Books by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Hvad skal vi med nyhederne? - spørger professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen i den 18. Moderne Ide og stiller skarpt på et afgørende grundlag for vores demokratiske fællesskaber: Nyheder.I en tid med breaking news kan det undre, at vi samlet set bruger mindre tid på nyheder, end vi gjorde før i tiden. Og mens nyhedsmedierne kæmper om vores opmærksomhed, bliver den sociale ulighed i nyhedsbrug online større. Men nyheder kan stadig noget, som ikke meget andet kan. I denne bog giver professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen et bud på, hvad det er, hvorfor det er udfordret, og hvordan nyhederne og deres rolle i vores samfund er ved at ændre sig radikalt.Fra bogen: “Historisk set har nyhederne alt for ofte været sammenfiltret med eliten og magthaverne, tættere på deres anskuelser og interesser end på den brede offentligheds, for slet ikke at tale om forskellige minoriteters. Hvis nyheder blandt andet er viden, og viden er magt, er det altid relevant at spørge: Hvis viden og hvis magt? Rigtig meget journalistik er og har altid været for hvide, velhavende, veluddannede heteromænd (som mig), af hvide mænd og om hvide mænd.”Hvad skal vi med nyhederne? er den 18. bog i Informations Forlags serie Moderne Ideer, om vor tids store udfordringer – klima, krig, ulighed, migration, terrorisme, overvågning, medborgerskab, uddannelse og data med mere. Serien har solgt knap 30.000 eksemplarer.Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (f. 1980) er direktør for Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Han er også professor i Politisk Kommunikation ved University of Oxford.

Political campaigns today are won or lost in the so-called ground war--the strategic deployment of teams of staffers, volunteers, and paid part-timers who work the phones and canvass block by block, house by house, voter by voter. Ground Wars provides an in-depth ethnographic portrait of two such campaigns, New Jersey Democrat Linda Stender's and that of Democratic Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut, who both ran for Congress in 2008. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen examines how American political operatives use "e;personalized political communication"e; to engage with the electorate, and weighs the implications of ground war tactics for how we understand political campaigns and what it means to participate in them. He shows how ground wars are waged using resources well beyond those of a given candidate and their staff. These include allied interest groups and civic associations, party-provided technical infrastructures that utilize large databases with detailed individual-level information for targeting voters, and armies of dedicated volunteers and paid part-timers. Nielsen challenges the notion that political communication in America must be tightly scripted, controlled, and conducted by a select coterie of professionals. Yet he also quashes the romantic idea that canvassing is a purer form of grassroots politics. In today's political ground wars, Nielsen demonstrates, even the most ordinary-seeming volunteer knocking at your door is backed up by high-tech targeting technologies and party expertise. Ground Wars reveals how personalized political communication is profoundly influencing electoral outcomes and transforming American democracy.