In recent years, I have been exploring a variety of themes that cluster around the idea of civic involvement in the political process, and the significance of the media in this regard. This work has been framed by a number of conceptual horizons, including theories of the public sphere and of the socio-cultural transitions of late modernity. The notion of identity has also had a central place, especially as it pertains to the emergence of a civic or political self. Thus, with an emphasis on the shifting contingencies of power relations, I probe the relations between on the one hand, social and cultural forces including the media, on the other, the terrain of subjectivity. To this I add perspectives on the crises of democracy, and the changing character of politics not least in regard to the emergence of new forms of political engagement and civic practices.
I pursue these trajectories at both analytic and concrete levels. Among the topics I address have been the specific circumstances of young citizens, the evolution of public intellectuals, the use of media in strategies of protest, the changing circumstances of journalism, the significance of cosmopolitanism as an analytic lens for globalised participation, and the subjectivity of civic agency.