Diana Mutz's HEARING THE OTHER SIDE: An Assessment

Critical Review (Volume 25, Issue 2) features a Symposium on Diana Mutz's 2006 Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative Versus Participatory Democracy. 

Five scholars consider the theoretical claims of this work: The Accidental Theorist: Diana Mutz's Normative and Empirical Insights (Ben Berger); The Many Faces of Good Citizenship (Simone Chambers); On Minimal Deliberation, Partisan Activism, and Teaching People How to Disagree (Helene Landemore); Hearing the Opposition (Robert Shapiro); Digital Deliberation (Chris Wisniewski). Dr. Mutz rounds out the proceedings with a response: Reflections on Hearing the Other Side, in Theory and in Practice. 

Hearing the Other Side is available in the Library at Van Pelt and Annenberg, and the journal is available through Penn Libraries e-resources. 

April CommQuote

Authors Joanne Roberts and John Armitage, in a recent article appearing in the December 2008 issue of Prometheus, compel us to think about the knowledge economy, a much bandied around concept related to the production and transmission of knowledge-based goods and services, in terms of its binary, the ignorance economy. I've strung a few quotes together from that article which I realize is cheating a little but still close enough to the spirit of our monthly rendezvous with quotable-things-related-to-communication. This article can be found in Penn's e-resources.

"Unlike the knowledge economy, the ignorance economy is not, or at least not yet, a common expression used amongst economists, managers, and policymakers. ...Nevertheless, we want to argue, the knowledge economy is precisely rooted in the production, distribution, and consumption of ignorance and lack of information. ...Indeed, as we shall see below, the knowledge economy is necessarily engaged in the speedy obsolescence of knowledge and thus in the expansion of ignorance....it is our contention that ICTs lead to a growth in ignorance. First, increasing amounts of knowledge are being codified and embedded in information management systems, databases, websites and so on. While this makes the information easily retrievable for those with access to the technologies (and we must remember that many even in the advanced nations have limited or no access), it also leads to the discarding of important tacit elements of knowledge that are not amenable to codification. ...Jean-Noël Jeanneney raises this concern in relation to Google's library project, arguing that its unsystematic digitization of works predominantly written in English and from a few partner libraries ignores the complexity of the world's cultural heritage. The result of such codification projects is the loss of valuable knowledge and the development of path-dependency in terms of future creativity and innovation."

--Joanne Roberts and John Armitage (from "The Ignorance Economy," Prometheus, Volume 26, Issue 4, pp. 345-347).

Arbitron Cinema Advertising Study; Pew Reports

The Arbitron Cinema Advertising Study 2007 is the follow-up to Arbitron’s 2003 study which examined the size, characteristics, and behavior of movie theater audiences. In this new report, Arbitron focuses on the moviegoer’s relationship with cinema advertising and evaluate its ability to influence young and affluent consumers.

And from Pew:

Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions What Americans Know: 1989-2007, a report from the Pew Research Center for People and the Press.

A Quarter's Worth of News Coverage A new report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism which finds that the four-year-old war in Iraq dwarfed all other topics in the U.S. news media during the first three months of 2007. However, more than 80% of war news focused on Americans -- those shaping policy, fighting or affected at home. Only about one-in-six stories was primarily about Iraqis, whether their government, their lives, or their casualties. The 2008 presidential campaign ranked second in coverage with news focusing primarily on Democratic candidates.

Also from PEJ, don't forget about their annual State of the News Media reports. State of the News Media 2007 has been out since March and is the fourth edition of this reputable report on the health and status of American journalism. (Earlier reports have been highlighted in a previous post.)