Stephen Coleman & Karen Ross 
The Media and The Public 
‘Them’ and ‘Us’ in Media Discourse

The Media and the Public explores the ways a range of media,
from the press to television to the Internet, have constructed and
represented the public.

* Provides a new synthesis of recent research exploring the
relationship between media and their publics

* Identifies ways in which different publics are subverting the
gatekeeping of mainstream media in order to find a voice and
communicate with others

* Situates contemporary media-public discourse and relationships
in an historical context in order to show the origin of
contemporary public/political engagement

* Creates a theoretical expansion on the role of the media in
accessing or denying the articulation of public voices, and the
ways in which publics are harnessing new media formats to produce
richer and more complex forms of political engagement

Table of Content

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction. Them and Us: Meet Joe the Plumber 1

1 Imagining the Public 8

2 Public Spheres 29

3 The Managed Public 45

4 Counterpublics and Alternative Media 72

5 Virtual Publicness 93

6 Fractured Publics, Contested Publicness 123

Notes 156

Bibliography 169

Index 179

About the author

Stephen Coleman is Professor of Political Communication and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Citizenship, Institute for Communications Studies, University of Leeds. He is the author of The Internet and Democratic Citizenship: Theory, Practice, and Policy (with Jay G. Blumler, 2009) and Public Trust in the News: A Constructivist Study of the Social Life of News (with David Morrison and Scott Anthony, 2009).

Karen Ross is Professor of Media and Public Communication at the University of Liverpool. She has written and edited many books, including Gendered Media: Women, Men and Identity Politics (2009), Popular Communication: Essays on Publics, Practices and Processes (2008), Rethinking Media Education: Critical Pedagogy and Identity Politics (2007), and Women and Media: Critical Issues (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).