Robert W. McChesney – författare

Ruthless Criticism was first published in 1993. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.Ruthless Criticism offers perspectives and subjects largely outside traditional historiography. It broadens the concept of media history to include lesser-studied media, and offers alternative interpretations of traditional media.This anthology of original research includes an array of scholarly and theoretical perspectives. Each addresses specific topic within a specific era. reflecting the diversity of U.S. mass media.Solomon and McChesney begin by using critical theory and deconstruction to examine the meanings of print in the colonial era. Subsequent chapters study the media ecology of the antebellum press; the intense focus on profits of the post-Civil War mainstream press; gender images in the labor press; the diversity of political views within the working-class press; and the development of a commercial press in the black community.The essays concerning the twentieth century focus on the rise of a culture industry and include studies on the origins of the broadcast ratings system and the commercial broadcast system and the commercial broadcast system, early television's portrayals of childhood, the televisions networks' close ties with the federal government, the government's key role in creating and developing the field of mass communication research, and teenage girls' popular culture from 1960–1968 as a formative influence on the feminist movement.

Media reform plays an increasingly important role in the struggle for social justice. As battles are fought over the future of investigative journalism, media ownership, spectrum management, speech rights, broadband access, network neutrality, the surveillance apparatus, and digital literacy, what effective strategies can be used in the pursuit of effective media reform?Prepared by thirty-three scholars and activists from more than twenty-five countries, Strategies for Media Reform focuses on theorizing media democratization and evaluating specific projects for media reform. This edited collection of articles offers readers the opportunity to reflect on the prospects for and challenges facing campaigns for media reform and gathers significant examples of theory, advocacy, and activism from multinational perspectives.

Winner of Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize as well as the Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award, Rich Media, Poor Democracy destroys the assumption that a society drenched in commercial information “choices” is a democratic one. Robert McChesney, whom Marc Crispin Miller calls “the greatest of our media historians,” maintains that the major beneficiaries of the so-called Information Age are no more than a handful of enormous corporations, and that this concentrated corporate control is disastrous for any notion of participatory democracy.In a book that Noam Chomsky hails as a “rich, penetrating study,” McChesney combines historical sweep and unprecedented detail on current events as he chronicles the recent waves of media mergers and acquisitions, as well as the corrupt and secretive enactment of public policies surrounding the Internet, digital television, and public broadcasting. He also addresses the gradual and ominous adaptation of the First Amendment as a means of shielding corporate media power, and debunks the myth that the market compels media firms to “give the people what they want.”

First published to great acclaim in 2000, Rich Media, Poor Democracy is Robert W. McChesney's magnum opus. Called 'a rich, penetrating study' by Noam Chomsky, the book is a meticulously researched exposition of how media and communication empires are threatening effective democratic governance. McChesney lays out his vision for what a truly democratic society might look like, offering compelling suggestions for how the media can be reformed as part of a broader program of democratic renewal. This new edition includes a major new preface by McChesney.

Humanity is on the verge of its darkest hour- or its greatest momentThe consequences of the technological revolution are about to hit hard: unemployment will spike as new technologies replace labour in the manufacturing, service, and professional sectors of an economy that is already struggling. The end of work as we know it will hit at the worst moment imaginable: as capitalism fosters permanent stagnation, when the labour market is in decrepit shape, with declining wages, expanding poverty, and scorching inequality. Only the dramatic democratization of our economy can address the existential challenges we now face. Yet, the US political process is so dominated by billionaires and corporate special interests, by corruption and monopoly, that it stymies not just democracy but progress.The great challenge of these times is to ensure that the tremendous benefits of technological progress are employed to serve the whole of humanity, rather than to enrich the wealthy few. Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols argue that the United States needs a new economy in which revolutionary technologies are applied to effectively address environmental and social problems and used to rejuvenate and extend democratic institutions. Based on intense reporting, rich historical analysis, and deep understanding of the technological and social changes that are unfolding, they propose a bold strategy for democratizing our digital destiny,before it's too late- and unleashing the real power of the Internet, and of humanity.

Foreword by Senator Bernie SandersFresh from the first 10 billion election campaign, two award-winning authors show how unbridled campaign spending defines our politics and, failing a dramatic intervention, signals the end of our democracy.Blending vivid reporting from the 2012 campaign trail and deep perspective from decades covering American and international media and politics, political journalist John Nichols and media critic Robert W. McChesney explain how US elections are becoming controlled, predictable enterprises that are managed by a new class of consultants who wield millions of dollars and define our politics as never before. As the money gets bigger,especially after the Citizens United ruling,and journalism, a core check and balance on the government, declines, American citizens are in danger of becoming less informed and more open to manipulation. With ground-breaking behind-the-scenes reporting and staggering new research on the money power," Dollarocracy shows that this new power does not just endanger electoral politics it is a challenge to the DNA of American democracy itself.

More than any other work, The Political Economy of Media demonstrates the incompatibility of the corporate media system with a viable democratic public sphere, and the corrupt policymaking process that brings the system into existence. Among the most acclaimed communication scholars in the world, Robert W. McChesney has brought together all the major themes of his two decades of research. Rich in detail, evidence, and thoughtful arguments, The Political Economy of Media provides a comprehensive critique of the degradation of journalism, the hyper-commercialization of culture, the Internet, and the emergence of the contemporary media reform movement. The Political Economy of Media is mandatory reading for anyone wishing to understand and change media, and the political economy, in the world today.

In the United States and much of the world there is a palpable depression about the prospect of overcoming the downward spiral created by the tyranny of wealth and privilege and establishing a truly democratic and sustainable society. It threatens to become self-fulfilling. In this trailblazing new book, award-winning author Robert W. McChesney argues that the weight of the present is blinding people to the changing nature and the tremendous possibilities of the historical moment we inhabit. In Blowing the Roof Off the Twenty-First Century, he uses a sophisticated political economic analysis to delineate the recent trajectory of capitalism and its ongoing degeneration. In exciting new research McChesney reveals how notions of democratic media are becoming central to activists around the world seeking to establish post-capitalist democracies. Blowing the Roof Off the Twenty-First Century also takes a fresh look at recent progressive political campaigns in the United States. While conveying complex ideas in a lively and accessible manner, McChesney demonstrates a very different and far superior world is not only necessary, but possible.

The days of boom and bubble are over, and the time has come to understand the long-term economic reality. Although the Great Recession officially ended in 2009, hopes for a new phase of economic expansion were quickly dashed. Instead, growth has been slow, unemployment has remained high, wages and benefits have seen little improvement, poverty has increased, and the trend toward more inequality of incomes and wealth has continued. It appears that the Great Recession has given way to a period of long-term anaemic growth, which Foster and McChesney aptly term the Great Stagnation.This incisive and timely book traces the origins of economic stagnation and explains what it means for a clear understanding of our current situation. The authors point out that increasing monopolization of the economy-when a handful of large firms dominate one or several industries-leads to an over-abundance of capital and too few profitable investment opportunities, with economic stagnation as the result.Absent powerful stimuli to investment, such as historic innovations like the automobile or major government spending, modern capitalist economies have become increasingly dependent on the financial sector to realize profits. And while financialisation may have provided a respite from stagnation, it is a solution that cannot last indefinitely, as instability in financial markets over the last half-decade has made clear.

In this sharply argued book, McChesney explains why we are in the midst of a communication revolution which is at the centre of 21st century life. Yet this profound juncture is not well understood, in part because media criticism and scholarship haven't been up to the task. McChesney's concise history of media studies shows how communication scholarship has grown increasingly irrelevant in recent years, even as the media became a decisive issue of these times. The revolution in communication calls for a transformation in the way we think about media.

In a sharp and cogent analysis of the history of media studies and a clarion call for citizen participation, McChesney argues that with the internet and wireless technologies set to take over traditional media, there is a unique opportunity to build a more egalitarian communication system. With authorative analysis and historical knowledge, he brilliantly shows how communication scholarship is failing to rise to the challenge of the burgeoning media reform movement. Of extraordinary importance.' - Chomsky'

The sudden meltdown of the news media has sparked one of the liveliest debates in recent memory, with an outpouring of opinion and analysis crackling across journals, the blogosphere and academic publications. Yet, until now, a comprehensive and accessible introduction to this new terrain has been noticeably missing. Celebrated media analysts Robert W. McChesney and Victor Pickard have assembled twelve seminal pieces on the crisis in journalism, revised and updated for this volume. Influential commentators provide a comprehensive portrait.

Celebrants and sceptics alike have produced valuable analyses of the Internet's effect on us and our world, oscillating between utopian bliss and dystopian hell. McChesney argues that a society drenched in commercial information is a democratic one. He says the Internet is not naturally' commercial. Capitalism's colonisation of the Internet has spurred the collapse of credible journalism and has made the Internet a place of numbing commercialism, an unparalleled apparatus for government and corporate surveillance and an anti-democratic force.'