Based on an analysis of media content from selected periods in 1986 and 1996, this study examines the changing nature of parliamentary and political coverage in Britain, Germany and France. The comparison of the output suggests that although there are differences in political structures and media practices, there are also important similarities, such as a reduction in the length of politicians' sound-bites on television, and changes in the make-up of newspapers which affect the nature of parliamentary and political coverage. The findings are placed within a broader context of a continually changing relationship between political institutions and actors in the media.

First published in 1999, this study will examine the nature of the difficulties in the UK, Belgium and Ireland and the accompanying need for parliamentary communication, setting that parliament within an institutional, historical and political EU context and examining its ability to mobilise popular support through the use of mass media.

"This paper is concerned with women parliamentarians. It discusses the way they are portrayed in the media and whether a shift has occurred from a focus on women as political novelties, with much interest devoted to their appearance, family life and housekeeping skills, to women politicians being taken more seriously and treated in largely the same manner as their male colleagues. This paper also compares the different ways political parties have responded to the unequal partifipation of women in parliament, notably their attitude to the use of quotas. It examines the barriers that hinder women's entry into politics, especially in the context of the 2007 NSW election. How many women were preselected? Were they preselected to marginal or safe seats? How many were successful in their bid for election?"--p. 1.

This book investigates how individual politicians and political parties strategically make use of the media to reach their political goals. Looking beyond a purely Americentric viewpoint, the chapters present data from more than ten Western democracies to argue that the media are both a source of information and an arena for political communication. This double functional role of the media is examined from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective, including chapters dealing with different aspects of politics - from campaigning to law making - and within different political contexts. The role of the news media is discussed from the perspective of the political actor, focusing on both the opportunities and the constraints the news media provide, resulting in a multidisciplinary text that will appeal to students and scholars of both communication and political science.

Throughout the 1990s, humanitarian interventionism sat at a crossroads, where ideas about rights and duties within and beyond borders collided with an international reality of civil conflict where the most basic human rights were violated in the most brutal manner. This growing awareness of humanitarian crises has been enabled by a more globalized media which increasingly shapes public perceptions of distant crises, public opinion, and political decision-making. Clarke examines the extent to which the public discourse, and particular concepts, including those of an ethical and legal nature, influenced British newspaper coverage of the 1994 crisis in Rwanda, and, in turn, the extent to which that coverage influenced the British Parliament’s response to the crisis. Through his development and application of a broader methodological approach that combines both quantitative and qualitative analyses, the book offers a fuller understanding of the relationship between media coverage, parliamentary debate, and policy formulation, and the central role that the globalized media plays in this process. Integrating ethics, law and empirical analysis of the media to obtain a more cohesive understanding of the chemistry of the media-public policy nexus, this work will be of interest to graduates and scholars in a range of areas, including Genocide Studies, the Responsibility to Protect, the Media & Politics and International Relations.

This book does what few other works have done: it examines the role media have played in the larger political, economic and social transformations in the post communist space. An international group of scholars from various disciplines explore the complex relations between media, society, and the state in this region over the past twenty years, and present theoretical arguments that challenge dominant views. They scrutinize changes in the public sphere as well as the media itself, its role, format, agenda and quality in the context of changing values and shifting power relationships.

Reconfiguring Global Societies in the Pre-Vaccination Phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic examines lived experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic in communities and societies around the world before the arrival of vaccines. This collection presents analyses of scholars from eight countries, all of whom were engaged in the unfolding crisis of social forces across the world. This timely volume conveys valuable insights about how public officials, the state, healthcare workers, and, ultimately, citizens responded to consequences of the pandemic upon not only the body but also social relations in community, city, and society. The contributing scholars document how state apparatuses, urban configurations, places of employment, legal structures, and ways of life responded to crisis-altered social conditions during the pandemic. The book investigates what societies experiencing crisis around the world reveal about the state’s efficacy and inefficacy in fulfilling its social contract for its citizens, especially on unresolved issues related to social relations based on politics, race, ethnicity, gender, and crime. This collection brings together a cross section of scholars experiencing the same temporal moment of crisis together, watching and observing how the pandemic of their age uncoiled itself into the fabric of community, onto the institutions and bureaucracies of society, and into the most intimate confines of the home.

This book introduces undergraduates to critical perspectives on the relationship between media and society, and to ideas about the production of meaning through media. The opening chapters provide a foundation to understanding the triangular relationship between media businesses (institutions) and texts and audiences. Succeeding chapters look at specialist areas such as popular music, news, new technologies, advertising and globalization. .There is a development and application of ideas about such key terms as representation, difference, discourse and ideology. The student reader is encouraged to take on different views around issues relating to questions of media power, media influence, audience consumption. There is an emphasis on applying ideas to media practices and media texts. There is engagement with debates around such topics as public service broadcasting and the public sphere. Students are introduced to a range of key thinkers and their ideas as concepts, issues and debates are introduced..The reader is engaged through key questions, case studies, illustrations and diagrams, as well as a clearly argued text bedded in examples. .This book is already used both as a foundation at level 1 for degree courses in media studies, as a key text for general media modules at different levels, and as a key text at various levels in respect of specific chapters supporting specific modules and their topics..