First published in 1998, this volume asks: are groups or organisations beyond the sphere of Westminster politics doomed to be marginalised in mainstream news coverage, or can the currently fashionable emphasis upon media techniques and 'spin doctoring' offer such non-official news sources a means of securing media success?. This question is now surfacing as a major issue within politics and cultural debates, as well as within the sociology of the mass media and communication studies. We are living through a period of remarkable transformation in politics, culture and social arrangements. Communications experts in the 'new Labour' camp believe that trade unions must respond by becoming more sophisticated in their use of the media and marketing techniques; and by employing new vocabularies for communicating their messages to the public. However, can trade unions succeed in using the tricks of the 1990s spin doctor to restore their position?. This study uses extensive interviews with leading national newspaper journalists and senior figures within trade unions to explore the question. Drawing upon unique archive material the study points to the importance of government in fostering or undermining branches of journalism including coverage of labour relations.
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This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.
We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.
We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
First published in 1998, this volume asks: are groups or organisations beyond the sphere of Westminster politics doomed to be marginalised in mainstream news coverage, or can the currently fashionable emphasis upon media techniques and 'spin doctoring' offer such non-official news sources a means of securing media success?. This question is now surfacing as a major issue within politics and cultural debates, as well as within the sociology of the mass media and communication studies. We are living through a period of remarkable transformation in politics, culture and social arrangements. Communications experts in the 'new Labour' camp believe that trade unions must respond by becoming more sophisticated in their use of the media and marketing techniques; and by employing new vocabularies for communicating their messages to the public. However, can trade unions succeed in using the tricks of the 1990s spin doctor to restore their position?. This study uses extensive interviews with leading national newspaper journalists and senior figures within trade unions to explore the question. Drawing upon unique archive material the study points to the importance of government in fostering or undermining branches of journalism including coverage of labour relations.
News and News Sources offers a fresh introduction to the sociology of news.
News and News Sources: reviews new research in the rapidly expanding field of political communication, drawing upon material from Britain, Europe and the USA; provides a clear introduction to the processes of news production and the implications of the rise in global electronic news communication; and assesses the various theoretical frameworks available for analysing these developments including fuctionalism, pluralism, Marxism, political economy, hegemony theory, discourse theory and postmodernism.
Drink, as an embodied semiotic and material form, mediates social life. This book examines the fundamental nature of drink through a series of modular but connected ethnographic discussions. It looks at the way the materiality of a specific drink (coffee, wine, water, beer) serves as the semiotic medium for a genre of sociability in a specific time and place.
As an explicitly comparative semiotic study, the book uses familiar and unfamiliar case studies to show how drinks with similar material properties are semiotically organized into very different drinking practices, including ethnographic examples as diverse as the relation of coffee to talk (in ordering at Starbucks). Further chapters look at the dryness of gin in relation to the modern cocktail party and the embedding of beer brands in the ethnographic imagination of the nation. Rather than treat drinks as mere props in the exclusively human drama of the social, the book promotes them to actors on the stage.