliver the attention of the voting populations. But in an age of multiplying media, political disillusionment, and time-scarcity, is this plausible any longer? This book addresses this major question head on