Although most research in political communication concerns conventional, electoral politics and mainstream media, scholars need to focus on the margins of the public sphere as well. By studying social groups that find it difficult to garner attention from the major networks and newspapers, we discover a variety of interesting innovations in human communication. This article discusses a few cases, historical and contemporary, of marginal political communication in order to highlight forms and possibilities of mediated communication that are overlooked in typical discussions of media and American politics.
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References
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10. On feminists as a counterpublic, see Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
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11. Denis Diderot, Dialogues, trans. Francis Birrell (London: Routledge, 1927), p. 196.
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18. See James Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
19.
19. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).
20.
20. A recent example of work along these lines is Phyllis Kannis, Making Local News (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
21.
21. Steven Lukes, “Political Ritual and Social Integration,”Sociology, 9:289-308 (1975).
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22. Ibid., p. 302.
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23. Susan Herbst, “Mass Media and Public Opinion: Citizens' Constructions of Political Reality,”Media Culture and Society, 15:437-454 (1993).
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24. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), p. 123.
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26. Hiram Sachs, “A Place of Their Own: Political Activists and the Formation of Public Opinion on PEACENET” (M.A. thesis, Northwestern University, 1992).
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27. Ben Page and Jason Tannenbaum, “Populistic Deliberation: The Zoe Baird Uprising” (Paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 1995).
28.
28. Anderson, Imagined Communities.
29.
29. Carol Bowman, “The Vocal Minority in American Politics” (Report, Times Mirror Center, 1993).
30.
30. The Roper Center estimates that between 18 and 40 million people listen to Limbaugh. See “Talk Radio,”Public Perspective, 4:96-97 (1993).
31.
31. Elihu Katz and Daniel Dayan, Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).
