Media, Crisis and Democracy: Mass Communication and the Disruption of Social Order.

In modern states, the smooth functioning of democratic politics is inextricably tied to the role of the media in the creation and dissemination of information, images, and ideas. Utilizing a number of different contexts, Media, Crisis, and Democracy edited by Marc Raboy and Bernard Dagenais explores the ways in which crises serve to highlight the problematic issues of media performance in democratic states. Further, the book examines the relationship between communication and civil society by asking some difficult yet intriguing questions: To what extent do threats to the sovereignty of the nation-state work to subvert the contribution of the media to the democratic political process? Do crises reveal only the existing ideological and hegemonic functions of the mainstream media? Is "crisis" itself a media construct? Media, Crisis, and Democracy explores these theoretical problems through a number of actual cases of media responses to "crises," events ranging from the Gulf War of 1991 to the recent turmoil in Eastern Europe. These examples emphasize the complexities of understanding the role of the media in struggles of identity around nationality, ethnicity, and gender.

SAGE Publications (1992).