Books by "Robert M. Entman"
7 books found
Persuasion and Social Movements
by Charles J. Stewart, Craig Allen Smith, Robert E. Denton, Jr.
2012 · Waveland Press
Conflict over moral, religious, social, political, and economic values fuel social movements. People form organized collectivities to promote or to oppose changes in societal norms and values. The steady growth in globalization and access to information have increased the perception of threats to identity, values, and culture. Persuasion and Social Movements provides a solid foundation for understanding how people collectively shape society. The latest edition marks three decades of synthesizing, applying, and extending research and theories about the persuasive efforts of social movements. Historic and current examples illustrate the many facets of social movement persuasion: Persuasion is inherently practical; we can study it most profitably by examining the functions of persuasive acts. Even apparently irrational acts make sense to the actoreffective analysis discovers the reasoning behind the acts. People create and comprehend their world through symbols, and it is people who create, use, ignore, or act on these symbolic creations. Although they remain important in social movement persuasion, speeches are now one of many resources for organizing and carrying out a variety of protests. New technologies have transformed how social movements come into existence, constitute organizations, establish coalitions, pressure institutions, and communicate with a wide variety of audiences. Social movements sometimes sell conspiracy theories to skeptical audiences, justify inherently divisive tactics, and use violence as a rhetorical strategy. Institutions and countermovements have a variety of strategies for resistance.
Social Regulation
by Eugene Bardach, Robert Kagan
The Nightly News Nightmare
by Stephen J. Farnsworth, Robert S. Lichter
2011 · Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
The Nightly News Nightmare, Third Edition, examines news coverage of presidential nomination and election campaigns from 1988 to 2008. Farnsworth and Lichter find that the news media, despite the wide variety of outlets, have consistent problems in terms of fairness and focus ...
The symptoms of the crisis of the U.S. media are well-known—a decline in hard news, the growth of info-tainment and advertorials, staff cuts and concentration of ownership, increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. McChesney's new book, The Problem of the Media, gets to the roots of this crisis, explains it, and points a way forward for the growing media reform movement. Moving consistently from critique to action, the book explores the political economy of the media, illuminating its major flashpoints and controversies by locating them in the political economy of U.S. capitalism. It deals with issues such as the declining quality of journalism, the question of bias, the weakness of the public broadcasting sector, and the limits and possibilities of antitrust legislation in regulating the media. It points out the ways in which the existing media system has become a threat to democracy, and shows how it could be made to serve the interests of the majority. McChesney's Rich Media, Poor Democracy was hailed as a pioneering analysis of the way in which media had come to serve the interests of corporate profit rather than public enlightenment and debate. Bill Moyers commented, "If Thomas Paine were around, he would have written this book." The Problem of the Media is certain to be a landmark in media studies, a vital resource for media activism, and essential reading for concerned scholars and citizens everywhere.
Communication provides the basis of social cohesion, issue discussion, and legislative enactmentcore features of political activity and governing in the United States. Denton and Kuypers, experts in the field of political communication, synthesize materials and sources from political science, communication, history, journalism, and sociology to demonstrate how communication intersects with these fields to formulate political beliefs, attitudes, and values. Conventional categories of political activitycampaigns, activity in Congress, the courts, the mass media, and the presidencystructure the discussions. Theoretical and applied concepts drawn from firsthand sources and classic historical works, plus extensive use of contemporary examples, enrich understanding. Written in an engaging, accessible style that is geared to an undergraduate audience, the text ignites readers awareness that the essence of politics is talk or human interaction. Such interaction is formal and informal, verbal and nonverbal, public and privatebut always persuasive in nature, causing audiences to interpret, to evaluate, and to act.
Debuting in its first edition , The Contemporary American President explores the potential and limitations of presidential influence in times of rising public expectation for the office and the declining ability of presidents to meet it. It focuses on six major areas concerning the presidency - selection, power, accountability, decision making, personality, and leadership - and offers an appreciation of the challenges of the office as the institution attempts to function in an increasingly controversial political environment.