Written with media students in mind, this accessible book provides both students and researchers with a new perspective on how to research engagement, not as a metric but as a marker of power relations.
This book navigates the reader through a tighter analytical notion of engagement within an understanding of media, culture and democracy. Dahlgren and Hill offer a new definition of engagement as an energising internal force, and as such a powerful means to further human agency. From this definition, the book builds a generative theory of engagement as a nexus of relations we make and break with media on a daily basis, with examples from political activism, news and disinformation, and the global pandemic. Dahlgren and Hill identify five parameters of engagement in order to understand the relations we have with media across changing public and mediated spheres. This new perspective offers students and researchers pathways for investigating the meaning of media engagement as a resource for living.
It will be particularly useful for undergraduate courses on media audiences and publics, political communication and democracy, media and cultural theory, journalism, and for media, communication and sociology studies more broadly.
Author(s): Peter Dahlgren, Annette Hill
Series: Key Ideas in Media and Cultural Studies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 198
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Illustrations
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Part I Mapping Engagement
1 Introduction: Understanding Media Engagement
Media Engagement as Relational
Tracing Media Engagement
Engagement Matters
Outline of the Book
2 Parameters of Media Engagement
Introduction
Five Parameters
Contexts
Motivations
Modalities
Intensities
Consequences
The Case of Populism and Professional Wrestling
Populist Tensions
Carnivalesque Wrestling
A Note On Critical Media Research
Conclusion
Note
Part II Changing Public Settings for Engagement
3 Vectors of Media and Political Engagement
An ‘Excess’ of Engagement
A Time of Engagement
The Civil Rights Movement
The Anti-Vietnam War Movement
The Feminist and Queer Movements
Many Roads to Political Engagement
The Logics of Disengagement
Hindrances to Engagement
New Waves of Media and Political Engagement
Thunder From the Right
4 Public Spheres and Their Contingencies
Introduction
Public Spheres: Ideals and Norms
Motivating Engagement
Affective Energies and Engagement
Civic Cultures: Facilitating Engagement
Knowledge
Democratic Values
Identity as Political Agency
Altered Media Environments
Media Contingencies
Problematic Knowledge
Eroding Trust
Conspiracy Theories and ‘Post-Truth’
Part III Case Studies in Public Knowledge and Political Engagement
5 Audience Engagement: Researching News in Southeast Asia
Introduction
Starting the Project
Avoiding Assumptions
Using the Parameters Model
Southeast Asian News Contexts
Research Reflections
Conclusion
Notes
6 News Relations
Forms of Knowledge and Practices of Knowing
The Negation of News
News Engagement and Family Relations
Reflections
Notes
7 The Belarus Protests: A Case Study of Political Engagement
Introduction
Contexts
Historical Threads
The 2020 Election and Its Aftermath
A Year and Half of Repression – and Response
The Media Landscape
Motivations Behind the Protests
Modalities of Media Practices and Tactics
Intensities of Engagement
Consequences
8 Conclusion: Contingencies of Media Engagement
Case Studies
Reflections
Note
Appendix: News Engagement Interview Guide
News Context
News Motivations
News Modalities
News Intensities
News Consequences (Personal, Social, Political)
Other
References
Index
