Media and The Public

Stephen Coleman is Professor of Political Communication and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Citizenship, Institute for Communications Studies, University of Leeds. He is the author of The Internet and Democratic Citizenship: Theory, Practice, and Policy (with Jay G. Blumler, 2009) and Public Trust in the News: A Constructivist Study of the Social Life of News (with David Morrison and Scott Anthony, 2009). Karen Ross is Professor of Media and Public Communication at the University of Liverpool. She has written and edited many books, including Gendered Media: Women, Men and Identity Politics (2009), Popular Communication: Essays on Publics, Practices and Processes (2008), Rethinking Media Education: Critical Pedagogy and Identity Politics (2007), and Women and Media: Critical Issues (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).

• Acknowledgments viiIntroduction. Them and Us: Meet Joe the Plumber 11 Imagining the Public 82 Public Spheres 293 The Managed Public 454 Counterpublics and Alternative Media 725 Virtual Publicness 936 Fractured Publics, Contested Publicness 123Notes 156Bibliography 169Index 179