Bart Cammaerts - Böcker

This innovative textbook explores media and communication theory, and its intersections with social and political theory, through the prism of eight core dichotomies – communication/media, private/public, production/reception, material/symbolic, mainstream/alternative, abundance/scarcity, control/freedom, and virtual/real – revealing their complex interrelationships and significance in understanding contemporary media and communication landscapes.Students will gain a nuanced understanding of media and communication theories by examining both sides of each dichotomy and their dynamic interplay. The book historicizes each concept pair, illustrates them with past and present examples, and demonstrates how competing paradigms often complement rather than contradict each other. This approach helps readers grasp theoretical complexity, recognize the democratic importance of media and communication, and develop critical thinking skills through engaging case studies and discussion questions in each chapter.This textbook is designed for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking media and communication theory courses. Instructors teaching critical media and communication theory will find the dichotomy-based approach particularly valuable for helping students navigate complex theoretical debates and understand the field's intellectual development. It will also be useful supplementary reading for specific topics within broader media studies programs.

This book addresses one of the greatest challenges of post-modern democracy: how to bridge the perceived gap between citizens and democratic institutions. It examines internet-mediated multi-stakeholder processes of international and regional organisations - the European Union and United Nations - which aim to democratise decision-making processes in an attempt to counter criticisms of a 'democratic deficit'. The book evaluates two multi-stakeholder consultation processes where the internet played an important mediating role. It critically evaluates multi-stakeholderism as well as the potentials and constraints of the internet in terms of mediating or facilitating such consultation processes at international and regional levels of governance. It also addresses the perceived impact of civil society organisations on decision-making processes beyond the nation-state and, in turn, the impact of such participatory experiments on civil society itself.

This innovative textbook explores media and communication theory, and its intersections with social and political theory, through the prism of eight core dichotomies – communication/media, private/public, production/reception, material/symbolic, mainstream/alternative, abundance/scarcity, control/freedom, and virtual/real – revealing their complex interrelationships and significance in understanding contemporary media and communication landscapes.Students will gain a nuanced understanding of media and communication theories by examining both sides of each dichotomy and their dynamic interplay. The book historicizes each concept pair, illustrates them with past and present examples, and demonstrates how competing paradigms often complement rather than contradict each other. This approach helps readers grasp theoretical complexity, recognize the democratic importance of media and communication, and develop critical thinking skills through engaging case studies and discussion questions in each chapter.This textbook is designed for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking media and communication theory courses. Instructors teaching critical media and communication theory will find the dichotomy-based approach particularly valuable for helping students navigate complex theoretical debates and understand the field's intellectual development. It will also be useful supplementary reading for specific topics within broader media studies programs.

This book is concerned with the contexts, nature and quality of the participation of young people in European democratic life. The authors understand democracy broadly as both institutional politics and civic cultures, and a wide range of methods are used to analyse and assess youth participation and attitudes.

This book addresses one of the greatest challenges of post-modern democracy: how to bridge the perceived gap between citizens and democratic institutions. It examines internet-mediated multi-stakeholder processes of international and regional organisations - the European Union and United Nations - which aim to democratise decision-making processes in an attempt to counter criticisms of a 'democratic deficit'. The book evaluates two multi-stakeholder consultation processes where the internet played an important mediating role. It critically evaluates multi-stakeholderism as well as the potentials and constraints of the internet in terms of mediating or facilitating such consultation processes at international and regional levels of governance. It also addresses the perceived impact of civil society organisations on decision-making processes beyond the nation-state and, in turn, the impact of such participatory experiments on civil society itself.

At the beginning of the 21st century, it hardly goes uncontested anymore that media organisations play an important role in democracy. The main questions have now become whether the contemporary media conjuncture offers enough to our democracies, how their democratic investment can be deepened and how our communication rights can be expande. This book aims to look at four thematic areas that structure the opportunities for democratising (media) democracy. A first section is devoted to citizenship and the public spheres, giving special attention to the general theme of communication rights. The second section elaborates further on a notion central to communication rights, namely that of participation. The third section returns to the traditional representational role in relation to democracy and citizenship, scrutinizing and criticizing the democratic efforts of contemporary journalism. The fourth section moves outside of the (traditional) media system, and deals with the diversity of media and communication strategies of activists. This is volume 3 in the European Communication Research and Education Association book series.

Over the past year, international and national media have been full of stories about protest movements and tumultuous social upheaval from Tunisia to California. But scholars have not yet fully addressed the connection between these movements and the media and communication channels through which their messages spread. Correcting that imbalance, Mediation and Protest Movements explores the nature of the relationship between protest movements, media representation, and communication strategies and tactics. In a series of fascinating essays, contributors to this timely volume focus on the processes and practices in which contemporary protesters engage when acting with and through media. Covering both online and offline contexts as well as mainstream and alternative media, they consider media environments around the world in all their complexity. They also provide a broad and comparative perspective on the ways that protest movements at local and transnational levels engage in mediation processes and develop media practices. Bridging the gap between social movement theory and media and communication studies,  Mediation and Protest Movements will serve as an important reference for students and scholars of the media and social change.

In this book a set of theoretical and methodological resources are presented to study the way in which protest, resistance and social movement discourses circulate through society and looks at the role of media and of communication in this process.