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Palgrave Macmillan
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The Communication Crisis in America, And How to Fix It

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  • © 2016

Overview

  • Addresses the specific communication needs of the poor, racial/ethnic, women, immigrant communities, the disabled and other marginalized communities
  • Discusses a new policy framework for incorporating social issues into the national communication debate
  • Draws together the analysis of critical information needs and the policy and legal challenges in an ecological framework

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Table of contents (19 chapters)

  1. Preface: New Approaches to Solving the Communications Challenge

  2. Preface: Communication Challenges in a Changing America

  3. Preface: Government Capture and Market Failure

  4. Preface: Net Neutrality Is Not Enough

Keywords

About this book

with foreword by Michael X. Delli Carpini, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, USA

This book critiques U.S. public policy about communication and offers guidelines to improve public safety and create strong democratic communities. The lack of effective emergency communication, basic information about health care, education, jobs and the economy, and civic life is at a crisis state, creating problems for the whole community, not just a vulnerable few. The Communications Crisis in America is not because of changing markets or new technology, it is the failure of public policy. The authors include economists, sociologists, journalists, lawyers and a diverse group of media and communication scholars, all offering an urgent call to action and difficult, but achievable steps forward.  

Reviews

“As these powerful essays attest, there is indeed a crisis in the role of our communications systems’ ability to fulfill our crucial information needs, whether it’s about the positions of political candidates or warning about the devastation of hurricanes and tornados. The Communication Crisis in America, And How to Fix It brings together some of the best scholars in this area to analyze journalism’s ongoing role in the American democratic process, and to rethink how legacy media and digital media do and can interact to better inform our citizens. An important, urgent call for correcting how ‘old ways of thinking’ are undermining our media to do so much better in serving the American public.” (Susan J. Douglas, Catherine Neafie Kellogg and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Department of Communication Studies, University of Michigan, USA)

“This important book reveals the growing information gaps in local communities and offers policy solutions to restore the communication systems on which democracy depend. This is a timely and compelling work by the top thinkers in the field.” (Lance Bennett, Professor of Political Science and Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor of Communication, University of Washington, Seattle, USA)

Editors and Affiliations

  • University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

    Mark Lloyd

  • University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, USA

    Lewis A. Friedland

About the editors

Mark Lloyd is Professor of Professional Practice of Communication at the University of Southern California Annenberg School, USA. He has been an associate general counsel at the Federal Communications Commission, and headed the communication policy program at the New America Foundation.  An Emmy-award winning broadcast producer with experience in public and commercial radio and television, including NBC and CNN, Lloyd has also managed national advocacy campaigns focused on a wide-range of communication policy issues. 

Lewis A. Friedland is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, USA where he directs the Center for Communication and Democracy. He is affiliated with the Department of Sociology and has published four books, co-edited two, and is author of more than forty research articles and chapters. Friedland played a prominent role in providing a 2012 report to the Federal Communications Commission, involving several of the contributors (including Wilson) on the importance of addressing critical information needs.

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