Democratic Communications: Cultural and Historical Resources and Possibilities in the Age of Capitalism

While it has always been hard to do, establishing a clear difference between mainstream media and alternative media has grown even more difficult within the past twenty years. With the emergence of such efforts as open publishing, web-logging and video-logging, video-posting websites, citizen journalism, creative-commons initiatives, and image-focused anti-corporate activism, it has become increasingly difficult to navigate within this emerging media landscape. The traditional lines between mainstream and alternative and between producers and consumers have been blurred. This growing inability to adequately map this landscape demands that these lines be reconsidered. New ways must be formed for probing implications of these new media outlets for democratization and global-justice movements. This book reconstitutes the cultural and historical roots of this protean media landscape and assesses its relevance to democratic communications. Using a comprehensively argued cultural and historical analysis, the book rethinks long-standing assumptions about alternative media and democratic communications. By providing greater understanding of historical resources, limitations, and possibilities, this book makes a key contribution not only to scholarship in this area, but also to this pressing social, political, and cultural issue.

Biting off what he admits is more than he can chew in a single volume, Hamilton (advertising and public relations, U. of Georgia) critically explores Anglo-American historical traditions and practices of democratic communications. Among his topics are providentialism and rationalist empiricism in early modern England, modernism and the aestheticization of dissent, and market radicalism and the struggle of participation. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)