Remaking Media: The Struggle to Democratize Public Communication

This book covers new material on the topic of media democracy and activism. The authors consider the ways in which media, particularly broadcast media is made by and for a narrow audience of white, middle-class, heterosexual, Westerners that conform to the ideal values of the governing body. They consider how certain demographics are denied representation in the news, how they are unable to afford new technologies (digitalization, the internet, broadband) and cannot afford the education in order to get employment in the media industries and thus gain equality in choosing content. The authors call this the democratic deficit of mainstream media and look at alternate forms of activism to redress the imbalance in the media. They consider ways in which new media like the internet could be used to allow multiple perspectives of the same event, rather than only one side of the story being broadcast, and then consider how this still negates the reason for the activism as the internet is not available to all.

The text considers the key concepts of political media theory. The main cast are all here: Gramsci, Bourdieu, Habermas, Baudrillard etc as well as the new activism groups - CPBF, Media Alliance, FAIR. Freedom of speech and the importance of freedom of the media is more at debate now than ever before with the issuance of special journalism visas for British journalists to enter the USA and the whole BBC sexing up Iraq debacle, so the book will be quite topical if the authors deliver on time.

Routledge (2006).