Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society

What are focus groups? How are they distinct from ordinary group discussions and what use are they anyway? This article introduces focus group methodology, explores ways of conducting such groups and examines what this technique of data collection can offer researchers in general and medical sociologists in particular. It concentrates on the one feature which inevitably distinguishes focus groups from one-to-one interviews or questionnaires – namely the interaction between research participants - and argues for the overt exploration and exploitation of such interaction in the research process.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-9566.ep11347023

The methodology of focus groups: the importance of interaction between research participants

The third way: the renewal of social democracy

The theme of the Internet and the public sphere now has a permanent place on research agendas and in intellectual inquiry; it is entering the mainstream of political communication studies. The first part of this presentation briefly pulls together key elements in the public sphere perspective, underscoring three main analytic dimensions: the structural, the representational, and the interactional. Then the discussion addresses some central themes in the current difficulties facing democracy, refracted through the lens of the public sphere perspective. In particular, the destabilization of political communication systems is seen as a context for understanding the role of the Internet: It enters into, as well as contributes to, this destabilization. At the same time, the notion of destabilization can also embody a positive sense, pointing to dispersions of older patterns that may have outlived their utility. Further, the discussion takes up obvious positive consequences that follow from the Internet, for ex...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10584600590933160

The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation

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.

Media and Political Engagement: Citizens, Communication and Democracy

PART ONE: INITIAL HORIZONS Mediating Democracy Prismatic Television Popular Television Journalism PART TWO: SHIFTING FRAMES Modern Contingencies Communication and Subjectivity Civil Society and Its Citizens PART THREE: FLICKERING HOPES Democratic Mediations?

Television and the public sphere : citizenship, democracy and the media

This text makes the argument that to understand the communicative skills and other competencies associated with active citizenship in the public sphere, one must analyse cultural circumstances within everyday life. Citizens do not magically emerge, fully formed and ready to participate, at age 18; they - and their civic skills - are shaped by a variety of factors in the private sphere.

/pdf/doing-citizenship-the-cultural-origins-of-civic-agency-in-5b92y6epf4.pdf

Doing citizenship: the cultural origins of civic agency in the public sphere

Contributors: Ian Connell, Ann N. Crigler, James Curran, Peter Dahlgren, Klaus Jakubowicz, Todd Gitlin, Michael Gurevitch, Suzanne Hasselbach, Mark R. Levy, Paolo Mancini, John M. Phelan, Vincent Porter, Itzhak Roeh, Colin Sparks, Liesbet van Zoonen

Peter Dahlgren

Papers

The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation

Media and Political Engagement: Citizens, Communication and Democracy

Television and the public sphere : citizenship, democracy and the media

Doing citizenship: the cultural origins of civic agency in the public sphere

Communication and Citizenship: Journalism and the Public Sphere