The Paradox of Mass Politics

The Paradox of Mass Politics PDF Author: W. Russell Neuman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674654600
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
A central current in the history of democratic politics is the tensions between the political culture of an informed citizenry and the potentially antidemocratic impulses of the larger mass of individuals who are only marginally involved in the political world. Given the public's low level of political interest and knowledge, it is paradoxical that the democratic system works at all. In The Paradox of Mass Politics W. Russell Neuman analyzes the major election surveys in the United States for the period 1948-1980 and develops for each a central index of political sophistication based on measures of political interest, knowledge, and style of political conceptualization. Taking a fresh look at the dramatic findings of public apathy and ignorance, he probes the process by which citizens acquire political knowledge and the impact of their knowledge on voting behavior. The book challenges the commonly held view that politically oriented college-educated individuals have a sophisticated grasp of the fundamental political issues of the day and do not rely heavily on vague political symbolism and party identification in their electoral calculus. In their expression of political opinions and in the stability and coherence of those opinions over time, the more knowledgeable half of the population, Neuman concludes, is almost indistinguishable from the other half. This is, in effect, a second paradox closely related to the first. In an attempt to resolve a major and persisting paradox of political theory, Neuman develops a model of three publics, which more accurately portrays the distribution of political knowledge and behavior in the mass population. He identifies a stratum of apoliticals, a large middle mass, and a politically sophisticated elite. The elite is so small (less than 5 percent) that the beliefs and behavior of its member are lost in the large random samples of national election surveys, but so active and articulate that its views are often equated with public opinion at large by the powers in Washington. The key to the paradox of mass politics is the activity of this tiny stratum of persons who follow political issues with care and expertise. This book is essential reading for concerned students of American politics, sociology, public opinion, and mass communication.

The Paradox of Mass Politics

The Paradox of Mass Politics PDF Author: W. Russell Neuman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674654600
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
A central current in the history of democratic politics is the tensions between the political culture of an informed citizenry and the potentially antidemocratic impulses of the larger mass of individuals who are only marginally involved in the political world. Given the public's low level of political interest and knowledge, it is paradoxical that the democratic system works at all. In The Paradox of Mass Politics W. Russell Neuman analyzes the major election surveys in the United States for the period 1948-1980 and develops for each a central index of political sophistication based on measures of political interest, knowledge, and style of political conceptualization. Taking a fresh look at the dramatic findings of public apathy and ignorance, he probes the process by which citizens acquire political knowledge and the impact of their knowledge on voting behavior. The book challenges the commonly held view that politically oriented college-educated individuals have a sophisticated grasp of the fundamental political issues of the day and do not rely heavily on vague political symbolism and party identification in their electoral calculus. In their expression of political opinions and in the stability and coherence of those opinions over time, the more knowledgeable half of the population, Neuman concludes, is almost indistinguishable from the other half. This is, in effect, a second paradox closely related to the first. In an attempt to resolve a major and persisting paradox of political theory, Neuman develops a model of three publics, which more accurately portrays the distribution of political knowledge and behavior in the mass population. He identifies a stratum of apoliticals, a large middle mass, and a politically sophisticated elite. The elite is so small (less than 5 percent) that the beliefs and behavior of its member are lost in the large random samples of national election surveys, but so active and articulate that its views are often equated with public opinion at large by the powers in Washington. The key to the paradox of mass politics is the activity of this tiny stratum of persons who follow political issues with care and expertise. This book is essential reading for concerned students of American politics, sociology, public opinion, and mass communication.

The Politics of Mass Digitization

The Politics of Mass Digitization PDF Author: Nanna Bonde Thylstrup
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026203901X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
A new examination of mass digitization as an emerging sociopolitical and sociotechnical phenomenon that alters the politics of cultural memory. Today, all of us with internet connections can access millions of digitized cultural artifacts from the comfort of our desks. Institutions and individuals add thousands of new cultural works to the digital sphere every day, creating new central nexuses of knowledge. How does this affect us politically and culturally? In this book, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup approaches mass digitization as an emerging sociopolitical and sociotechnical phenomenon, offering a new understanding of a defining concept of our time. Arguing that digitization has become a global cultural political project, Thylstrup draws on case studies of different forms of mass digitization—including Google Books, Europeana, and the shadow libraries Monoskop, lib.ru, and Ubuweb—to suggest a different approach to the study of digital cultural memory archives. She constructs a new theoretical framework for understanding mass digitization that focuses on notions of assemblage, infrastructure, and infrapolitics. Mass digitization does not consist merely of neutral technical processes, Thylstrup argues, but of distinct subpolitical processes that give rise to new kinds of archives and new ways of interacting with the artifacts they contain. With this book, she offers important and timely guidance on how mass digitization alters the politics of cultural memory to impact our relationship with the past and with one another.

Mass Politics in Tough Times

Mass Politics in Tough Times PDF Author: Nancy Bermeo
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019935751X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 402

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Mass Politics in Tough Times, the eminent political scientists Larry Bartels and Nancy Bermeo have gathered a group of leading scholars to analyze the political responses to the Great Recession in the US, Western Europe, and East-Central Europe.

The Mass Marketing of Politics

The Mass Marketing of Politics PDF Author: Bruce I. Newman
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 0761909591
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 186

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bruce I. Newman reveals how the US public is being manipulated by marketing strategies and tactics taken directly from the most successful market-led companies. He uncovers the emphasis on style over substance and sound-bite over real dialogue.

Globalization and Mass Politics

Globalization and Mass Politics PDF Author: Timothy Hellwig
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107075076
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
Analyzes how increases in international trade, finance, and production have altered voter decisions, political party positions, and the issues that parties focus on in postindustrial democracies.

Mandatory Separation

Mandatory Separation PDF Author: Suzanne Schneider
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503604527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
Is religion a source of political stability and social continuity, or an agent of radical change? This question, so central to contemporary conversations about religion and extremism, has generated varied responses over the last century. Taking Jewish and Islamic education as its objects of inquiry, Mandatory Separation sheds light on the contours of this debate in Palestine during the formative period of British rule, detailing how colonial, Zionist, and Palestinian-Muslim leaders developed competing views of the form and function of religious education in an age of mass politics. Drawing from archival records, school syllabi, textbooks, newspapers, and personal narratives, Suzanne Schneider argues that the British Mandatory government supported religious education as a supposed antidote to nationalist passions at the precise moment when the administrative, pedagogic, and curricular transformation of religious schooling rendered it a vital tool for Zionist and Palestinian leaders. This study of their policies and practices illuminates the tensions, similarities, and differences among these diverse educational and political philosophies, revealing the lasting significance of these debates for thinking about religion and political identity in the modern Middle East.

Sites of European Antisemitism in the Age of Mass Politics, 1880-1918

Sites of European Antisemitism in the Age of Mass Politics, 1880-1918 PDF Author: Robert Nemes
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
ISBN: 1611685826
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book Here

Book Description
This innovative collection of essays on the upsurge of antisemitism across Europe in the decades around 1900 shifts the focus away from intellectuals and well-known incidents to less-familiar events, actors, and locations, including smaller towns and villages. This "from below" perspective offers a new look at a much-studied phenomenon: essays link provincial violence and antisemitic politics with regional, state, and even transnational trends. Featuring a diverse array of geographies that include Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Romania, Italy, Greece, and the Russian Empire, the book demonstrates the complex interplay of many factors--economic, religious, political, and personal--that led people to attack their Jewish neighbors.

Modernism and Mass Politics

Modernism and Mass Politics PDF Author:
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804764697
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examining in detail the surprising similarities between modernist literature and contemporary theories of the crowd, this work shows that many modernist literary forms emerged out of efforts to write in the idiom of the crowd mind.

The European Reformation

The European Reformation PDF Author: Euan Cameron
Publisher: Oxford University Press (UK)
ISBN: 0199547858
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 637

Get Book Here

Book Description
A fully revised and updated version of this authoritative account of the birth of the Protestant traditions in sixteenth-century Europe, providing a clear and comprehensive narrative of these complex and many-stranded events.

Crowd Scenes

Crowd Scenes PDF Author: Michael Tratner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Get Book Here

Book Description
The movies and the masses erupted on the world stage together. In a few decades around the turn of the twentieth century, millions of persons who rarely could afford a night at the theater and had never voted in an election became regular paying customers at movie palaces and proud members of new political parties. The question of how to represent these new masses fascinated and plagued politicians and filmmakers alike. Michael Tratner examines the representations of masses-the crowd scenes-in Hollywood films from The Birth of a Nation through such popular love stories as Gone with the Wind, The Sound of Music, and Dr. Zhivago. He then contrasts these with similar scenes in early Soviet and Nazi films. What emerges is a political debate being carried out in filmic style. In both sets of films, the crowd is represented as a seething cauldron of emotions