The Voice of America (VOA) is the oldest and largest U.S. government-funded international media organization. In 2020, Donald Trump nominated Michael Pack, a right-wing documentarian and close friend of Steve Bannon, to lead the organization and curb what Trump saw as the network's overly negative reporting on the U.S. During the seven months that Pack oversaw the agency, more than 30 whistleblowers filed complaints against him, a judge ruled that he had infringed journalists' constitutional right to freedom of speech, and he refused to respond to a subpoena issued by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. How did such a major international public service media network become intensely politicized by government allies in such a short time, despite having its editorial independence protected by law? What were the effects on news output? And what can we learn from this situation about how to protect media freedom in the future? Capturing News, Capturing Democracy puts these events in historical and international context--and develops a new analytical framework for understanding government capture and its connection to broader processes of democratic backsliding. Drawing from in-depth interviews with network managers and journalists, and analysis of private correspondence and internal documents, Wright, Scott, and Bunce analyze how political appointees, White House officials, and right-wing media influenced VOA changing its reporting of the Black Lives Matter movement, the presidential election, and its contested aftermath. The authors stress that leaving the VOA unprotected opens it and other public media to targeting by authoritarian leadership and poses serious risks to US democracy. Further, they offer practical recommendations for how to protect the network and other international public service media better in the future.

Sponsored by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS), this 22nd volume in Studies in Media and Communications explores the complex construction of democratic public dialogue in developing countries.

Who owns the media and communications in Africa today and with what implications? The book elegantly answers this urgent question by unpacking multiple dimensions of media ownership through rare and authoritative perspectives, including both historical and contemporary digital developments. It traces the evolving forms of ownership of media and communications in specific African contexts, showing how they interact with broader changes in and outside the continent. The book also shows how Big Techs, such as Meta (formerly known as Facebook), are involved in a scramble for Africa’s digital ecosystem and how their advance brings both opportunities and concerns about ownership and control. The chapters analyse evolving forms of ownership and their implications on media concentration and democracy across Africa. The book offers a nuanced account of how media ownership structures are in some instances captured with an ever-growing and complex ecosystem that also has new opportunities for public interest media. Offering a significant representation of the trends and diversity of existing media systems, the book goes beyond the postcolonial geographical divisions of North and Sub-Saharan Africa to highlight common patterns and significant similarities and differences of communications ownerships between and within African countries. The contributors expose media and communications ownership patterns in Africa that are centralised and yet decentralising and in some cases, battling, resurging and globalising.

In order to better understand how the world viewed the US 2016 presidential election, the issues that mattered around the world, and how nations made sense of how their media systems constructed presentations of the presidential election, Robert S. Hinck, Skye C. Cooley, and Randolph Kluver examine global news narratives during the campaign and immediately afterwards. Analyzing 1,578 news stories from 62 sources within three regional media ecologies in China, Russia, and the Middle East, Hinck, Cooley, and Kluver demonstrate how the US election was incorporated into narrative constructions of the global order. They establish that the narratives told about the US election through national and regional media provide insights into how foreign nations construct US democracy, and reflect local understandings regarding the issues, and impacts, of US policy towards those nations. Avoiding jargon-laden prose, Global Media and Strategic Narratives of Contested Democracy is as accessible as it is wide-ranging. Its empirical detail will expand readers’ understanding of soft power as narrative articulations of foreign nation’s policies, values, and beliefs within localized media systems. Communication/media studies students, as well as political scientists whose studies includes media and global politics, will welcome its publication.

The ability of the media to affect outcomes in economic and political markets has been well documented. News reporting and advertising influence consumer behavior in goods and services markets by revealing (or selectively revealing) information about a product, acting as agenda setters to influence consumer demand, or enhancing competition in markets by alerting consumers to substitutes. In political markets, they can affect behavior by informing voters about a politician's views or actions, enlightening citizens to outcomes of public policy, or taking a stance on political, social, or economic issues. For businesses, households, and most others, the media is the main source of information on public policy choices and current social and economic conditions. As a result, what news the media chooses to gather, analyze and disseminate--and the slant they choose to put on what they report--is of consequence. 'Information and Public Choice' addresses the factors that affect the content and reach of news coverage as well as its impact on public policy. The book addresses both market constraints that affect media--particularly news content--and the impact that news reporting has on economic and political choices. The authors examine a range of issues, including bias or slant in media reporting, the impact of markets and nonmarket factors on news reporting, and the role of government regulation of the media sector in developing countries. The studies in this volume provide new evidence and a good summary of previous research on the power of the media. An invaluable guide for those concerned about the impact of media on economic and political outcomes, 'Information and Public Choice' draws attention to an under-researched yet important area of economics.

"People increasingly use mobile phones for many tasks including consuming news, which affects what they pay attention to and learn. Using mobile devices as a case, this book argues that by differentiating between physical and cognitive access to content we can better understand how technology structures information delivery and presentation. Moreover, a model for post-exposure processing offers a means to generate and test for communication technology's effects on cognitive access. This book helps to reconcile accounts that paint smartphones as either the democratic leveler or divider and offers a researcher an approach to understanding media effects as situated in the context of changing information communication technology. The authors argue that this approach adds to our understanding of how communication technology changes what we know about media effects, with consequences for the informed citizenry a democracy requires"--

In Australia, as in many comparable democracies, the role of the media in the political process is high on the public agenda. There is a perception of widespread disillusionment with and disengagement from politics amongst voters, and criticism of the media for failing to fulfil their democratic responsibilities adequately. This book evaluates public perceptions of the performance of the political media in the context of the declared aims and objectives of media producers. From there the authors present findings for improving the capacity of political media to engage and inform their audiences in ways which enhance the quality and popular legitimacy of the democratic process. These conclusions are of import not only to Australians, but to observers of mediated politics in the UK, the US and other countries where similar debates around the ‘crisis of public communication’ are on-going.

In this edited collection, contributors analyze how the media is navigating Nigeria and its mediated democracy. Scholars of journalism, political communication, and media studies will find this book of particular interest.

This book investigates the role of media and communication in processes of democratization in different political and cultural contexts. Struggles for democratic change are periods of intense contest over the transformation of citizenship and the reconfiguration of political power. These democratization conflicts are played out within an increasingly complex media ecology where traditional modes of communication merge with new digital networks, thus bringing about multiple platforms for journalists and political actors to promote and contest competing definitions of reality. The volume draws on extensive case study research in South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and Serbia to highlight the ambivalent role of the media as force for democratic change, citizen empowerment, and accountability, as well as driver of polarization, radicalization and manipulation.

Drawing on real-world developments, and including international case studies, this book introduces students to the concept and causes of democratic decay in the modern world.