News as culture

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Jürgen Diethe

Die Anfänge des Journalismus werden meist auf das 18. Jahrhundert datiert? doch bereits 200 Jahre zuvor profilierten sich die Vorläufer der uns heute bekannten Presseorgane. Vor dem Hintergrund der turbulenten Ereignisse der Englischen Revolution Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts erlebte der Journalismus ein explosives, wenn auch kurzlebiges Wachstum. Die ersten Journalisten betraten die Szene, angeführt von der schillernden Figur des Marchamont Nedham, ein Mann mit zahlreichen Talenten? ein rassiger Schreiber, gebildeter Humanist, republikanischer Theoretiker und obendrein ein innovativer Mediziner. Gleichzeitig war er ein notorischer Wendehals, der sich nicht scheute, seine geniale Feder ganz gegensätzlichen Sachen zur Verfügung zu stellen. Immer stand er im Zentrum der politischen Ereignisse, als Propagandist des Parlaments, als Kämpfer für den todgeweihten König, als Sprecher von Cromwell und schliesslich als Speerspitze für Karl II.

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A. Dirk Moses

" ...Often new, probing and rich examinations of the takeover of a continent by white Anglos and the long-term impact ...the book is replete with detailed and meticulously sourced information on the scope, scale and persistence of the cruelty and violence involved - actual and structural - over a 200-year period...there is a great deal in this excellent volume that demands grounds for deep reflection on how Australia came to be what it is." * Patterns of Prejudice "The value of this stimulating collection of historical essays is that it points to both the usefulness of a transnational framework for analysing race thinking and the necessity for close attention to the historical specificity of particular moments and places." * Australian Book Review "[This volume] is an outstanding collection, a challenging conversation between differing viewpoints where discussion is ongoing and cooperative." * Australian Historical Studies Colonial Genocide has been seen increasingly as a stepping-stone to the European genocides of the twentieth century, yet it remains an under-researched phenomenon.This volume reconstructs instances of Australian genocide and for the first time places them in a global context. Beginning with the arrival of the British in 1788 and extending to the 1960s, the authors identify the moments of radicalization and the escalation of British violence and ethnic engineering aimed at the Indigenous populations, while carefully distinguishing between local massacres, cultural genocide, and genocide itself. These essays reflect a growing concern with the nature of settler society in Australia and in particular with the fate of the tens of thousands of children who were forcibly taken away from their Aboriginal families by state agencies. A. Dirk Moses teaches European History and comparative genocide Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. He is editing another volume in this series entitled Genocide and Colonialism.

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Ki-Sung Kwak

Since South Korea achieved partial democracy in 1987, the country has moved away from authoritarian political control. However, after two decades of democratic transition, South Korea still does not have a strong liberal, individualist culture - something that has brought about a wide range of scholarly discussion on the nature of democracy practised in this dynamic country. While the political changes in South Korea have received rigorous attention from Western scholars, less attention has been given to the changing nature and role of media in this and other such transitions. This book focuses on the changing role of media in the more democratised political landscape of South Korea. It thereby contributes to debates about the emerging role of the media in democratic transition, especially in relation to approaches that go beyond traditional Western constructs of media freedom and the relationship between the state and the media. In addition, it discusses the complex interacting forces that affect the role of the media and their implications for state control and democratisation.

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Mark J. Rozell

Over the past decade, the public's opinion of Congress has declined - election after election - to record lows. Mark J. Rozell examines the reasons for the electorate's ongoing disgust with its legislature. Putting recent Congresses in historical perspectives, he notes that our modern representatives are actually less corrupt than those of the past, due in large measure to increased public scrutiny and ongoing tightening of ethics and conflict of interest rules. Still, the public remains skeptical, indeed hostile, toward this most representative national institution. Rozell finds that much of the blame goes to highly negative press coverage of the Congress, and government in general, and that while Congress has always been a favorite target of critics and comedians, healthy skepticism has now largely been replaced by a debilitating cynicism that undermines the foundations of representative government. This is a major study which will be of interest to scholars and students of American politics, government, and media.