This book examines the media's role in shaping civic engagement and enhancing political engagement.

This book focuses on the impact of digital media use for political engagement across varied geographic and political contexts, using a diversity of methodological approaches and datasets. The book addresses an important gap in the contemporary literature on digital politics, identifying context dependent and transcendent political consequences of digital media use. While the majority of the empirical work in this field has been based on studies from the United States and United Kingdom, this volume seeks to place those results into comparative relief with other regions of the world. It moves debates in this field of study forward by identifying system-level attributes that shape digital political engagement across a wide variety of contexts. The evidence analyzed across the fifteen cases considered in the book suggests that engagement with digital environments influences users' political orientations and that contextual features play a significant role in shaping digital politics.

In this completely revised and updated edition (including eight new chapters), Jeffrey Jones charts the evolution and maturation of political entertainment television by examining The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Politically Incorrect/Real Time with Bill Maher, and Michael Moore's TV Nation and The Awful Truth. This volume investigates how and why these shows have been central locations for the critique of political and economic power and an important resource for citizens during numerous political crises. In an age of Truthiness, fake news and humorous political talk have proven themselves viable forms of alternative reporting and critical means for ascertaining truth, and in the process, questioning the legitimacy of news media's role as the primary mediator of political life. The book also addresses the persistent claims that these programs have cynical effects and create misinformed young citizens, demonstrating instead how such programming provides for an informed, active, and meaningful citizenship. The new edition takes account of the many changes that have occurred in television and political culture since Entertaining Politics' initial release.

"There is a widespread perception that the foundations of American democracy are dysfunctional and little is likely to emerge from traditional politics that will shift those conditions. Youth are often seen as emblematic of this crisis--frequently represented as uninterested in political life and ill-informed about current-affairs. By Any Media Necessary offers a profoundly different picture of contemporary American youth. Young men and women are tapping into the potential of new forms of communication, such as social media platforms and spreadable videos and memes, seeking to bring about political change--by any media necessary. In a series of case studies covering a diverse range of organizations, networks, and movements--from the Harry Potter Alliance, which fights for human rights in the name of the popular fantasy franchise, to immigration-rights advocates using superheroes to dramatize their struggles--By Any Media Necessary examines the civic imagination at work. Exploring new forms of political activities and identities emerging from the practice of participatory culture, By Any Media Necessary reveals how these shifts in communication have unleashed a new political dynamism in American youth."--Book jacket.

This book considers the radical effects the emergence of social media and digital politics have had on the way that advocacy organisations mobilise and organise citizens into political participation. It argues that these changes are due not only to technological advancement but are also underpinned by hybrid media systems, new political narratives, and a new networked generation of political actors. The author empirically analyses the emergence and consolidation within advanced democracies of online campaigning organisations, such as MoveOn, 38 Degrees, Getup and AVAAZ. Vromen shows that they have become leading political advocates, and influential on both national and international level governance. The book critically engages with this digital disruption of traditional patterns of political mobilisation and organisation, and highlights the challenges in embracing new ideas such as entrepreneurialism and issue-driven politics. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars in political participation and citizen politics, interest groups, civil society organisations, e-government and politics and social media.

This book analyses the exponential growth of independent news portal (INPs) in Malaysia and discusses the extent of impacts generated from these portals in Malaysian electoral conduct especially during Malaysia's 12th and 13th general elections. The mainstream media in Malaysia has for decades been controlled by strict laws such as the Printing Presses and Publications Act (PPPA) and the Sedition Act, as well as self-censorship by print and broadcast journalists and editors. The rise of INP in Malaysia has challenged this government stranglehold, as well as making information available much faster than the mainstream media. The undeniable speed of the news posted on INP which often come with interactive contents are seen to have caused a remarkable increment on public’s options with regards to expressing their political views. Some of the INPs have also impressively taken up a notch by providing live streaming videos or interesting online visual news which indirectly unifies various sectors of pressure groups in providing options of circulating and disseminating information to the public. The interviews conducted for this book provide deeper insights from those producing news and at the same time provide a specific and thorough observation on political events including representatives of the Malaysian middle class, Opposition parties, youth and university students, NGOs and civil society movements. Chinnasamy investigates key questions relating to this shift in relation to media preference concerning on the mainstream and political landscape in Malaysia. Did the INP evolve new democratic movement in the country or induce a change in the way the government retains its power by increasing people's active engagement in political participation? Did any revolution in government-managed media landscape occur drastically? If so, how did they accomplish these changes? This book will fill the gap of existing research on how far have the INP empowered themselves to be the third force in fighting democratic movement in the country and how the ruling government continues seeing it as a contention, as foreseen by many experts in the industry.

The practices of participation and engagement are characterised by complexities and contradictions. All celebratory examples of uses of social media, e.g. in the Arab spring, the Occupy movement or in recent LGBTQ protests, are deeply rooted in human practices. Because of this connection, every case of mediated participation should be perceived as highly contextual and cannot be attributed to one (social) specific media logic, necessitating detailed empirical studies to investigate the different contexts of political and civic engagement. In this volume, the theoretical chapters discuss analytical frameworks that can enrich our understanding of current contexts and practices of mediated participation. The empirical studies explore the implications of the new digital conditions for the ways in which digitally mediated social interactions, practices and environments shape everyday participation, engagement or protest and their subjective as well societal meaning.