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Habermas’ theory of the structural transformation of the public sphere has been a point of departure for theoretical debate for more than forty years. Habermas’ explains the decline of a discursive space for public discussion of collective interests as resulting from the emergence of consumer culture in post-industrial capitalism. Whereas the public sphere was originally a location of rational-critical activity, public life today is a spectator sport. The dominance of media corporations has undermined the potential for critical debate of pressing social issues, including race. This study seeks to illuminate the change in public discussions of race in New York City. A comparison is made between nineteenth-century and contemporary discourse. The nineteenth-century discourse is represented by texts from The Weekly Advocate and The Colored American, two important black Abolitionist newspapers published in New York City between 1837 and 1841; this discourse has a two-sided focus: an attack on slavery and a call for civil rights, and as such, combines analysis of the violence of racism and the nature of racial inequality. To find a parallel in the contemporary discourse, news articles from New York Times, from 1998, were collected. An innovative semiotic content coding strategy is used to describe the conceptual network and ideology of public discussions of race in New York City.

The resolution of the slavery issue in the United States may have had more to do with economic development and political power than a shift in public morality, but there can be no question that abolitionist discourse played a major role in the expansion of America's republican vision in the nineteenth century. In the human rights discourse of the black abolitionists, ideological conflict centers on the dimensions of reification and fragmentation. Potential answers to the rights question – who is to be included in the American republic? – involve contentious claims about group identities. To examine systematically the strategic use of the jeremiad as a human rights argument in the black abolitionist discourse, this research produced a content analysis study of the antebellum black press in New York State. The findings present the hegemonic discourse and the case that the human rights argument could not have been made without simultaneously undermining the hegemonic view. The black abolitionist discourse in antebellum New York State was the first American experience with the jeremiad as a human rights argument and would not be the last.

This chapter focusses on current debates on ‘locating metal’ and on the demand for more theoretical and methodological rigor in metal studies. As an example of the usage of a non-English language in metal, the author examines the empirical case of the usage of Austrian German and Austrian dialects in metal music since around 1990. Herein, the author will be using the disciplinary methodologies of history and analyse the two Austrian bands Alkbottle and Varulv. According to the theory of ‘sonic knowledge’, the case study is interpreted as an example of ‘locating metal’ that occurred in the Austrian metal scene. The chapter shows that the seemingly contradictory coexistence of both deconstructive irony and essentialist nationalism is characteristic of the usage of Austrian German in metal. To conclude, the author proposes that this paradox is a result of the broad cultural history of Austrian nation building after 1945. The paradox of the usage of Austrian dialects in metal is the metal scene's attempt at coping with the frictions of Austria's twentieth century history.

David L. Altheide is Emeritus Regents’ Professor in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University. Using qualitative methodology, his work has focused on the role of mass media and information technology for social control. His two most recent books are: Terrorism and the Politics of Fear (Alta Mira, 2006) and Terror Post 9/11 and the Media (Lang, 2009). The former work as well as Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis (Aldine/Transaction, 2002) received the Cooley Award as the best books for the year in the tradition of symbolic interaction, from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. Dr. Altheide also won this award in 1986 for his book Media Power, and he is the 2005 George Herbert Mead Award recipient for lifetime contributions from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.

Some chapters provide us with a snapshot (intentional) of ethnic community across the city. Others look closely at a particular place. Still others look across the whole ethnic landscape of the city. Neither individually nor as a whole collection do they form a complete picture. But perhaps because they are so eclectic maybe they form a challenge to urban sociology to exam not just macro level change in urban form and metropolitan space, but to apply other methodologies to better understand the increasingly complex, unfocused mosaic of social worlds in the American city.

The Studies in Communications book series presents contemporary scholarship on the central dynamic of society – communications. Theoretically grounded empirical studies drawn from the social sciences focus on the institutional patterns, media, and the dynamic process of meaning construction. Incorporating communications, mass media and communications, sociological and critical theories, comparative and historical analysis, with combinations of qualitative and quantitative research provide compelling themes for each volume of the series. Volume 6 develops the “Human Rights and Media” theme. The collective rights associated with age, class, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, and disability are framed by the media. The studies in this volume explore the connections and discourse of media and human rights, through media production, social policies and responsibilities, human rights violation and the social, institutional, and global contexts of social movements for human rights protections and about human rights violations.