Communication and Citizenship addresses a question increasingly at the center of academic and journalistic deabte: to what extent are the media able to help citizens in modern societies learn more about the world, debate their responses to it, and reach informed decisions about what courses of action to take? Can the media play a role in the formation of a "public sphere" when public service broadcasting is under attack, and the popular press plays to"the market" with a steady stream of celebrity gossip and sensationalized reporting?

Contributors to the volume each concentrate on one aspect of the role and future of the public sphere in the United States and Europe, both East and West. Topics discussed include American politics and television news, feminist perspectives on the public sphere, the Polish media after Stalinism, and the popular press and television in the U. K.
Contributors: Ian Connell, Ann N. Crigler, James Curran, Peter Dahlgren, Todd Gitlin, Michael Gurevitch, Suzanne Hasselbach, Karol Jakubowicz, Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Mark R. Levy, Paolo Mancini, John M. Phelan, Vincent Porter, Itzhak Roeh, Colin Sparks, Liesbet van Zoonen.