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.