Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Democracy and Media Decadence
  • Cited by 134
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2014
Print publication year:
2013
Online ISBN:
9781107300767
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107300767
Subjects:
Political Sociology, Politics and International Relations, Comparative Politics, Sociology
Information

Book description

We live in a revolutionary age of communicative abundance in which many media innovations - from satellite broadcasting to smart glasses and electronic books - spawn great fascination mixed with excitement. In the field of politics, hopeful talk of digital democracy, cybercitizens and e-government has been flourishing. This book admits the many thrilling ways that communicative abundance is fundamentally altering the contours of our lives and of our politics, often for the better. But it asks whether too little attention has been paid to the troubling counter-trends, the decadent media developments that encourage public silence and concentrations of unlimited power, so weakening the spirit and substance of democracy. Exploring examples of clever government surveillance, market censorship, spin tactics and back-channel public relations, John Keane seeks to understand and explain these trends, and how best to deal with them. Tackling some tough but big and fateful questions, Keane argues that 'media decadence' is deeply harmful for public life.

Reviews

‘With impressive intellectual breadth and rich analytic insight, John Keane’s engaging new book moves us beyond conventional ways of thinking about media and democracy. Addressing key debates, his writing is, as always, accessible, compelling, and edifying.’

Peter Dahlgren - Lund University

‘Vanquishing received wisdom and resisting cliché, John Keane charts the transformative impact of communicative abundance. Invoking McCluhan, Derrida, Curran and others, he perceptively constructs a significant vision: an emerging 'monitory democracy' dependent on new roles for media and very new relationships between media institutions, technology and society.’

Monroe E. Price - Director, Center for Global Communications Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

‘John Keane doesn’t answer all your questions about the new media and democracy - but he makes it impossible for you to credit those who pretend to. In energetic, sometimes gripping, prose he offers indispensable conceptual tools (particularly 'monitory democracy') for a fresh look at where democracy stands in an age of communicative abundance teetering on the edge of communicative decay. A brilliant work!’

Michael Schudson - Columbia Journalism School

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents
  • 1 - Communicative abundance
    pp 1-76
      • You have access
    • PDF
    • Export citation
References

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.