Cover -- Contents -- Preface -- Part I - Initial Horizons -- Chapter 1 - Mediating Democracy -- Desiring Democracy -- The Public Sphere as Historical Narrative -- Four Dimensions -- Media Institutions -- Media Representation -- Social Structures -- Interaction: Social Bonds and Social Construction -- Subjectivity, Identity, Interaction -- Chapter 2 - Prismatic Television -- Three Angles of Vision -- Industry: Organization, Professionalism, Political Economy -- Mimetic Televisual Texts -- Two Worlds? -- Sociocultural TV: Ubiquity, Culturology and Critique -- Chapter 3 - Popular Television Journalism -- Television Journalism: an Esential Tension -- Probing 'the Popular' -- Old and New Formats -- Elusive Information, Accessible Stories -- Tele-tabloids -- Talk Shows: Élite and Vox-pop -- Morality and Dialogue -- Part II - Shifting Frames -- Chapter 4 - Modern Contingencies -- Falling Rates of Certitude -- Flowing Capitalism -- Destabilized Microworlds -- The Semiotic Environment -- Going Global? -- The Problematics of Public and Private -- Political Permutations -- Chapter 5 - Communication and Subjectivity -- A Universal Model? -- Language and Lacunae -- Cultural Contexts -- Repressing the Unconscious -- Dealing with Desire -- Reassembling the Reflexive Subject -- Imagination and Emancipation -- Chapter 6 - Civil Society and its Citizens -- The Contexts of Reception -- The Horizon of Civil Society -- Institutionalized Lifeworlds -- Constructive Talk and Social Bonds -- The Evolution of Citizenship -- Community, Difference, Universality -- Citizens and Identity -- Part III - Flickering Hopes -- Chapter 7 - Democratic Mediations? -- Television in its Place -- Citizens and Politics -- Common Domain, Advocacy Domain -- References -- Index.