Mediated Citizenship

Previously published as a special issue of Social Semiotics , this book grapples with such questions as: What does it mean to be a citizen in contemporary societies? What role do mass media play in the making of citizenship? Drawing on ground-breaking work from scholars around the world known for their contributions to the study of media and politics, this volume covers a range of practices of mediated citizenship, with chapters studying the mourning after the deaths of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands and notions of authenticity in letters written to British Conservative politician Boris Johnson. The authors explore discourses of nationalism in the English and Scottish Press, and examine struggles over definitions of the public in Australian public service broadcasting and the US Medicare debate. Emerging possibilities for mediated citizenship are assessed in three studies of online activism and participation in the US and China. The book builds onconventional understandings of citizenship and the public sphere, calling attention to the need for understanding affective attachments to politics. Finally, it demonstrates that we cannot fully understand citizenship without looking at the concrete workings of power in and through mediated discourse.

Mediated citizenship(s): an introduction Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Cardiff University Do crying citizens make good citizens? Mervi Pantti and Liesbet van Zoonen, University of Amsterdam Media, citizenship and governmentality: Defining 'the public' of public service broadcasting David Nolan, University of Melbourne Mediating citizenship through the lens of consumerism: Frames in the American Medicare reform debates of 2003-2004 Emily West, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Invisible centers: Boris Johnson, authenticity, cultural citizenship and a centrifugal model of media power Andy Ruddock, Liverpool John Moores University Mediated citizenship and digital discipline: A rhetoric of control in a campaign blog James Janack, Eckerd College From active audience to media citizenship: The case of post-Mao China Haiqing Yu, University of Melbourne Mediating which nation? Citizenship and national identities in the British press Michael Rosie, University of Edinburgh; Pille Petersoo, Stirling Media Research Institute, University of Stirling; John MacInnes, University of Edinburgh & Universitat Autinoma de Barcelona; Susan Condor, University of Lancaster; James Kennedy, University of Edinburgh. CODEPINK alert: Mediated citizenship in the publics sphere Maria Simone, Temple University A cultural approach to the study of mediated citizenship Jeffrey Jones, Old Dominion University