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Explores how people participate in public life through organizations. The authors examine three organizations and show surprising similarities across them.
This book assesses the consequences of new information technologies for American democracy in a way that is theoretical and also historically grounded. The author argues that new technologies have produced the fourth in a series of 'information revolutions' in the US, stretching back to the founding. Each of these, he argues, led to important structural changes in politics. After re-interpreting historical American political development from the perspective of evolving characteristics of information and political communications, the author evaluates effects of the Internet and related new media. The analysis shows that the use of new technologies is contributing to 'post-bureaucratic' political organization and fundamental changes in the structure of political interests. The author's conclusions tie together scholarship on parties, interest groups, bureaucracy, collective action, and political behavior with new theory and evidence about politics in the information age.
Examines the relationship between technical experts and elected officials, challenging the prevailing view about how experts become politicized by the policy process.
These thirteen essays explore a crucial historical questionthat has been notoriously hard to pin down: To what extent,and by what means, does a society's technology determine itspolitical, social, economic, and cultural forms? These thirteen essays explore a crucial historical question that has been notoriously hard to pin down: To what extent, and by what means, does a society's technology determine its political, social, economic, and cultural forms? Karl Marx launched the modern debate on determinism with his provocative remark that "the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist," and a classic article by Robert Heilbroner (re...
This surprising study of online political mobilization shows that money and organizational sophistication influence politics online as much as off, and casts doubt on the democratizing power of digital activism. The internet has been hailed as a leveling force that is reshaping activism. From the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, digital activism seemed cheap, fast, and open to all. Now this celebratory narrative finds itself competing with an increasingly sinister story as platforms like Facebook and Twitter—once the darlings of digital democracy—are on the defensive for their role in promoting fake news. While hashtag activism captures headlines, cons...
Over the course of American political history, political elites and organizations have often updated their political communications strategies in order to achieve longstanding political communication goals in more efficient or effective ways. But why do successful innovations occur when they do, and what motivates political actors to make choices about how to innovate their communication tactics? Covering over 300 years of political communication innovations, Ben Epstein shows how this process of change happens and why. To do this, Epstein, following an interdisciplinary approach, proposes a new model called "the political communication cycle" that accounts for the technological, behavioral,...
Assessing the influence of scientific advice in societies that increasingly question scientific authority and expertise. Today, scientific advice is asked for (and given) on questions ranging from stem-cell research to genetically modified food. And yet it often seems that the more urgently scientific advice is solicited, the more vigorously scientific authority is questioned by policy makers, stakeholders, and citizens. This book examines a paradox: how scientific advice can be influential in society even when the status of science and scientists seems to be at a low ebb. The authors do this by means of an ethnographic study of the creation of scientific authority at one of the key sites fo...
A large-scale empirical investigation into the frequency and accuracy of media coverage of public policy.
Shows how Fox News' appeal is based on its populist presentational style, not its conservative ideological bias.
This book explores the impact of the Internet on scholarly research across and beyond the social sciences. The contributors - leading figures in a broad spectrum of disciplines - explain how their fields of inquiry are being redefined, and what issues of social change are salient as new information technologies increasingly become the subject of scholarly analysis. They have rendered a conceptual photograph of how their disciplines are coping with the impact of information technology by covering policy approaches, empirical research, and theoretical questions. Academy & the Internet highlights significant zones of inquiry and provides a critical perspective on the direction each discipline is traveling.