In questo volume del 1979, i due autori elaborano l'impianto teorico di uno dei pił fortunati concetti del campo degli studi sui mezzi di comunicazione, quello di media logic. Illustrano, con una prospettiva innovativa, i vari aspetti e processi dell'impatto dei media sulla vita sociale, specialmente sul modo in cui le persone vedono la realtą. Nella loro visione, i media sono diventati istituzioni sociali la cui logica ha permeato le altre istituzioni, come la famiglia e la politica. Dalla tecnologia all'intrattenimento, la logica e il potere dei media si trasformano in cultura della societą.

Over the past 45 years, award-winning sociologist David L. Altheide has illuminated how media formats and media logic affect our understanding of social issues, of how political decisions are made, and of how we relate to each other. In this masterful, summative work, Altheide describes the media syndrome: how these factors shape our expectations of, and reactions to, both public and personal events. Ideal for courses on mass media and political communication, the book

• provides a detailed description of the media syndrome and its impact on daily life;

• uses historical and contemporary examples from Watergate to Edward Snowden;

• includes the changes in the ecology of communication from mass media to social media and its social impact.

For students and researchers, Altheide (justice and social inquiry, Arizona State U.) and Schneider (sociology, U. of British Columbia, Canada) explain how to use qualitative approaches to analyze media documents like newspapers and magazines, electronic documents, television newscasts, Internet video games, and online newspaper and other websites. They blend the traditional idea of objective content analysis with participant observation to form ethnographic content analysis and focus on documents as representations of social meanings and institutional relations. They compare traditional quantitative with ethnographic (or qualitative) content analysis, outline the steps of qualitative document analysis and the role of the research task and perspective in various sampling strategies, and address the use of computer information bases for tracking discourse, and field notes and other research materials as documents. Materials from their students' projects are used for illustration. This edition adds new examples, clarifies some concepts and perspectives, adds research by others and more on the process of qualitative media analysis, and has a new chapter on social media, as well as more on their approach, with an expanded list of studies using it. All chapters have been expanded, and figures have been revised. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

A sociologist who has long studied media logic and the ecology of communications, Altheide (justice and social inquire, Arizona State U.) here examines how news, popular culture, and other mass media have cast terrorism, propaganda, and social control since the 9/11 attacks. His emphasis in on the way that the media tell institutional stories that reflect and help keep a sense of order. While terrorism has become the bread-and-butter of mainstream media institutions, he argues, the counter-narratives provided--perhaps only reflexively--by alternative media represent new communication formats that will shape future communicative experience. His topics include global crises, propaganda, the politics of fear, moral panic, the Columbine shootings, terrorism programming, and the terrorism narrative and mediated evil. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Taking advantage of electronic information bases, Altheide, whose previous interpretive studies of the mass media are well known, uses a "tracking discourse" method to show how the nature and use of the word "fear" by mass media have changed over the years. His analysis examines how some of the topics associated with fear (e.g., AIDS, crime, immigrants, race, sexuality, schools, children) have shifted in emphasis, and how certain news organizations and social institutions benefit from the exploitation of fear.

This book is about fear and its expanding place in our public life. The author documents the rise of a "discourse of fear" in the present era: the pervasive communication, sym­bolic awareness, and expectation that danger and risk surround us. Altheide offers explanations of how this occurred and suggests some of its serious social consequences. In doing so, he focuses on the nature and use of social power and social control. The mass media play a significant role in shaping social definitions that govern social action. Relatedly, his methodological and theoretical foundation in classical social theory, existential-phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and symbolic interactionism leads him to view social power as the capacity to define situations for self and others.

Creating Fear is focused on sorting out the ways that the mass media and popular culture help define social situa­tions. It helps understand the nature, process, and organiza­tion of mass media operations, including news procedures, perspectives, and formats. It recognizes the need to expand our methodological frameworks to incorporate new infor­mation technologies and databases and to ask different ques­tions. This volume, which attempts to break the circle of fear discourse, will be of interest to sociologists, communi­cations scholars, and criminologists.