Crisis of Public Communication

Jay G. Blumler is Emeritus Professor of the Social and Political Aspects of Broadcasting at the University of Leeds and Professor of Journalism at the University of Maryland. He is International Editor of the Journal of Communication and Founding Co-Editor of the International Journal of Communication. Michael Gurevitch is Professor at the College of Journalism, University of Maryland, and is Associate Editor of the Journal of Communication. He is co-author of The Secularization of Leisure, The Challenge of Election Broadcasting and The Formation of Campaign Agendas and co-editor of Mass Communications and Society.

• Introduction 1 The crisis of civic communication Part I: Structure 2 Linkages between the mass media and politics 3 Politicians and the press: an essay on role relationships 4 The orientations of journalists to social and political institutions 5 Towards a comparative framework for political communication research 6 Comparative research: the extending frontier 7 The formation of campaign agendas in the United States and Britain 8 Political communication systems and democratic values Part II: Development 9 Producers’ attitudes towards television coverage of an election campaign (UK election 1966) 10 The construction of election news at the BBC (1979) 11 Setting the television news agenda (1983) 12 The earnest versus the determined: election news-making at the BBC (1987) 13 Struggles for meaningful election communication (1992) 14 Longitudinal analysis of an election communication system: newsroom observation at the BBC, 1966–92 15 The crisis of communication for citizenship: in and out of the ashes?