| This dissertation research has comprehensively investigated how mass media and Internet-driven network media help shape low-income housing policy, programming, and civic participation in a U.S. local urban community---Madison, Wisconsin. This study has demonstrated that the policy formation process and the outcome of local low-income housing policy are social products resulting from the interaction between local urban politics and the communication media ecology. For this, a local urban politics is investigated, and the public discourses in both local mass media and network media communication spaces regarding the policy are assessed from ecological and relational social scientific approaches, both of which are concerned with complex social relations and their transformations among individuals and organizations in the social environment over time.;Substantively, this research is composed of five dimensions: (1) to conceptualize an urban politics model; (2) to historically reconstruct the urban politics centered on Madison's local low-income housing policy issue at different social sectors; (3) to investigate local mass media's framing of the policy issue; (4) to inquire into the policy discussions in local network media space; and (5) to provide research implications for policy initiatives. In order to assess the complex urban politics and local communication media ecology, this study employs multiple research methods, which are historical, qualitative, quantitative, and network. In its theoretical aspect, by localizing and integrating Pierre Bourdieu's field theory and Jurgen Habermas' public sphere, this research has developed a mid-range social theory of community-communication ecology, which can operate as a comprehensive framework of community research to assess the complex dynamics in local urban politics and communication ecology by mapping the flows of power relations and public discourses. This modeling is expected to contribute to investigating community affairs and suggesting multiple strategies for solving community problems from an interdisciplinary perspective. |
