Public Communication in Freefall

Stephen Coleman is Professor of Political Communication at the University of Leeds, UK.Frank Esser is Professor of International & Comparative Media Research in the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.Julie Firmstone is Professor of Journalism and Political Communication at the School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, UK.Katy Parry is Professor of Media and Politics at the University of Leeds, UK.Chris Paterson is Professor of Global Communication at the School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, UK.

• 1. Introduction.- Section One: The ‘crisis of public communication’ in historical perspective.- 2. Reprint of the following journal article which we will obtain permission to publish: Blumler, J.G. and Coleman, S., 2015. Democracy and the media—revisited. Javnost-The Public, 22(2), pp.111-128.- 3. Prof. W. Russell Neuman, NYU Steinhardt: Cycles of Crisis: The Current Condition of the Democratic Public Sphere.- 4. Prof. Barbara Pfetsch, Freie Universität Berlin: Fluid Public Spheres, Noisy Networks and Political Polarization – Safeguards against the threats of democratic public communication.- Section Two: Challenges in the ‘fourth age’ of political communication.- 5. Prof. Paul D’Angelo and Prof. Erik P. Bucy, Texas Tech University: The Crisis of a Denigrated Press in a Post-Compromise U.S. Political Culture.- 6. Dr. Curd Knüpfer, Freie Universität Berlin: The Challenge by Far-right Counter-publics as the Next Crisis of Public Communication.- 7. Dr Márton Bene, Centre for Social Sciences (TK PTI): The effect of the viralization of political communication on the crisis of public communication.- Section Three: The public sphere and citizen engagement.- 8. Dr. Tom Chivers and Prof. Stuart Allan, Cardiff University: Rethinking the public value of Public Service Broadcasting in the political communications freefall.- 9. Prof. William H. Dutton and Dr. Grant Blank (Oxford Internet Institute): Diversity of Sources in Democratic Communication: Speaking Comparatively.- 10. Prof. Zrinjka Peruško, University of Zagreb: The Crisis of Public Communication in Hybrid Public Spheres and the Aspiration to Deliberative Democracy.- 11. Sang Jung Kim,, Yibing Sun, Zening Duan, Yooji Suh, Ruochong Fan, Mengyu Li, Erik Bucy, Porismita Borah, Josephine Lukito, Zhongkai Sun, Dhavan Shah: The Increasingly Contentious Spaces of Mediated Interaction: Aggressive Partisanship and Weakening Citizenship.-12. Author TBC: Afterword: The continuing legacy of Jay Blumler’s work