[ecrea] Political Culture and Media Genre: Beyond the News.

From the University of Liverpool and the University of Leeds, we are 
happy to announce the publication of our book, _Political Culture and 
Media Genre: Beyond the News_, new out this month from Palgrave 
McMillan, authors Kay Richardson, John Corner and Katy Parry.

This book explores the forms and meanings of mediated politics beyond 
the news cycle. It encompasses genres drawn from television, radio, the 
press and the internet, assessing their individual and collective 
contribution to contemporary political culture through textual analysis 
and thematic review, including attention to audience responses and 
reflections.

The academic study of political communication usually focuses on 
political journalism - the challenges it faces, the economic political 
and social conditions under which it operates, and the implications for 
a healthy public sphere. But mediated politics goes well beyond the news 
coverage. Politicians and their activities are evaluated by columnists 
and bloggers, lampooned in cartoons, narrativised in dramas, satirised 
in broadcasting panel shows and discussed, in different ways, by 
citizens themselves. Through these genres and others, the world of 
politics is kept at the forefront of mediated culture. 'Beyond the news' 
is where judgments are publicly made, the imagination gets to work and 
emotion as well as information is mediated and is variously addressed to 
different parts of the national audience, and variously relevant to 
citizens' understandings of, and feelings towards, politics itself.

The book includes many detailed analyses of particular texts as well as 
reports of some discussions with audience focus groups, which allowed us 
to explore what viewers/listeners/readers liked and disliked about 
politics in the (mass) media.

Thanks for reading this!

Kay

University of Liverpool, (kay100 /at/ liv.ac.uk) <mailto:(kay100 /at/ liv.ac.uk)>; 
0151 794 1329. Department of Communication and Media, School of the Arts.

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