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Examines the ritual practices of the People's Republic of China's cultural revolution movement, drawing on data from published writing, official publications, Red Guard interviews with participants, & observations, 1966-1969. It is suggested that the cultural revolution movement was instigated by Mao Tse-tung in response to a loss of personal control over the party apparatus. To work around the party, Mao created a series of nationwide activities, eg, loyalty dances, public recitations of his speeches, & a daily study of his works, which paralyzed the bureaucracy & held up Mao's image as an omnipotent god & emperor. A movement designed to get the masses to rebel against party authority, the cultural revolution movement ended in developing a new cultural harmony on the basis of Mao's image. This new cultural consenus was possible only because the movement conformed to long-standing themes in Chinese culture & thus drew on the existing cultural expectations of the Chinese people. Thus, the movement is best understood as a strategic use of traditional cultural knowledge to achieve a new political environment. D. M. Smith

Argues that recognizing repression as an act of strategic communication in the public sphere is critical for understanding contentious politics in modern democracies. It is contended that political communication is now dependent on the dynamics of public discourse in the mass media. The mediating role of public discourse in shaping the conditions & consequences of repression is described as a set of "discursive opportunities" that explain why some messages are diffused & others are not. It was hypothesized that: 1) repression reacts to violence as portrayed in the media; 2) the extreme right's lack of legitimacy enhances the diffusion of repression; & 3) the problematic nature of immigrants makes diffusion less likely. Theoretical aspects are explored & the argument is empirically tested through an analysis of 11,000 claims of repression against xenophobic & extreme right groups/individuals in Germany that were published in three Frankfurt newspapers in the period 1990-99. The results confirmed all four hypotheses. 1 Table, 1 Figure, 26 References. J. Lindroth

Argues that recognizing repression as an act of strategic communication in the public sphere is critical for understanding contentious politics in modern democracies. It is contended that political communication is now dependent on the dynamics of public discourse in the mass media. The mediating role of public discourse in shaping the conditions & consequences of repression is described as a set of "discursive opportunities" that explain why some messages are diffused & others are not. It was hypothesized that: 1) repression reacts to violence as portrayed in the media; 2) the extreme right's lack of legitimacy enhances the diffusion of repression; & 3) the problematic nature of immigrants makes diffusion less likely. Theoretical aspects are explored & the argument is empirically tested through an analysis of 11,000 claims of repression against xenophobic & extreme right groups/individuals in Germany that were published in three Frankfurt newspapers in the period 1990-99. The results confirmed all four hypotheses. 1 Table, 1 Figure, 26 References. J. Lindroth

"In Chapter 5, the empirical qualitative material gathered within the AIM project is reviewed from two different angles. On the one hand, the European media debate an the European public sphere (EPS) is assessed. On the other hand, Interviews with spokespersons of the EU Commission and the EU Commission's strategic documents concerning communication are analysed in order to understand the gap between journalistic and EU institutional approaches to the concept of the EPS." (author's abstract)

Discusses the nature of US citizenship in the context of global transformations that have made politics & political practice especially turbulent. As the global economy & society have become more interdependent, individuals & groups have remained capable of effecting political change by using communication technologies & collective action at strategic leverage points in the system. Citizens are imagined as making decisions based on self-environment orientations that impact their participation in the system. US citizenship is described in terms of apathetic, altruistic, self-centered, & democratic citizenship roles. It is suggested that, in the past, US citizenship was mostly composed of democratic roles, but recently, the other types have mushroomed. As citizenship has become unmoored from any underlying structure, subgroupism has previaled over a larger sense of democratic purpose. A reformulated democratic citizenship will require analysis of several themes, including the rise of new collective entities & the nature of flexible identity in them. 42 References. D. M. Ryfe