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The Civil Power of the News

  • Book
  • © 2019

Overview

Authors:
  1. Jackie Harrison

    1. Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

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  • Presents an original conceptual framework to examine how news exercises its civil power by making civil and anti-civil judgements

  • Explores how the news interprets our invariant civil concerns of who we identify with, what we regard as legitimate and what risks we think we face

  • Examines how civil and anti-civil judgements are influenced by commercial and political power

  • Concludes with a detailed empirical analyses of a fascinating case study based on a new research template that demonstrates how the news exercises civil power

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xviii
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  2. The Civil Power of the News Defined and Explained

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Introduction to Part I

      • Jackie Harrison
      Pages 3-30

    3. The Civil Ideal of the News

      • Jackie Harrison
      Pages 31-63

    4. The Civil Ideal of the News and Political and Commercial Reality

      • Jackie Harrison
      Pages 65-104

    5. Newsrooms and the News Cycle

      • Jackie Harrison
      Pages 105-142

  3. A Practical Demonstration of the Civil Power of the News Through an Analysis of the First British Railway Murder 1864

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 143-143
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    2. Introduction to Part II

      • Jackie Harrison
      Pages 145-162

    3. The Reporting of the Murder and the Invariant Civil Concern of Identity

      • Jackie Harrison
      Pages 163-210

    4. The Reporting of the Murder and the Invariant Civil Concern of Legitimacy

      • Jackie Harrison
      Pages 211-264

    5. The Reporting of the Murder and the Invariant Civil Concern of Risk

      • Jackie Harrison
      Pages 265-302

    6. The Reporting of the Murder as Type 3 Civil Boundary Maintenance: The Rejection of Change and the Endorsement of the Status Quo in Civil Society

      • Jackie Harrison
      Pages 303-320

    7. Résumé

      • Jackie Harrison
      Pages 321-326

  4. Back Matter

    Pages 327-353
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Keywords

About this book

This landmark book is concerned with the civil power of the news. This power can be seen in the ways the news engages with public sentiment through a focus on three invariant civil concerns: identity, legitimacy and risk. The book analyses how news stories engage with these concerns to make civil and anti-civil judgements, which influence public sentiment and determine the boundaries we place and maintain around the society we live in. Through historical and contemporary examples of this boundary shaping and maintenance, The Civil Power of the News presents a bold and original account of the architecture of news, the influence it has on our conceptions of civility, and, ultimately, the power it wields.


Reviews

The Civil Power of the News is an extraordinary work, one that deserves to be widely read, widely discussed, and widely reviewed. Jackie Harrison advances a new model of how journalism can create but also undermine civil-democratic power. She illustrates this rigorous conceptual argument with an empirically rich and morally compelling case study of Victorian crime that reads like a detective novel. (Jeffrey C. Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, Yale University, USA)

“Original in its conceptualization … sophisticated in its methodological approach … with a glimmer of hope for the civil potential of journalism.” (María Luengo Cruz, Associate Professor of Journalism, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Jackie Harrison

About the author

Jackie Harrison is Professor of Public Communication and Chair of the Centre for Freedom of the Media (CFOM) at the University of Sheffield, UK. She also holds the UNESCO Chair on Media Freedom, Journalism Safety and the Issue of Impunity. She has published extensively in the areas of freedom of expression, media regulation and policy, the mediation of civil society and on issues of news media freedom and standards.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Civil Power of the News

  • Authors: Jackie Harrison

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19381-2

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-19380-5Published: 31 October 2019

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-19383-6Published: 31 October 2020

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-19381-2Published: 18 October 2019

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVIII, 353

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 5 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Journalism, Journalism, Media Policy

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