Politics, Discourse, and American Society: New Agendas

What is the purpose of talk in a democratic society? Do the American people interact with their government in distinctive ways? Are the nation’s mass media helpful or harmful to the democratic experience? In this text, contributors present work on how politics is transacted in American society and how public communication affects those transactions. They also lay out directions for future research, thereby putting fresh ideas on the scholarly agenda. The authors ask whether the American president is genuinely powerful, if lawsuits have become a way of changing the nations politics, whether public opinion polling is really objective, and whether politics can be distinguished from pop culture.