Soundbitten

Download or read book Soundbitten written by Sarah Sobieraj and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-06-13 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ethnographic portrait of fifty diverse organizations over the course of two campaign cycles that reveals that while most activist groups equate political success with media success and channel their energies accordingly, their efforts fail to generate news coverage and come with deleterious consequences. Sobieraj shows that activists' impact on public political debates is minimal, and carefully unravels the ways in which their all-consuming media work and unrelenting public relations approach undermine their ability to communicate with pedestrians, comes at the expense of other political activities, and perhaps most perniciously, damages the groups themselves. This portrait of activism in the United States lays bare the challenges faced by outsiders struggling to be heard in a mass media dominated public sphere that proves exclusionary and shows that media-centrism is not only ineffective, but also damaging to group life. From publisher description.