Political Sociology of News: A Critical Study of Media and "the Political"

2022/11/24

This book had two objectives in analyzing news from a political sociological perspective. One was to demonstrate the significance of focusing on news when analyzing political society—in other words, how deeply news is intertwined with the nature of society and democracy in the modern era. News is information concerning the interests of many people in society, and it has long been argued that analyzing it leads to an understanding of the structure and dynamics of social values. While building on this perspective, this book emphasizes that the practices of news production and consumption embedded in everyday life are integrated into the dynamics of forming, maintaining, and transforming political and social order.

The second objective is the analysis of the contemporary crisis surrounding news. Today, we see a "crisis" involving news, ranging from distrust and criticism of traditional news media to the spread of fake news on the internet. It is well known that this crisis of news has been linked to crises of democracy, such as the Trump phenomenon and post-truth. However, there are several other dimensions to this crisis. First, amidst the deluge of information caused by digitalization, it is becoming difficult to maintain a social consensus on "what news is." Second, and closely related, as the information people use to access "reality" becomes excessively diversified and fragmented, the mechanism of sharing a social reality through news is failing. These two aspects are also tied to the crisis of the existing order that has underpinned democracy.

Initially, when I began planning this book, I intended to focus primarily on the first point. However, as the media environment and political landscape changed rapidly and in tandem over the last few years, the diagnosis of the crisis in the second point gradually evolved into a central theme.

This book is the result of research conducted from the time I joined the Keio University Institute for Journalism, Media & Communication Studies as a full-time faculty member in journalism studies until my transfer to the Faculty of Law. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Institute for providing me with numerous research opportunities.

Political Sociology of News: A Critical Study of Media and "the Political"

Shuzo Yamakoshi

Keiso Shobo

262 pages, 2,970 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and job titles are as of the time of publication.