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Newer Version Available
Cover of American Government and Politics in the Information Age v1.0
Published: 
August 2011
Page Count: 
450
ISBN (Digital): 
978-1-4533-2895-8

American Government and Politics in the Information Age

Version 1.0
By David L. Paletz, Diana Owen, and Timothy E. Cook

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American Government and Politics in the Information Age by Paletz, Owen, and Cook, is a comprehensive introduction to the vital subject of American government and politics.

It covers all the basics. The text:

  • introduces the intricacies of the Constitution, the complexities of federalism, the meanings of civil liberties, and the conflicts over civil rights;
  • explains how people are socialized to politics, acquire and express opinions, and participate in political life;
  • describes interest groups, political parties, and elections—the intermediaries that link people to government and politics;
  • details the branches of government and how they operate;
  • shows how policies are made and affect people’s lives.

However, American Government and Politics in the Information Age goes beyond the basics of American politics and government to explain how and why, in this information age, government and politics are most commonly depicted in the media.


Appreciating and learning these subjects can be a challenge. Inspired by students’ familiarity with mass media and their fluent use of new communication technologies, such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, live streaming, and the Ipad, The authors have chosen an approach that connects our subject matter with these media and technologies.


Many students acquire political information from the dramatic and dynamic news cycle with its twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week coverage of events. More and more students obtain news online, including from the websites of mainstream news organizations such as the New York Times and CNN. But the web also provides them with information that repeats, amplifies, challenges, or even contradicts the news they get from the mainstream media.


Many students connect with government and politics through media entertainment. They watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, and the late-night television talk shows of Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Conan O’Brien. They tune in to television and radio commentators such as Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rachel Maddow, and Rush Limbaugh. They watch television competitions, reality shows, dramas, and comedies, most of which have political aspects. They may have seen one or more of Michael Moore’s polemical documentaries (e.g., Fahrenheit 9/11), or a movie about social issues, such as Crash. They may have listened to music with political messages, for example Lee Greenwood’s Proud to be an American and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA. They may read the satirical newspaper The Onion.


Although most political information still originates in the mainstream media—newspapers, magazines, television, radio, and movies—even these media are being transformed by new forms of communication. Information can now be transmitted much more quickly and subjected to far more individual control, initiative, and choice than ever before. Digital technologies support new media formats, such as weblogs, podcasts, and wikis, which blend interpersonal with mass communication, through e-mail and instant messaging.


Yet, students are often unfamiliar with the origins of the media’s contents, especially the importance of ownership, profits, and professionalism. They may not fully grasp the influence on the media of outside forces, such as interest groups, political parties and candidates, and policymakers, most of whom are media savvy and use the new technologies to try to maximize their positive and minimize their negative coverage.


Paletz, Owen, and Cook have, therefore, organized our text to connect students’ media-saturated daily lives to the world of politics and government. They want students to learn how the media interact with and depict the American political system; to recognize the similarities and differences between these media depictions and the real world of government and politics; and to understand the consequences these interactions and depictions can have for the public, politics, government, and public policies. They also want students to learn how the media, including new media, can help them intervene productively in politics and get things done.


Each chapter contains a comparison of the reality of American government and politics with the media’s most common depictions (acknowledging that there are differences between and among the media and in their political content). The authors show that the depictions range from accurate and revealing to inaccurate and misleading, and distinguish the telling accounts and insights from partial truths, false impressions, and distortions. The online version of our text includes links to the media we discuss for the student to experience and react to first hand.


The authors do not inflate the importance of the media. We recognize that much of politics and government occurs under the media’s radar screen and that the consequences of the media’s coverage vary widely. They avoid the temptation of “gee whiz” utopian celebrations of new technologies. Rather, the text offers discussions of both their possibilities, their limitations, and their dangers: they can and do lower the costs of political activity and organization but do not necessarily turn people into thoughtful, full-fledged activists.


Finally, the text was written with recognition of the fact that people variously accept, ignore, reject, or rework the media’s contents. Above all, in today’s information age, they are able to hash and rehash the meaning and impact of what is covered and not covered in the media. As an example of how the authors integrate media influences into American Government and Politics in the Information Age, chapter 1 is devoted to detailing the system of communication, the organization of media, and the transmission of information in the United States.


Then the authors integrate relevant mass media and new-media material throughout every chapter. Each chapter opens with an anecdote that ties media to the particular institution, process, or policy area under study. For example, Chapter 4 (Civil Liberties) starts by showing how the television “reality” show Cops depicts the police as working effectively to stop crime but downplays the civil liberties of individuals, including the rights of the accused.


Each chapter presents the most common media depictions of its subject. In some chapters, a few depictions dominate: most news coverage portrays the US Supreme Court and its decisions as above politics (except when the president has nominated a new member); and the entertainment media depict the judicial system unrealistically. In other chapters, depictions are split. For example, in Chapter 4, students see that journalists’ diligent defense of the civil liberties that are central to their job does not carry through to their stories about crime or war.


One of Paletz, Owen, and Cook’s goals in writing American Government and Politics in the Information Age is to encourage students to participate in civic life. In appropriate chapters, they add a “Civic Education” box showing how young people have become involved in politics, government, and the making of public policies, as well as how the media, old and new, can help and hinder civic work.


The ultimate goal of this text is to help you teach your students so they will come to understand, appreciate, question, and criticize the realities of American politics and government and the media depictions of these realities, and possibly come to use the media to intervene effectively in the American political system on their own terms. Request a desk copy or read the book online to see if this fresh approach to American Government is one that would fit with your course goals.

Instructor’s Manual

Instructor’s Manual

The Instructor’s Manual guides you through the main concepts of each chapter and important elements such as learning objectives, key terms, and key takeaways. Can include answers to chapter exercises, group activity suggestions, and discussion questions.

Instructor’s Manual

PowerPoint Lecture Notes

PowerPoint Lecture Notes

A PowerPoint presentation highlighting key learning objectives and the main concepts for each chapter are available for you to use in your classroom. You can either cut and paste sections or use the presentation as a whole.

PowerPoint Lecture Notes

Test Generator

Test Generator

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Test Bank Files for Import to Learning Management Systems

Test Bank Files for Import to Learning Management Systems

For your convenience, we've packaged our test items for easy import into Learning Management Systems like Blackboard, Brightspace/D2L, Canvas, Moodle, or Respondus.

Test Item File

Test Item File

Need assistance in supplementing your quizzes and tests? Our test-item files (in Word format) contain many multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and short-answer questions.

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David L. Paletz Duke University

David L. Paletz (PhD University of California at Los Angeles) is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Duke University. He has been director of Duke’s Film/Video/Digital Program and for six years the editor of Political Communication. His degrees are all from the University of California, Los Angeles. Paletz specializes in American government and politics (defined broadly to include the foundations, public, institutions, and processes) and political communication (defined broadly to include news, opinion, and entertainment). Among the courses he has taught are American Government, Politics and the Media in the U.S., Film and Politics, Documentary Film, and Politics and the Libido. He is the author of The Media in American Politics: Contents and Consequences, 2nd ed. (Routledge), and co-author of Media Power Politics (Free Press, 1983) and Politics in Public Service Advertising on Television (Praeger, 1977). He is the editor of and a contributor to Political Communication in Action (Hampton Press, 1996) and Political Communication Research, vols. I and II (Ablex, 1987 and 1996); a co-editor and contributor to Taken by Storm: Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War (University of Chicago Press, 1994), and Terrorism and the Media (Sage, 1992); co-author of Business as Usual (Hampton Press, 2003) and Glasnost and After: Media and Change in Eastern/Central Europe (Hampton Press, 1995); and the author or co-author of some sixty other publications. He created and chaired for many years the Political Communication Research Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research and chaired the Political Communication Section of the American Political Science Association. Among his research and teaching awards are a Congressional Fellowship from the American Political Science Association, a Humanities Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, two Fulbright Scholarships, and the Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award from Duke University. In 2012 he received the David Swanson Award for Service to Political Communication Scholarship from the Political Communication Sections of the American Political Science Association and the International Communication Association.

Diana Owen Georgetown University

Diana Owen (PhD University of Wisconsin) is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Civic Education Research Lab (https://cerl.georgetown.edu/) at Georgetown University where she teaches in the Communication, Culture, and Technology graduate program. She is a graduate of George Washington University and received her doctorate in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Diana has been an American Political Science Association Congressional Media Fellow and is the recipient of the Daniel Roselle Award from the Middle States Association for the Social Studies. She is the author, with Richard Davis, of New Media and American Politics (Oxford, 1998) and Media Messages in American Presidential Elections (Greenwood, 1991). She is a coeditor of The Internet and Politics: Citizens, Voters, and Activists (Routledge, 2006) with Sarah Oates and Rachel Gibson; she is a coeditor of Making a Difference: The Internet and Elections in Comparative Perspective (Lexington, 2009) with Richard Davis, Stephen Ward, and David Taras; and a coeditor of Internet Election Campaigns in the United States, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). She has published in numerous scholarly journal articles and book chapters in the areas of American government, mass political behavior, political communication, media and politics, political socialization, civic education, and elections and voting behavior. Her most recent work focuses on digital media in American elections and the intersection of civic education and political engagement. She is the recipient of several grants from the U.S. Department of Education supporting programs and research on high-needs primary and secondary school students. She is grateful for the support of her husband of over forty years, Jeffrey, and her cats, Bella and Gio.

Timothy E. Cook Louisiana State University - Baton Rouge

Timothy E. Cook (1954–2006) was a political scientist who held the Kevin P. Reilly, Sr. Chair of Political Communication at Louisiana State University from 2001 after twenty years as a professor at Williams College. He was the first occupant of the Laurence Lombard Chair at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and was a Visiting Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School. Tim was an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow which afforded him the opportunity to study the internal workings of Congress as a participant observer. He made lasting contributions in the fields of American government and media and politics. He is the author of the landmark works, Making News and Making Laws: Media Strategies in the House of Representatives (Brookings, 1987) and Governing with the News: The News Media as a Political Institution (University of Chicago, 1999 and 2005). Tim was a coauthor of Crosstalk: Citizens, Candidates, and the Media in a Presidential Campaign (University of Chicago Press, 1996). Both Governing with the News and Crosstalk were honored with the Doris Graber Award of the Political Communication Section of the American Political Science Association for the best book published in ten years. Tim also was the editor of Freeing the Presses: The First Amendment in Action (Louisiana State University Press, 2006). In addition to these works, Tim published journal articles and book chapters in the fields of legislative studies, presidential politics, elections and voting behavior, political communication, political socialization, and lesbian, gay, and bisexual politics. Tim was inducted in the Louisiana State University Manship School Hall of Fame in 2011. Tim passed away from brain cancer at the age of 51. He is survived by his spouse, Jack Yeager, a professor of French at Louisiana State University.

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