Media Consumption and Public Engagement: Beyond the Presumption of Attention

Governments in many countries fear voting turnout and political engagement is in terminal decline, threatening the long-term legitimacy of the democratic process. Meanwhile definitions of politics and the public world are changing, while media formats are proliferating and media audiences fragmenting in the age of digital media.

How are these important trends related? And what do our everyday habits of consuming media contribute to our possibilities of being effective citizens?

Nick Couldry, Sonia Livingstone and Tim Markham address these questions in their pathbreaking new book based on research into the 'Future of Public Connection'. The book reports their findings and explains highly original methodology, involving people across England producing diaries for three months tracking their perspective on the public world. The book includes interviews, a nationwide survey and an authoritative review of the current literature on democratic theory, political sociology and media audiences.

The result is a major assessment of the difference that media, and our ways of living with media, make to the condition of democracy.