The Hybrid Media System Politics And Power

"The diffusion and rapid evolution of new communication technologies has completely reshaped media and politics. But who are the new power players? Written by a leading scholar in the field, The Hybrid Media System is a sweeping and compelling new theory of how political communication now works. The new media system is increasingly defined by organizations, groups, and individuals who are best able to blend old and new within what Andrew Chadwick terms a hybrid system. Those who are best able to create, tap, and steer information to suit their goals are, in turn, able to modify, enable, and disable the power of others between a range of older and newer media. Chadwick looks at news making in all of its contemporary "professional" and "amateur" forms, from parties and election campaigns, to activist movements, and government communication. He weaves in compelling ethnographic material from American presidential campaigns to WikiLeaks, and from live prime ministerial debates to hotly-contested political scandals. The end result of this wide-ranging book is a map of the emerging balance of power between older and newer media technologies, genres, norms, behaviors, and organizational forms. Chadwick argues that hybrid thinking rejects simple dichotomies, and he reveals how older and newer media logics in the fields of media and politics blend, overlap, intermesh, and coevolve. Political communication has entered a new era. This book reveals how the clash of older and newer media logics is causing chaos and disintegration but also surprising new patterns of order and integration"-- "The diffusion and rapid evolution of new communication technologies has created a pressing need to understand the complex forces reshaping media and politics. Who is emerging as powerful in this new context? Written by a leading scholar in the field, this book provides a new, holistic interpretation of how political communication now works. In The Hybrid Media System Andrew Chadwick reveals how political communication is increasingly shaped by interactions among older and newer media logics. Organizations, groups, and individuals in this system are linked by complex and ever-evolving relationships based on adaptation and interdependence. Chadwick shows how power is exercised by those who create, tap, and steer information flows to suit their goals, and in ways that modify, enable, and disable the agency of others across and between a range of older and newer media settings. The book examines a range of examples of this systemic hybridity in flow in concrete political communication contexts ranging from news making in all of its contemporary "professional" and "amateur" forms, to parties and election campaigns, to activist movements, and government communication. Compelling stories bring the theory to life. From American presidential campaigns to WikiLeaks, from live prime ministerial debates to hotly-contested political scandals that evolve in real time, from historical precedents stretching back five hundred years to the author's unique ethnographic data gathered from recent insider fieldwork among journalists, campaign workers, bloggers, and activist organizations, this wide-ranging book maps the emerging balance of power between older and newer media technologies, genres, norms, behaviors, and organizational forms"--