Media and Political Engagement

Peter Dahlgren is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Lund University, Sweden. He has also taught at Stockholm University, as well as Queens College and Fordham University in New York City, and has been a visiting scholar at several other universities. He is the author of many articles and author or editor of several books, including Television and the Public Sphere (1995) and Young Citizens and New Media: Learning for Democratic Participation (2007).

• 1. Democracy in difficult times; 2. Media alternatives; 3. Citizens and agency; 4. Engagement, deliberation, and performance; 5. Civic cultures: an analytic frame; 6. Television and popular public spheres; 7. Internet and civic potential; 8. Online practices and civic cultures.

'The vision that civic engagement in a democracy will lead to a happier and better quality of life for more people is an article of faith. With an analysis that is sobering but also passionate, Peter Dahlgren offers good reasons for believing that such a vision remains desirable and obtainable, and he shows how contemporary media technologies and institutions are central to any meaningful pursuit of such a vision. But it is human agency and political will, not machines and bureaucratic structures, that are central to this hopeful vision. Media and Political Engagement is path-breaking in its demonstration of the profound nature of media institutions as political institutions.' Andrew Calabrese, University of Colorado