Analyzes such social institutions as politics, religion, and sport as they are presented and transformed by the media to affect our shared stock of knowledge. Altheide and Snow move beyond a consideration of the reasons for the picture given by media of these institutions and the ways in which media has impact, to a more pervasive view of our culture as shaped by the media that are a part of it. 'Altheide and Snow do successfully show how a common media logic has gripped such apparently different areas as spectator politics, sport and religion. They do show how all other media tend to conform to a dominant television format.' -- The Media Reporter, Spring 1980

In order to prepare a successful research project, a qualitative researcher often must consult media documents of various types. How to obtain, categorize, and analyze these different media documents is the subject of this entry in the Qualitative Research Methods series. Author David L. Altheide looks at traditional primary documents such as newspapers and magazines but also at more recent forms--television newscasts and cyberspace. The use of student examples of research protocols makes this book a useful primer in deriving meaning from the bombardment of media documents a qualitative researcher faces. This handy volume, Qualitative Media Analysis, is ideal for students and professionals in research methods, sociology, communication studies, social theory, and political science.

The creative use of fear by news media and social control organizations has produced a "discourse of fear"--The awareness and expectation that danger and risk are lurking everywhere. Case studies illustrates how certain organizations and social institutions benefit from the exploitation of such fear construction. One social impact is a manipulated public empathy: We now have more "victims" than at any time in our prior history. Another, more troubling result is the role we have ceded to law enforcement and punishment: we turn ever more readily to the state and formal control to protect us from what we fear. This book attempts through the marshalling of significant data to interrupt that vicious cycle of fear discourse. David Altheide employs a method, which he calls "tracking discourse", to map how the nature and the extent of the use of the word "fear" has changed since the 1980s; how the topics associated with fear, the topics of media discourse, have also changed over the same period (for example, the emphasis "moves" over time across AIDS, crime, immigrants, race, sexuality, schools, and children); and how certain news sources prevail over others, thus protectively insulating themselves from criticism of the premises of their discourse frames.

Drawing on social science and communications theory, Gonzo Governance offers a new interpretation of presidential power that shifts focus to the media dynamics that surrounded Donald Trump. The former president’s unhinged behavior and skilled media and digital manipulations changed the nature and process of significant governance at the federal and state levels, including denying election results and restricting voting opportunities. He went "Gonzo" – promoting himself without regard for conventional norms and practices – and blasted ideological fault lines into explosive political fragments, resulting in so much dissensus that numerous legislators would not recognize the newly elected President Biden, nor would they agree to take a potential life-saving vaccine because it had been associated with a politicized virus, COVID-19. Nurtured by media logic and a communications ecology that has wedded people to digital technologies and formats that govern the structure, grammar, form, expectations, and meanings of messages that can entertain, enlighten, and disinform, this form of governance alters the fundamental way that information is communicated. David L. Altheide emphasizes how these changes informed Donald Trump’s electoral strategies as well as the insurrection attempt on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Altheide's new book advances the argument set in motion some years ago with Media Logic and continued in Media Worlds in the Postjournalism Era: that in our age, information technology and the communication enviroments it posits have affected the private and the social spheres of all our power relationships, redefining the ground rules for social life and concepts such as freedom and justice., Articulated through an interactionist and non-deterministic focus, An Ecology of Communication offers a distinctive perspective for understanding the impact of information technology, communication formats, and social activities in the new electronic environment.

Altheide's new book advances the argument set in motion some years ago with "Media Logic "and continued in "Media Worlds in the Postjournalism Era: "that in our age, information technology and the communication environments it posits have affected the private and the social spheres of all our power relationships, redefining the ground rules for social life and concepts such as freedom and justice. Articulated through an interactionist and non-deterministic focus, "An Ecology of Communication "offers a distinctive perspective for understanding the impact of information technology, communication formats, and social activities in the new electronic environment. As more routines, rituals, and activities incorporate such technologies within their organizational cultures, new sorts of activities are added and previous ones are changed according to an underlying logic explored in these pages. Various chapters illustrate some of these altered and redefined organizational cultures: bureaucracy, the mass media, computer formats, war, surveillance, and testing, among others.

This book challenges social science to address the most important social change since the industrial revolution: the mediated communication order. More of our everyday lives and social institutions reflect the compelling media logic that resonates through conversation, interaction, marketing, as well as social programs, issues and foreign policy. We are beyond the time when people take into account media matters; rather, media matters are now incorporated as a kind of social form in routine and extraordinary activities. This thesis was first laid out in 'Media Logic', co-authored with Robert P. Snow in 1979.&ltBR> Thirty-five years on, Altheide discusses his recent thinking about how media logic and mediation is a basic element in constructing social reality.&ltBR> From the internet to the NSA, he shows how media logic has transformed audiences into personal networks guided by social media. He argues that we have reached the media edge as social media have all but eviscerated the audience as a significant factor in the communication equation; mediated communication is increasingly about media performances and individual selection to promote identity.

In this powerful new book, sociologist David L. Altheide demonstrates how the mass media constructs a politics of fear in America. He argues that politicians and decision-makers bear much of the blame for the promotion of fear among citizens, resulting in the loss of civil liberties in return for greater protection. From a social interactionist perspective, Altheide presents his thesis that fear-as-entertainment informs the production of popular culture and news, generates profits, enables political decision-makers to cynically manipulate citizens, and can lead to major institutional changes, even war. The author dissects in turn: a modern propaganda campaign in the justification of the invasion of Iraq to the American people; the expansion of control and surveillance on the Internet; and the construction of a 'hero fighting terrorism' to promote patriotism, in the story of a promising young Arizona sports hero, Pat Tillman, who joined the Army and was killed by his fellow Rangers in Afghanistan. This thoughtful treatment of a timely subject will be indispensable to teachers and students of sociology, media, politics, and criminology studies.