bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Political Economy of the Media
Authors: Mosco Vincent
Published: September 2017

Political economy is the study of the social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources, including communication resources → Media Economics). This formulation has a certain practical value because it calls attention to how the communication business operates, for example, how communications products move through a chain of producers such as a → Hollywood film studio, to wholesalers, retailers, and, finally, consumers, whose purchases, downloads, and attention are fed back into new processes of production.
Political Journalists
Authors: Hanitzsch Thomas
Published: September 2017

Political journalists, viewed through the lens of the editorial organization, are those who report on political affairs or work on the
political desk
. This perspective foregrounds organizational factors in news production, particularly the division of labor in the editorial process. Typical Anglo‐American newsrooms make a functional distinction between news gatherers (reporters) and news processors (editors), but in continental Europe many news cultures have implemented divisions among subject‐related editorial departments (such as politics, business, or sports), where journalists function as professional all‐rounders with tasks involving reporting, editing, and commenting (→ News Routines; Political News).
Political Journalists
Authors: Hanitzsch Thomas
Published: September 2017

Political journalists, viewed through the lens of the editorial organization, are those who report on political affairs or work on thepolitical desk. This perspective foregrounds organizational factors in news production, particularly the division of labor in the editorial process. Typical Anglo‐American newsrooms make a functional distinction between news gatherers (reporters) and news processors (editors), but in continental Europe many news cultures have implemented divisions among subject‐related editorial departments (such as politics, business, or sports), where journalists function as professional all‐rounders with tasks involving reporting, editing, and commenting (→ News Routines; Political News).
Political Knowledge
Authors: Eveland William P. , Hively Myiah Hutchens
Published: September 2017

One of the foundational assumptions of democratic theory is that the public must be sufficiently informed about public matters in order to be capable of fulfilling their roles in making collective decisions. The centrality of an informed public in democratic theory has made the study of political knowledge integral to the study of political communication. Much of the research on political knowledge addresses one of two main questions: Is the public sufficiently politically knowledgeable to sustain an effective democracy? and: What role does communication play in the creation and maintenance of an informed citizenry? (→ Deliberativeness in Political Communication; Public; Public Opinion; Public Sphere). But to begin, it is important to define political knowledge.
Political Knowledge
Authors: Eveland William P. , Hutchens Myiah J.
Published: September 2017

One of the foundational assumptions of democratic theory is that the public must be sufficiently informed about public matters in order to be capable of fulfilling their roles in making collective decisions. The centrality of an informed public in democratic theory has made the study of political knowledge integral to the study of political communication. Much of the research on political knowledge addresses one of two main questions: “Is the public sufficiently politically knowledgeable to sustain an effective democracy?” and “What role does communication play in the creation and maintenance of an informed citizenry?” (→ Deliberativeness in Political Communication; Public; Public Opinion; Public Sphere). But to begin, it is important to define political knowledge.
Political Marketing
Authors: Maarek Philippe J.
Published: September 2017

Political marketing arose when, in the middle of the twentieth century, the methods developed by commercial marketing specialists were adopted for political campaigning. Political marketing replaced unilateral → propaganda exactly as commercial → advertising has become a plain subsidiary of commercial → Marketing. Political marketing is considered as one of the most demanding applications of political communication research. It stands at the crossroads of several distinct fields of social sciences engaging in the study or practice of deliberate and purposive communication to reach set goals (Maarek 1995, 2007; → Political Communication; Public Relations; Strategic Communication).
Political News
Authors: Schulz Winfried
Published: September 2017

Political news was published in leaflets and early → Newspapers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, shortly after the advent of printing (→ Printing, History of). However, only the cheap, mass circulation press in the nineteenth century and, most notably, → Radio and → Television about a century later made political news available to a general audience (→ Media History). Today, regular newscasts on many radio and television programs, 24‐hour news networks, and a multitude of websites on the Internet make political news continuously available and pervasive in society (→ Internet News; Newscast, 24‐Hour). The deployment of global news logistics – → foreign correspondents, → news agencies, and news pools around the world – as well as advances in cable, satellite, and other transmission technologies, have brought about an enormous expansion of the political news supply.
Political Personality in Media Democracy
Authors: Schütz Astrid
Published: September 2017

With the advent of → Television the public appearance of political processes has changed fundamentally. Television makes visual impressions of political events easily available and provides politicians with the opportunity to project an → Image of themselves to the general public (→ Media Democracy). This is assumed to have been contributing to a personalization of politics in general, and particularly to the change from issue‐centered to candidate‐centered election campaigning (→ Personalization of Campaigning). When the political parties and the mass media focus on the leading politicians, their public images become important factors in shaping and changing political opinions (→ Attitudes, Values, and Beliefs, Media Effects on; Candidate Image). As people lend themselves more readily to a mediated presentation of politics, the personality of political representatives plays an important role in citizens' thinking and behavior (→ Political Cognitions).
Political Socialization through the Media
Authors: Shah Dhavan V.
Published: September 2017

There is a great deal of controversy concerning the effects of mass communication on political socialization, in terms of both its size and direction (→ Media Effects). Political socialization can be understood as the processes through which democratic societies instill the proper norms among their members to maintain social institutions and practices. Most research on this topic focuses on how individuals engage in political development and learn basic civic skills, with family, schooling, peer groups, and media serving as the major factors involved in this dynamic. Early studies focused on adolescence as a critical period for political socialization, though this has given way to lifelong learning models, attention to generational differences, and consideration of civic modes of participation alongside the political (Sears & Levy 2003; Sapiro 2004).
Political Symbols
Authors: Jarvis Sharon E.
Published: September 2017

Political symbols are entities that stand for things other than themselves, elicit responses, and assume meaning in relation to the objects, beliefs, values, or attitudes to which they refer.
Polls and the Media
Authors: Traugott Michael W.
Published: September 2017

Election polls have a long history of a symbiotic relationship with the media, dating back to the nineteenth century (Converse 1987; Frankovic 2008). However, it was not until the 1920s that polls insinuated themselves into the news operations of election coverage on a regular basis. Before the advent of the modern polling period, the major political poll operating in the United States was conducted by a leading circulation magazine, the
Literary Digest
. Based upon its subscriber lists, eventually supplemented by information from telephone directories and automobile registrations, the
Literary Digest
conducted large mail surveys to produce estimates of the outcome of presidential elections. While the magazine made good estimates from its data in 1928 and 1932, its 1936 estimate that predicted a Landon win over Roosevelt was a disaster (Squire 1988). Of greater significance, George Gallup had started a new public polling operation and promised his first major news client, the
Washington Post
, that his methods could outperform the
Literary Digest
. When he did, a new era of public polling for news organizations was born (→ Public Opinion Polling; Survey).
Popular Communication
Authors: Merskin Debra
Published: September 2017

Popular communication is an interdisciplinary, multi‐theoretical, multi‐methodological philosophy of media and audiences. It has evolved as a nonhierarchical perspective that emphasizes the value of objects, behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs associated with everyday life. Gunn and Brummett (2004, 705) ask provocative questions about popular communication that capture the difficulty of defining the term: “Whose child is it, and who invented it? What sort of side dish did it contribute to the feast?” In many ways, the term defies definition because of the resistance to categorization inherent in a postmodern vision, which values all products of human endeavor (→ Postmodernism and Communication). Popular communication research is often critical of systems of power. A philosophy behind popular communication research is a “skepticism toward dominant institutions (including the university), ideologies, and social relations and an implicit commitment to a more democratic, egalitarian, and humane social order” (McChesney 1994, 340).
Popular Communication and Social Class
Authors: Drew Rob
Published: September 2017

During the Industrial Revolution, the English word “class” morphed from a general term for a division or group to a specific term for a position of rank within a social system based on economic wealth. Around the same time, the word “popular” began to be applied to communication and culture with meanings ranging from “liked by many people” to “created by many people.” Thus, social class and “the popular” simultaneously arose as objects of intellectual interest. Indeed, the very question of what counts as → 
Popular Culture
or → popular communication has always led to questions of class. In the late eighteenth century, when J. G. Herder coined the term “popular culture,” he had in mind the peasant culture that, for him, represented a more authentic alternative to Europe's elite, classical culture (→ Culture: Definitions and Concepts).
Popular Culture
Authors: Merskin Debra
Published: September 2017

“Culture” is “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language” according to Williams (1976, 87; → Culture: Definitions and Concepts). Originally used to describe the process of tending, culture evolved as metaphor, as noun, and as a reference to a physical object. Today, culture is regarded as a unifying system, a worldview, a civilization, and as a psychology encompassing behavior, attitudes, and values as well as the symbolic structure of these activities (→ Cultural Patterns and Communication). Music is one of the most globally ubiquitous forms of culture. Four elements are typically included in definitions of culture: institutions, norms, values, and artifacts. “Popular” is a term used to express favorability, high regard, and appreciation by the general → Public, as in the popular vote or to distinguish the popular from the academic press. Thus, “culture” used in this sense is political rather than aesthetic (→ Political Communication Culture). Storey (1996) points out that culture is not a narrow sense of aesthetic nor only an intellectual product but rather a domain of contestation, reflection, resistance, and reconstruction.
Popular Mythology
Authors: Merskin Debra
Published: September 2017

Myth comes from the Greek word
mythos
meaning “speech” or “story.” Contrary to popular parlance that says a myth is something untrue, false, or fake,
mythology
is in fact true stories and timeless tales passed down from generation to generation. Myths provide answers and explanations for the big questions of life, such as: where did we come from? What is love? Where do we go once we die? What is the role of nature? And so forth. They are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. They are truthful, inasmuch as they reflect a belief (even if erroneous or hegemonic).
Pornography, Media Law on
Authors: Lipschultz Jeremy Harris
Published: September 2017

Pornography or “porn,” is a socially defined class of sexual communication, which may or may not be protected under national laws. The term may be distinguishable from legal definitions of obscenity or indecency. Pornography is generally considered the depiction of graphic sexual behavior usually designed to promote sexual arousal. Pornographic material may be either legal erotica or illegal obscenity. Many have questioned the validity of the distinction between erotica and pornography, the latter being a pejorative and subjective term.
Pornography Use across the Life‐Span
Authors: Peter Jochen
Published: September 2017

Throughout the years, intense legal, political, and academic discussions have centered upon the use of pornography and its implications (→ Pornography, Media Law on; Sex and Pornography as Media Content: Feminist Perspectives). Currently, these discussions have been revived because the → Internet provides not only adults but also adolescents and children with free and anonymous access to pornography (→ Sex and Pornography Online). The easy availability of pornographic material for all age groups has raised questions about the extent to which people of different age groups are exposed to such material.
Portraiture
Authors: Burke Peter
Published: September 2017

There have been many disputes over the definition of portraits and some of them have ended up in court (in Alabama in 1863, for instance, and in New South Wales in 1944). A compromise definition is advisable, steering between the dangers of vacuousness, on the one side, and of excluding many images that are commonly taken to be portraits, on the other. For example: “a representation of one or more individuals that can be recognized by acquaintances as a likeness (despite possible elements of either idealization or caricature).” So defined, the portrait has a history, a geography, and a sociology.
Portugal: Media System
Authors: Carvalho Anabela
Published: September 2017

Situated in southwestern Europe, Portugal covers an area of 92,152 sq km and has a population of 10.7 million (2009 estimate). The two biggest cities are Lisbon, the capital, and Oporto. The official language is Portuguese. The literacy rate is 93 percent, and 85 percent of the population are Roman Catholic. In 2009, the country's GDP per capita was US$20.655. Portugal is a parliamentary democracy. The Portuguese Constitution determines the complete separation of the four main organs: the president, the government, the parliament, and the courts.
Postal Service, History of
Authors: Arblaster Paul
Published: September 2017

The use of couriers to bear written messages is presumably as old as the art of writing itself. The entrusting of messages to those traveling on other business (trade, pilgrimage, etc.) is attested from ancient times. States in many parts of the world and in many periods have instituted some sort of cadre of official messengers, sometimes maintaining an infrastructure of roads, inns, and relays to provide for the needs of those traveling on official business. Ancient Persia, Egypt, China, and the Roman Empire all had sophisticated communications infrastructures of this nature. The oldest descriptions of such a postal service in operation come from ancient Greek commentators on Persian affairs.
Postcolonial Theory
Authors: Kumar Shanti
Published: September 2017

The emergence of postcolonial theory as an academic tradition, particularly in the United States, can be traced to the late 1970s with the publication of Edward Said's bookOrientalism(1978). According to Said, Orientalism is a powerful body of knowledge – power/knowledge in Michel Foucault's sense (→ Structuralism) – produced by texts and institutional practices of western colonialism beginning with Napoleon's conquest of Egypt in 1798. Said finds three key elements in Orientalism: first, the power/knowledge of colonial institutions and texts to understand, control, and manipulate the “Orient” (or the east); second, the representation of “Oriental” societies as an unchanging cultural essence; and third, the fabrication of the “Orient” as an ahistorical space waiting to be transformed by historical progress and social development.
Postdevelopment
Authors: Pieterse Jan Nederveen
Published: September 2017

Along with “anti‐development,” postdevelopment is a radical reaction to the dilemmas of development. Perplexity and extreme dissatisfaction with business‐as‐usual and conventional development rhetoric and practice are keynotes of this perspective. This perspective emerges out of frustration with the seeming inability of development intervention to improve the lives of those in need. As a critical response to the development industry, this approach raises concerns with the imposition of science as power, cultural imperialism, and environmental destruction (→ Cultural Imperialism Theories; Sustainable Development).
Poster
Authors: Müller Marion G.
Published: September 2017

Posters are visual means of communicating messages to large public audiences (→ 
Visual Communication
). A poster is a printed mass media product (→ Printing, History of). Although → graffiti and murals are predecessors of posters, they do not qualify as posters, since one of the defining criteria for a poster is its mass reproducibility. While graffiti and murals exist only as single objects, attached to a specific place, posters are movable objects produced in large quantities to cover a wide geographical area.
Power, Dominance, and Social Interaction
Authors: Berger Charles R.
Published: September 2017

When individuals engage in social interaction, regardless of the relationship they have with each other and the context within which it occurs (→ Classroom Power; Power in Intergroup Settings), power and dominance are fundamental dimensions that both shape and are shaped by communication (→ Power and Discourse). Studies of how people think about and judge their social relationships have consistently demonstrated the importance of a dominance dimension. People use this dimension to judge and experience their social relationships and the communication that occurs within them (Berger 1994; Ng & Bradac 1993). Judgments concerning who is dominant or submissive or who is “in control” easily come to mind, whether the judgments are made during or after a specific interaction episode or in an ongoing relationship consisting of multiple episodes.
Printer‐Editors
Authors: Ward Stephen J. A.
Published: September 2017

Printers acted as editors from the origin of printing in eastern and western society. But Gutenberg's press in the mid‐fifteenth century gave birth to journalistic printer‐editors who published news regularly and informed a wide public (→ Journalism, History of). These early journalists used book production techniques to generate broadsheets, pamphlets, mercuries, intelligencers, gazettes, and newsbooks (Boyce et al. 1978). Under the eye of monarchs and their censors (→ Censorship), they disseminated reports on war, discoveries, and omens, and campaigned for or against political and religious movements across Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as part of an emerging western print culture (Eisenstein 1979).
Printing, History of
Authors: Arblaster Paul
Published: September 2017

In the broadest sense, printing is any means by which a pattern, text, or image is impressed on another surface. The creation of an impression in clay or wax with a seal, or in metal with a punch, and the printing of patterns on textiles are all ancient arts that bear some similarity to printing proper. Paper money, wallpaper, official forms, tickets, texts, images, and many other things have been and are printed with ink on paper. The concern here will be with the printing of texts on paper.
Professionalization of Journalism
Authors: Anderson Chris
Published: September 2017

The professionalization of journalism refers to the process by which a category of workers engaged in reporting and commentary in the public media on current events and ideas achieves the status of the occupational professional. Key issues in understanding the professionalization of journalism center on the difficulties in defining “professionalization” itself; the historical differences between US and non‐American trajectories of professionalization; the relationship between journalistic objectivity (→ Objectivity in Reporting) and professionalism, especially in the American case; and the current economic, technological, and political challenges to the professional status of → Journalism.
Professionalization of Public Relations
Authors: Pieczka Magda
Published: September 2017

The term “professionalization” refers to the way in which occupations become recognized as professions, usually explained by a range of factors related to the improvement of services offered and status enjoyed. The precise meaning of the term depends on the approach taken to defining the concept of “profession.” Three theoretical perspectives are in evidence in sociological literature: the functionalist approach, as articulated by Parsons (1954) and indebted to Durkheim, sees professions as key to maintaining social order; the critical approach, initiated in the 1970s (Freidson 1970, Johnson 1972), which views professions as centers of monopoly power and elitism; and the Foucauldian perspective, which defines the profession as characterized on the one hand by high status and power, and on the other hand by subjugation resulting from the exercise ofself‐discipline. Professionalization, therefore, can be understood respectively as: a process of improvement of services, knowledge, and standards; a process of social closure and exploitation of a monopoly position; and finally, a “soft” technology of control of expert labor (→ Professionalization of Journalism).
Proxemics
Authors: Guerrero Laura K.
Published: September 2017

Proxemics is the study of how humans perceive, structure, and use space as communication. Space helps people manage the dual needs for privacy and closeness in social and personal relationships. Early work on proxemics focused on classifying territory and conversational distance. Contemporary research has examined how proxemics is related to messages such as liking and dominance.
Psychology in Communication Processes
Authors: Bailenson Jeremy N. , Yee Nick
Published: September 2017

Psychology is generally concerned with studying the mind, the brain, and human behavior. While popular media often focus on clinical psychology (the study and treatment of mental illness), there are many other forms of psychology, ranging from neuropsychology to cultural psychology to sports psychology. This entry largely focuses on experimental psychology, an overarching branch that includes all areas of psychology in which researchers manipulate variables in order to perform empirical tests of how people think and behave (→ Experimental Design). Examples of experimental psychology areas include cognitive, cultural, developmental, perceptual, and social psychology, all of which hold implications for communication research (→ Cognitive Science).
Public Access Television
Authors: Armstrong John S.
Published: September 2017

Public access television – also known as community television or open channels (→ Community Media) – is a form of → television in which citizens produce programs and bypass corporations, governments, journalists, and other gatekeepers to transmit their programs directly to audiences (→ Access to the Media). Proponents of public access television promote it as a remedy to commercialism, centralization, and lack of diversity in television systems around the world (→ Commercialization of the Media; Plurality). As a systematic alternative to commercial or government‐supported television, public access television first emerged in Canada and the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Public access channels have since appeared in hundreds of communities in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania, although public access outlets have never attracted audiences large enough to rival those of professional television systems.
Public Affairs
Authors: Heath Robert L.
Published: September 2017

Public affairs is both a generic term for the trends and conditions that define and result from socio‐economic–socio‐political trends, and the corporate management function that works to position each organization comfortably and cooperatively in its non‐marketplace context. Focusing on the latter meaning, Madden (2005, 665) defined public affairs as “the management function responsible for interpreting an organization's external environment, or in the case of a corporation, its noncommercial environment, and managing an effective and appropriate response to that environment.” Its primary connection with society centers on governmental relations, the factors in the public policy (non‐marketplace) arena that can lead government to influence (support or oppose) management decisions and organizational operations and policies (→ Organizational Communication; Corporate Communication; Corporate Reputation; Organizational Image).
Public Broadcasting Systems
Authors: Bardoel Jo
Published: September 2017

Public service broadcasting (PSB), according to McQuail (2005, 179), refers to “a system that is set up by law and generally financed by public funds (often a compulsory license fee paid by households) and given a large degree of editorial and operating independence.” Public service broadcasting is supposed to function independently of both the market and the state, and therefore differs from the alternative systems of commercial broadcasting on the one hand and authoritarian or state‐operated broadcasting on the other (→ Communication and Law; Media Policy; Radio Broadcasting, Regulation of; Television Broadcasting, Regulation of).
Public Diplomacy
Authors: Ociepka Beata
Published: September 2017

The notion of public diplomacy has been used in international relations and in international communication studies since about the mid‐1960s. It originates from US foreign policy from the period of the Cold War. Public diplomacy is understood as a dialogical communication between governments and other actors on the stage of international relations via the mass communication media and non‐mediated channels of contact with the foreign countries' mass audience. The aim of public diplomacy is to create or reinforce a positive → Image of the country and its society, and by influencing → public opinion to shape positive attitudes toward the country, and in consequence to make the achievement of international policy goals easier.
Public Goods
Authors: Thompson Peter A.
Published: September 2017

The idea of public goods has been subject to considerable debate and contestation. The term is generally used to classify products or services that are not diminished through usage and for which charges cannot be levied on individual consumption (e.g., street lighting). The concept of public goods is significant for media and communication scholars because it potentially applies to some forms of broadcasting and informational or audiovisual products and services. Such classifications also have implications for contemporary media policy debates concerning the regulation of communication technologies and the legitimate role of state intervention in market activities (→ Communication and Law; Media Policy).
Public Interest
Authors: Papathanassopoulos Stylianos
Published: September 2017

As mass media play an increasing role in our societies by providing an arena of public debate and making politicians, policies, and relevant facts widely known, they are expected to follow certain rules of conduct. These rules and the normative media theories they draw upon typically imply presumptions as to the public interest the media should serve (McQuail 1992; 2005; → Journalism: Normative Theories). Presumptions about what is the public interest, directly or indirectly, determine the institutional set‐up of media systems, legal regulations, and media policy measures as well as journalistic codes of ethic and performance standards (→ Communication and Law; Ethics in Journalism; Ethics of Media Content; Media Performance; Media Policy).
Public Opinion
Authors: Glynn Carroll J. , Huge Michael E.
Published: September 2017

Bearing the dubious distinction of being one of the oldest, yet least understood, concepts in social science,
public opinion
continues to inspire and perplex scholars from communication and other fields. The term can be adequately defined as a general measure of the directionality and strength of issue‐specific views and sentiments held by a relevant group. Public opinion bears a sort of syntactical internal contradiction: While “public” denotes the group and the universal, “opinion” on its own is typically associated with the individual and considered a somewhat internal, subjective formulation. The rise of survey research during the early twentieth century further complicated matters with a trend toward quantifying public opinion as a simple aggregation of individual survey responses (→ Survey; Public Opinion Polling). The rejection of such mathematical reductions – along with the suggestion that public opinion was in fact a group‐level social force iteratively constructed through interpersonal interaction and media use (→ Interpersonal Communication; Political Media Use; Media Use by Social Variable) – set the stage for a social science debate that has continued for well over 50 years.
Public Relations Field Dynamics
Authors: Szyszka Peter
Published: September 2017

Systems theory reveals that organizations are integrated into their social environment by means of a network of relationships (→ Systems Theory). In part, this rationale of organizational success motivated Harlow, who used the term → “Public Relations” (PR) to describe the field of “all types of relations an organization has with its publics” (1957, xi; → Organization–Public Relationships). Systems theory and relationship analysis help explain why PR can be reciprocally activated: an organization and its reference groups observe, analyze, and rate each other regularly, particularly when it seems to be relevant because of expected risks and chances. On the organizational side, it is the task of PR activities to arrange these processes as communication management and to intervene communicatively if it seems to be necessary or expedient.
Public Relations: Media Influence
Authors: Kleinnijenhuis Jan
Published: September 2017

Earning public understanding and acceptance through reports in the press is one of the oldest means–ends schemes in public relations (PR). Firms, governments, NGOs, and interest groups alike use the media to convey their message to their publics. Hence, media influence is a two‐step process. Whether PR efforts lead to news items in the media depends on the relations of the company with the media and on the newsworthiness of the publicity efforts (→ Media Relations; News Factors; News Values). Once the media have published the news, PR media influence can be understood through theories about → media effects (→ Exposure to Communication Content; Information Processing).
Public Relations Roles
Authors: Dozier David M.
Published: September 2017

Organizational roles are abstract maps summarizing the most salient features of the daily activities of organizational members. Katz & Kahn (1978) considered roles central to the structure of organizations; organizations can be regarded as open systems of interrelated roles. Roles are defined as “recurring actions of an individual, appropriately interrelated with the repetitive activities of others so as to yield a predictable outcome” (Katz & Kahn 1978, 189).
Public Sphere
Authors: Marcinkowski Frank
Published: September 2017

The public sphere is an indispensable element of a democratic society and the institutional core of democratic decision‐making. Every democratic political order is essentially based on the idea that citizens participate in collectively binding decisions, articulate their interests and opinions openly, listen and evaluate the opinions and arguments of others, and, on that basis, make up their minds. The public sphere establishes an arena of discussion on public affairs and guarantees that all these processes are open to the public.
Public Sphere, Fragmentation of
Authors: Marcinkowski Frank
Published: September 2017

The public sphere is defined as a network of all the communicative spaces within which public affairs are debated and a public opinion is formed (→ Public Sphere; Public Opinion). Such an infrastructure of political communication is crucial for democratic self‐government and the social integration of modern society. Both functions seem to be threatened if the public sphere decays into a multitude of arenas that are just loosely connected (if at all) and do not form a coherent space for deliberation (→ Deliberativeness in Political Communication; Political Discourse).
Publics: Situational Theory
Authors: Verčič Ana Tkalac
Published: September 2017

During the past 40‐odd years, James E. Grunig's situational theory of communication behavior has been developed, changed, empirically tested, and adjusted through new research, with the purpose of defining the communication process and the behavior that results from it. Situational theory seeks to explain why people communicate and when it is most likely that they communicate. The theory also uses communicational behavior to partition the general → Public into smaller segments which are most likely to communicate about certain issues. Situational theory also predicts behavioral effects of communication (→ Media Effects), as well as attitudes that are most commonly connected to specific types of communication and types of public for which these consequences are most likely. Finally, the theory describes the process in which a certain, previously unconnected, group of people develops into an activist group that, with its → public opinion, influences the decisions of a certain organization (Grunig 1997).
Postman, Neil
Authors: Strate Lance
Published: September 2017

Neil Postman (1931–2003) was a prominent public intellectual and author of approximately 25 books on education, culture, and communication (→ Educational Communication → Popular Culture). He was known for his leadership in the educational reform movement of the 1960s and 1970s, his analysis of the misuse of language and symbols, his critique of the effects of television and technology on American culture, and the formal introduction of media ecology as a field of inquiry (→ Media Ecology).
Quality of the News
Authors: Jacobsson Adam , Jacobsson Eva‐Maria
Published: September 2017

Quality of the news is a difficult and complex concept to define. Who determines what is good quality and what is not? Quality depends in part on what → uses and gratifications are demanded from the media. Taking a liberal standpoint one could say that quality is what the audience wants. Another view would be to let media professionals, such as journalists and editors, act as moral agents and establish a set of criteria that defines good quality. The literature has, in sum, taken the view of professionals as the starting point.
Quality Press
Authors: Russ‐Mohl Stephan
Published: September 2017

Although communication researchers talk and write eloquently about the quality press and seem to have a clear concept what the term means, hardly anyone has made an effort to define it. A short, impressionistic review of handbooks and lexica as well as of online resources like Wikipedia and Google shows the term “quality” in many media‐related contexts. But the “quality press” itself has attracted little attention from researchers (Spassov 2004).
Quantitative Methodology
Authors: Scholl Armin
Published: September 2017

The results of polls tell us how many people intend to vote for a certain political party, watch television more than four hours a day, or favor a certain television program. We call methods of collecting and analyzing such data “quantitative methodology” because individuals' attributes are counted in large numbers. One can count not only single persons (→ Survey), but also propositions within texts, visual elements within pictures or sequences of film material (→ Content Analysis, Quantitative), or observed actions and overt behaviors (→ Observation). Counting people, words, the duration of a television program, and so on, is deeply rooted in our everyday lives and nothing artificial. Quantitative methodology joins these basic social phenomena but works out systematic (methodological) rules to a complex pattern of standards.
Questions and Questioning
Authors: Koshik Irene
Published: September 2017

Any discussion of questions and questioning needs to distinguish between questions as a linguistic form and the various social actions that are accomplished through this form. Questions, or “interrogatives,” can be formed in a variety of ways. One type of question uses a specific question word: “which,” “when,” “why,” “where,” “who,” “whose,” “whom,” or “how,” forming what is called a
wh‐question
, e.g., “Who was that lady?,” “Where did you play basketball?,” “Met whom?” Another question type is the
yes/no question
, i.e., a question to which a “yes” or “no” answer is generally expected. These questions are usually formed in English by inversion of subject and auxiliary, e.g., “Is Al here today?” If there is no auxiliary, the “do auxiliary” is added. Increasingly in informal oral English, the auxiliary is left out, e.g., “You home?” Other languages use phrases or particles, rather than inversion, to indicate that a preceding or following utterance is a yes/no question. Yes/no questions can also be formed syntactically in the same way that declarative statements are formed, using upward instead of downward intonation, e.g., “You're home?” Quirk et al. (1985) call these
declarative questions
. Other types of questions are
tag questions
, which are a type of yes/no question, e.g., “They're a lovely family now aren't they?” and
alternative questions
, e.g., “Didju say
wide
spread or
white
spread?”
Questions and Questioning
Authors: Koshik Irene
Published: September 2017

Any discussion of questions and questioning needs to distinguish between questions as a linguistic form and the various social actions that are accomplished through this form. Questions can be formed in a variety of ways. Wh‐questions use question words such as “which,” “when,” “why,” “where,” “who,” “whose,” “whom,” or “how” (e.g., “Who was that lady?” “Where did you play basketball?” “Met whom?”). Polar (yes/no) questions, are usually formed in English by inversion of subject and auxiliary (or “do‐auxiliary”; e.g., “Is Al here today?”). Increasingly, in informal oral English, the auxiliary is left out (e.g., “You home?”). Other languages use phrases or particles, rather than inversion, to indicate that a preceding or following utterance is a polar question. Polar questions can also be formed by using rising instead of falling intonation (e.g., “You're home?”). Quirk et al. (1985) call these
declarative questions
. Even declarative statements with falling intonation can, in some contexts, be heard as questions (Heritage 2012). For example, when a speaker makes a statement about something in the recipient's knowledge domain (e.g., “You're married”), it is up to the recipient to confirm or disconfirm that statement. These declarative statements therefore act like polar questions. Other types of questions are
tag questions
, which are a type of polar question (e.g., “They're a lovely family now aren't they?”) and
alternative questions
(e.g., “Didju say
wide
spread or
white
spread?”).
Radical Media
Authors: Rodríguez Clemencia
Published: September 2017

“Radical media” is a term used by communication scholars to refer to information and communication technologies used by radical media activists to bring about social change (→ Activist Media; Social Movements and Communication). In this sense, the word “radical” means the expression of ideas, opinions, and options to reorganize society that are not sanctioned by the established social order. British communication scholar John Downing coined the term in his volume
Radical media
, where he critiques the term “alternative media” as oxymoronic because “[e]verything, at some point, is alternative to something else” (1984, ix). For Downing, the designation radical media needs to be based on a careful historical examination of the medium's context, content, and consequences. Under certain cultural and political conditions, content that in other contexts would be deemed apolitical and inoffensive can yield tremendous social change when transmitted by radical media; thus, context determines the “radicalness” of the content in each case. Also, the medium's organization does not necessarily mean that the content is radical; each case has to be examined in order to establish if and to what extent the medium's content is in fact radical, depending on its potential to strengthen resistance politics and bring about social change.
Radio
Authors: Ferguson Douglas
Published: September 2017

Radio is a media technology that permits one person or organization to communicate with many receivers over large distances via the electromagnetic spectrum and radiated electrons. Listening to radio is possible by modulating voice (→ Broadcast Talk) or music (→ Popular Music) onto a radio wave that transmits at a predetermined signal. A radio receiver is tuned to the modulated carrier wave broadcasting at that frequency and the radio circuitry amplifies the voice or music, after discarding the carrier frequency wave (→ Radio Technology; Information and Communication Technology, Development of).
Radio Broadcasting, Regulation of
Authors: Davie William R.
Published: September 2017

The radio spectrum is viewed as a natural and scarce resource available to all nations. Even though the rules establishing the allocation of bandwidth and assignment of frequencies vary, common principles apply to all countries. The
legal rationale for controls
over licensing is generally based on four principles: (1) recognition of spectrum as a valuable resource; (2) conservation of bandwidth due to spectrum scarcity; (3) prevention of technical interference between channels; and (4) radio broadcasting's potential to influence society. These general principles serve as the starting point for regulating ownership, technology, and programming content (→ Radio; Radio: Social History).
Radio for Development
Authors: Huesca Robert
Published: September 2017

Radio for development is the strategic use of this medium to effect social changes beneficial to a community, nation, or region. Within the study and practice of communication for national development and social change, → Radio has claimed a prominent place for a variety of reasons. As an aural medium, radio obviates the need for a literate audience, making it an attractive medium for states and agencies working with impoverished populations that lack access to schools or other forms of literacy training. In addition, radio is an inexpensive medium for its audience, and therefore enjoys a wide range of diffusion even among rural people with scant resources for material not directly related to their basic needs. Finally, radio is relatively inexpensive to produce and distribute, making it an attractive medium for donor agencies concerned with per capita costs for reaching underdeveloped audiences with pro‐social messages. Indeed, among all communication media (print, film, telephone, television, and new media), radio consistently enjoys the highest rates of diffusion and use in the developing world (→ Exposure to Radio).
Radio Networks
Authors: McDonald Daniel G.
Published: September 2017

A traditional → radio network consists of a series of radio broadcasting stations connected in some way (typically by broadcast, landline, microwave, or satellite; → Radio Technology) so that each of the stations can carry the same programs or advertisements (→ Advertising). Often, the stations will carry the programs simultaneously, but under some circumstances (e.g., stations in differing time zones), a program or set of programs may be delayed for a given length of time. In both cases, the network serves to extend the audience beyond that which would have been available without the network. The linkage between stations may take the form of very different stations linked for the convenience of sharing particular content, or may take the form of one primary station linked to multiple “repeater” stations in which the repeater simply rebroadcasts whatever it receives from the primary station. More recently, with the advent of satellite channels and the → Internet, the radio network label has been applied to describe any audio service involving a large number of receivers, rather than stations, although it is questionable whether a system involving only one transmission device should be considered a network.
Radio News
Authors: Ferguson Douglas
Published: September 2017

Timely information delivered over radio waves dates back to the earliest stations and before (→ Radio; Radio: Social History; news). Lee de Forest reported the election night results via radio in 1916 and the first licensed US station to report election returns was KDKA in 1920. By 1924, radio broadcasts became a major influence on → public opinion because they could report live events. Radio news in the UK first gained attention during the General Strike of 1926, which briefly halted newspaper publication.
Radio: Social History
Authors: Priestman Chris
Published: September 2017

The introduction of → Radio broadcasting during the 1920s released a tide of social changes, which have profoundly affected every society in the world, changes that have subsequently been amplified by → Television and information and communication technology (→ Television: Social History; Information and Communication Technology, Development of). By the end of the twentieth century these electronic media had become so embedded in social, political, and economic processes that it is hard today to conceive of a world without their influence. Their defining characteristic as public media is that they provide systems for communicating simultaneously with large, geographically dispersed → audiences via pathways that are immediate and capable of delivering messages live: they abolish the delay between production and reception inherent in all earlier public media. Their combined effect has been greatly to accelerate the formation and shaping of cultural consciousness within societies (Hilmes 1997). They provide mechanisms of continuous reference and comparison by which individuals perceive their relationships beyond their immediate private sphere. The few social groups yet to be reached by radio have nevertheless felt the effects of communications‐driven political and economic change indirectly.