Class and News
Published on 17. May 2004
Book
Hardback
376 pages
978-0-7425-2712-6 (ISBN)
Description
News as a cultural product has earned a place in scholarly research over the past several decades, and media scholars and sociologists have successfully looked at news for ideological content and how news may shape an audience's ideas on politics, gender, and race. But how does news influence an audience's ideas about social structure? Class and News is a multidisciplinary collection of essays examining how the news media treats or neglects this structure in everyday reporting. Are certain stories chosen for their appeal to the upper or middle classes? Are stories of interest to lower class readers/viewers avoided? How are issues of social order reported or reflected in stories that aren't about class? This in-depth work will be a valuable resource for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the dynamics of class and news in the United States.
Reviews / Votes
Heider has brought together some excellent current scholarship explicating the very concept of class in America, how news influences people's ideas about class and what people believe and how they act, the way meaning is constructed in news, and how media operate to create or reinforce social values. No doubt the book will enlighten veteran scholars as well as readers who have not given the subject much attention. This book should be essential reading for students and scholars seriously interested in mass communication and society. * Mass Communication and Society * Essential. * CHOICE * This book deserves to be read by anyone who cares about classed news and its intersections with race and gender. Its deliberate eclecticism offers a range of methods that might make it especially useful for graduate students formulating their own research agendas and strategies. * Political Communication * Class and News is a lively anthology of news media studies which brings class and class bias back into media sociology. Heider's authors demonstrate how much America's news is still produced largely for and about the country's middle classes while ignoring or demonizing those lower in the socio-economic pecking order. -- Herbert J. Gans, Robert S. Lynd Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Columbia University; author of Making Sense of AmericaMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 147 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
608 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7425-2712-6 (9780742527126)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Don Heider is associate professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.
Content
Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 1 Media, Class, and Power: Debunking the Myth of a Classless Society Part 3 Part I Class in Print Chapter 4 2 Choosing Sources: How the Press Perpetuated the Myth of the Single Mother on Welfare Chapter 5 3 Poor People in the News: Images from the Journalistic Subconscious Chapter 6 4 Picturing Class: Mining the Field of Front Page Photographs for Keys to Accidental Communities of Memory Part 7 Part II Class on Television Chapter 8 5 Class and Local TV News Chapter 9 6 The Social Stratification Potential of Tabloid and Highbrow News Magazine Programs Chapter 10 7 Constructing a Televisual Class: Newsmagazines and Social Class Chapter 11 8 Calling Class: Sports Announcers and the Culture of Poverty Part 12 Part III Constructing Class Groups Chapter 13 9 'America is a Middle-Class Nation': The Presentation of Class in the Pages of Life Magazine Chapter 14 10 Tales Told in Two Cities: When Missing Women Are(n't) News Chapter 15 11 'Trailer-Park Trash': News, Ideology, and Depictions of the American Underclass Part 16 Part IV Labor, Workers, and News Chapter 17 12 The Emergence of Class Consciousness in the American Newspaper Guild Chapter 18 13 Writing the Workers' World Trade Center: An Analysis of Reportage on Ground Zero in the Aftermath of September 11 Chapter 19 14 UPS Strike Coverage and the Future of Labor in Corporate News Part 20 Part V Prospects for Change Chapter 21 15 Good News from a Bad Neighborhood: Urban Journalism and Community Assets Chapter 22 16 Class and Media Influence in Australia Chapter 23 17 Television Civic Journalism and the Portrayal of Class Chapter 24 Epilogue