Agenda-Setting as Politics [microform] : A Case Study of the Press-Public-Policy Connection at the Post-Modern Moment / James S. Ettema and Others.
In the spirit of the postmodern movement, this paper mixes the genres of survey research, in-depth interviews, and textual analysis to comment on governance in the media age. Using these methods, the paper traces the movement of a particular issue, international child abductions, on the agendas of t...
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| Format: | Microfilm Book |
| Language: | English |
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1989.
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| Summary: | In the spirit of the postmodern movement, this paper mixes the genres of survey research, in-depth interviews, and textual analysis to comment on governance in the media age. Using these methods, the paper traces the movement of a particular issue, international child abductions, on the agendas of the press, the public, and policy elites. Ultimately, the agenda-history of this issue is found to be a case study in cultural constraints on mass-mediated political power. Results of the study reported in the paper suggest that media logic--the epistemology of the vivid instance and the dramatic case--contains within it the counterpoised tendencies toward both the imposition of meaning and the dissipation of meaning--that normalization can be frustrated by fragmentation--and that it is impossible to predict how these tendencies will "play out" in any particular situation. The paper concludes that politics is, then, a game played under the rules of postmodern media culture, a "game of truth effects" as Baudrillard maintains, but also a game of power that is still real enough to matter. Two tables of data are included and 30 references are attached. (RS) |
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| Item Description: | ERIC Note: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (72nd, Washington, DC, August 10-13, 1989). ERIC Document Number: ED311502. |
| Physical Description: | 43 pages |
| Reproduction Note: | Microfiche. |
| Action Note: | committed to retain |