No discussion of politics, economics, war, culture or everyday life today lacks attention to the media. Not only are the media major centres of investment and power virtually everywhere, they are the focus of attention for most people in the advanced countries taking up more time in their lives than any other waking activity besides work. The media set agendas, orchestrate pleasures, shape and limit the conversational commons, elevate and demolish careers.
Yet convulsions of technology and control in the media are met publicly with little more than mystification and blur. Instead of sober reflection on the significance of changes in media structure, journalism gives us gee-whiz accounts of where each deal was done and speculates about who will come out on top, while academics tend to write self-enclosed prose strictly for one another.
We hope in this debate to get a fix on the major trends, and to assess media strategies in relation to politics, society, and technology. Our method will be open, reasoned debate; dialogue, not demonisation. What unites us is the presumption that a clarification what is at stake in actual and proposed changes could help us, as a democratic public, get beyond sleepwalking.
