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Documentaries are nonfiction programs that convey experience, provide information, and offer analysis. Many memorable and respected programs in American television journalism were documentaries. In part this is because documentaries offer journalists the luxury of more airtime to explore a single topic in greater depth than the shorter-format evening news or newsmagazine programs. In addition, documentarians are often freer to express their own conclusions on controversial issues than beat reporters, who are more constrained by the demands of objectivity and balance. Although the line between documentary and docudrama is often blurry, documentaries are less likely to dramatize or re-enact events. In contrast to talk shows, documentaries aim to go beyond "talking heads" offering opinions to convey the lived experience of people, places, and events. Documentary makers usually construct their programs from some combination of recordings in the field, compilations of archival materials, interviews, graphics, and animations. Many types of broadcast documentary have emerged over the years, including investigative, social, political, historical, cultural, biographical, diary, and those focused on nature.

From the sea change in American television in the 1980s emerged a programming trend variously described as "infotainment," "reality-based television," "tabloid TV," "crime-time television," "trash TV," and "on-scene shows." The welter of terms created by television critics to describe these new programs masked their underlying connection as a response to economic restructuring within the industry. In this essay I offer a rough categorization of these programs, sketch the industrial context from which they emerged, and point to the economic problems they were meant to solve. I focus mostly on the distinctive conditions of prime-time series, putting aside made-for-TV docudramas and entire cable channels (such as Court TV) that may have similar production practices and genres.

Many have argued that inequalities of access to the Internet in an information-driven society pose a serious social problem and that public investment is needed to solve it. Others contend that the digital divide is a minor concern that will resolve itself without government involvement and spending. The positions we take on this debate depend upon our understanding of how new technologies spread throughout society, whether we think Internet access is a frill or a necessity, and our vision of whether government can and ought to help broaden access.

Investigated Reporting is Chad Raphael's ambitious exploration of the relationship between journalism and regulation during American television's first sustained period of muckraking, between 1960 and 1975. Offering new and important insights into the economic, political, and industrial forces that shaped documentaries such as Harvest of Shame, Hunger in America, and Banks and the Poor, Raphael puts investigative television documentary into its institutional, regulatory, and cultural context. _x000B_Those who see investigative reporting as a watchdog on government will be surprised to find that these controversial reports relied heavily on official sources for inspiration, information, and regulatory protection from muckraking's critics. Based on superb historical research using primary sources, including recently opened papers from the Nixon White House, Raphael exposes the complex play of influence through which investigative documentaries were both shaped and attacked by government officials, and highlights the troubling legacy for contemporary regulation of television news.

Investigated Reporting is Chad Raphael's ambitious exploration of the relationship between journalism and regulation during American television's first sustained period of muckraking, between 1960 and 1975. Offering new and important insights into the economic, political, and industrial forces that shaped documentaries such as Harvest of Shame, Hunger in America, and Banks and the Poor, Raphael puts investigative television documentary into its institutional, regulatory, and cultural context. _x000B_Those who see investigative reporting as a watchdog on government will be surprised to find that these controversial reports relied heavily on official sources for inspiration, information, and regulatory protection from muckraking's critics. Based on superb historical research using primary sources, including recently opened papers from the Nixon White House, Raphael exposes the complex play of influence through which investigative documentaries were both shaped and attacked by government officials, and highlights the troubling legacy for contemporary regulation of television news. ; https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1160/thumbnail.jpg

This paper identifies three rationales for closing the gender gap in computing – economic, cultural and political – in the relevant literature. Each rationale implies a different set of indicators of present inequalities, disparate goals for creating equality, and distinct principles for software and web site design that aims to help girls overcome the gap by increasing their interest and knowledge about computing. It is argued that designers should pay greater attention to the political rationale for equity, conceiving software and web sites that cultivate girls' civic uses of computers, so that women can exercise equal control over the architecture and policy of the information age.

In less than a decade, the advent of the World Wide Web has allowed millions to take full advantage of the Internet by offering a seamless way to browse linked documents, including text, graphics, audio, and video, and to send E-mail and transfer files. Yet, despite the Web's apparent offer of cheap communication for all, it is a remarkably costly medium that is unlikely to reach the majority of the world in the near future. It is the Web's affluent clientele and the new opportunities for marketing to them that have spurred corporations to transform the Web into a consumer medium. Today, it is dif- ficult to surf without getting caught in an undertow of commodification. This essay charts the current political economy of the Web—from access to start-up to logging on to visiting the portal sites that have become our most frequent destinations—showing how our individual paths traverse crosscurrents of public subsidy and private capital at each step. This structure aims to write links between our lifeworld experience of navigating the Web and the larger political economic system. It locates the Web in a broader historical process of the commodification of information, as the market extends and inserts its logic of wage labor and capitalist exchange of information goods into new areas of life.1

From the sea change in U.S. television in the 1980s emerged a programming trend variously described as "infotainment," "reality-based television," "tabloid TV," "crime-time television," "trash TV," and "on-scene shows."[1][open notes in new window] The welter of terms created by television critics to describe these new programs masked their underlying connection as a response to economic restructuring within the industry. This essay offers a rough categorization of these programs, sketches the industrial context from which they emerged, and points to the economic problems they were meant to solve.[2] Although my focus here is on political economy, rather than on textual or audience issues, I do not want to imply that these programs' cultural significance can be reduced to their relations of production and distribution. Yet without understanding the political-economic forces which drove the spread of this genre, textual and audience studies risk reifying it as an expression of audience demand, or of their creators, or of a cultural, discursive, or ontological shift unrelated to the needs of those who run the television industry. If this genre exhibits a kind of textual excess, its emergence reflects a relative scarcity of means. I conclude with suggestions for how textual and audience studies might link the new "reality" of television to shifts in the larger U.S. political-economy since the mid-1980s.

"This is the first book devoted entirely to summarizing the body of community-engaged research on environmental justice, how we can conduct more of it, and how we can do it better. It shows how community-engaged research makes unique contributions to environmental justice for Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities by centering local knowledge, building truth from the ground up, producing actionable data that can influence decisions, and transforming researchers' relationships to communities so that they are more equitable and mutually beneficial. The book offers a critical synthesis of relevant research in many fields, outlines the main steps in conducting community-engaged research, evaluates the major research methods used, suggests new directions, and addresses overcoming institutional barriers to scholarship in academia. The coauthors employ an original framework that shows how community-engaged research and environmental justice align, which links research on the many topics treated in the chapters-from public health, urban planning, and conservation to law and policy, community economic development, and food justice and sovereignty"

Ground Truths shows how community-engaged research contributes to environmental justice for Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities by centering local knowledge, building truth from the ground up, producing data that can influence decisions, and transforming researchers' relationships to communities for equity and mutual benefit.
The book outlines the main steps in conducting community-engaged research, evaluates the major research methods used, and addresses institutional barriers to this kind of scholarship in academia. A critical synthesis of research in many fields, Ground Truths provides an original framework for aligning community-engaged research and environmental justice, and applies the framework in chapters on public health, urban planning, conservation, law and policy, community economic development, and food justice and sovereignty.
"If you're looking for a primer on how to do community-engaged research in environmental justice, look no further." — MANUEL PASTOR, JR., Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California
"Ground Truths offers a powerful journey into how the pursuit of knowledge can empower true change!" — KYLE WHYTE, George Willis Pack Professor of Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan
"Ground Truths demonstrates that mutually beneficial partnerships for research yield rich and sophisticated practices and outcomes." — TERESA CÓRDOVA, Professor of Urban Planning and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago

Building on prior thinking about political representation in democratic deliberation, we argue for four ideals of inclusion, each of which is most appropriate to a different situation. These principles of inclusion depend not only on the goals of a deliberation, but also on its level of empowerment in the political system, and its openness to all who want to participate. Holistic and open deliberations can most legitimately incorporate and decide for the people as a whole if they are open to all who want to participate and affirmatively recruit perspectives that would be underrepresented otherwise. Chicago Community Policing beat meetings offer an example. Holistic and restricted forums (such as the latter stages of some participatory budgeting processes) should recruit stratified random samples of the demos, but must also ensure that problems of tokenism are overcome by including a critical mass of the least powerful perspectives, so that their views can be aired and heard more fully and effectively. Forums that aim to improve relations between social sectors and peoples should provide open access for all who are affected by the issues (relational and open), if possible, or recruit a stratified random sample of all affected, when necessary (relational and restricted). In either case, proportional representation of the least advantaged perspectives is necessary. However, when deliberation focuses on relations between a disempowered group and the rest of society, or between unequal peoples, it is often most legitimate to over-sample the least powerful and even to create opportunities for the disempowered to deliberate among themselves so that their perspectives can be adequately represented in small and large group discussions. We illustrate this discussion with examples of atypical Deliberative Polls on Australia's reconciliation with its indigenous community and the Roma ethnic minority in Europe.

This chapter assesses the state of democratic innovations in North America, including the United States, Canada, and English-speaking countries of the Caribbean. We begin by setting these innovations in the contexts of democracy on the continent, which includes both established democracies and countries that have only recently decolonised. We go on to discuss major trends in democratic innovations over the past two decades in North America, including referendums and initiatives, mini-publics and collaborative governance, and digital participation in political and civic life. We note the broad range of issues addressed by these innovations and their effects on democratic institutions at different levels of governance. Finally, we draw several lessons and ideas for reform from the uneven impacts of democratic innovations in North America.1

Building on prior thinking about political representation in democratic deliberation, we argue for four ideals of inclusion, each of which is most appropriate to a different situation. These principles of inclusion depend not only on the goals of a deliberation, but also on its level of empowerment in the political system, and its openness to all who want to participate. Holistic and open deliberations can most legitimately incorporate and decide for the people as a whole if they are open to all who want to participate and affirmatively recruit perspectives that would be underrepresented otherwise. Chicago Community Policing beat meetings offer an example. Holistic and restricted forums (such as the latter stages of some participatory budgeting processes) should recruit stratified random samples of the demos, but must also ensure that problems of tokenism are overcome by including a critical mass of the least powerful perspectives, so that their views can be aired and heard more fully and effectively. Forums that aim to improve relations between social sectors and peoples should provide open access for all who are affected by the issues (relational and open), if possible, or recruit a stratified random sample of all affected, when necessary (relational and restricted). In either case, proportional representation of the least advantaged perspectives is necessary. However, when deliberation focuses on relations between a disempowered group and the rest of society, or between unequal peoples, it is often most legitimate to over-sample the least powerful and even to create opportunities for the disempowered to deliberate among themselves so that their perspectives can be adequately represented in small and large group discussions. We illustrate this discussion with examples of atypical Deliberative Polls on Australia's reconciliation with its indigenous community and the Roma ethnic minority in Europe.