Running through the revolution in European thought that came to be known as the Enlightenment were three central ambitions. The first was to develop new accounts of the natural and social worlds that were empirically grounded and expressed in rationally informed theoretical systems. The second was to replace the arbitrary power of kings and despots with a system of government in which every adult participated in political debates and decision as a free and equal citizen. And the third was to provide a nonreligious basis for moral action that would balance the pursuit of personal interests against the demands of the common good.Political economy was, from the outset, caught up in all three projects. For its early practitioners, like Adam Smith, theoretical and empirical questions about how to organize economic life and balance markets against state intervention were inextricably bound up with questions about the constitution of the good society. Marx, who presented his magnum opus, Capital, as a critique of political economy, shared this ethical concern, but argued forcefully that it could only be pursued by abolishing capitalism. Other socialists opted for a more gradualist approach in which the negative impacts of capitalist dynamics would be disciplined by strong public regulation and countered by substantial investment in public services.

understanding of different simultaneous rhythms of change requires complementary incursions through the past, the present and the empirically accessible future.

The governmental change which took place in Portugal after 2011 was far more than just a new episode in the typical rotation between the two major political parties given that it occurred whilst the country was initiating a three year period of external fi nancial control. As such the three political forces actively engaged in this rough transition have consistently pursued a stern austerity strategy imposed by creditors. This uneven platform (shaped by submission rather than by accord) has been the breeding ground for a discourse centred on the existence of a broad national consensus in support of the adopted draconian austerity measures. Irruptions of dissent have been met with contempt and have been dismissed as self-interested opinions or even as anti-patriotic. This article has four main parts. In the fi rst one, the fundamental features of the economic and fi nancial crisis and its consequences will be presented. In the second part, the political impacts and challenges of the crisis will be scrutinised. The political and economic impact is closely articulated with the current situation of mainstream media that is presented in the third part of the paper. As we will see in the last part of this article, a particular combination of factors in a country without fi nancial sovereignty has created the perfect conditions for media reproduction of the government and creditors' discourses.

Despite the conceptual difficulties and complex configuration, the concept of public sphere has dominated much of the recent literature in areas such as political sciences, cultural studies, communication sciences and sociology of new media. A space that establishes and organizes the relationship between the state and the civil society, the public sphere refers to the field of public interest where citizens seek to guide the exercise of power. Since its original proposition by Habermas (1968Habermas ( /1989) to more contemporary settings that include a media ecology punctuated by the internet, the concept has been subject to confrontations that seek to highlight its potential, but also its limitations, namely the unreal equality of participation and universal access.In spite of criticisms and limitations, the Jürgen Habermas' understanding of public sphere has therefore remained a seminal concept within the scientific reflections on the conditions of democratic functioning of societies, as well as on the role of media in the promotion of deliberation and confrontation of alternatives. The original distinction between the public sphere and the private domain has lost sharpness, but it is still considered to be a structural idea, yet accommodating new frontiers. Also the rationality that is implicit to the argumentation and debate has lost the exclusivity of discursive practices, thus incorporating new modalities ranging from satire to humor, also including irony and sometimes with speeches approaching incivility.Inseparable from the public sphere since its early conceptualization, the media are central to the public debate, both in its more traditional forms as through new modalities enhanced by digital technologies. The transformation of the mass media paradigm introduces clear changes in terms of media practices and in the role of citizens / consumers / producers. New media, particularly the Internet, pose new theoretical, methodological and practical challenges to the constitution of a digital public sphere. The conventional spaces devoted to public discussion are faced with various forms of socialization, with networking organizations and with new channels of dissemination and exchange of information, that update 'old' issues in terms of power, control and citizen participation.Will there be in the Internet a space for the constitution of a public sphere, aggregating wills, arguments, positions, defenses, consensus? Or is the Internet a place of hopeless fragmentation where it is impossible to fit in and accommodate the interests of collective nature? These concerns do not have an obvious answer, which is obscured by the novelty of many of these new processes and by the complexity of the phenomenon. This difficulty does not, however, prevent intellectually exploring of the potential of the internet as a prospective promoter of a public sphere (Dahlgren, 2005). The level and types of political participation of citizens, an indefectible condition to the constitution of the public sphere, are being challenged by...

Mário Mesquita dá-nos conta, na apresentação desta obra, de que não tem a pretensão de solucionar questões que, durante mais de cem anos, a investigação sobre a opinião pública e os media tem ajudado a formular, sem conseguir esclarecer cabalmente. Nenhum autor estaria em condições de o fazer, mas Mário Mesquita está particularmente bem posicionado para dar um contributo de grande significado para a compreensão de 'alguns aspectos da crise do jornalismo na sociedade contemporânea'. Com um longo percurso de excelência no jornalismo, conhece, por dentro, as rotinas das redacções e as lógicas das empresas de que dependem. Enquanto professor de Comunicação, é sistematicamente confrontado com novos problemas e desafios que o obrigam a pensar quotidianamente as articulações entre a experiência feita e a teoria. Enquanto investigador, Mário Mesquita combina um profundo conhecimento da literatura sobre as Teorias do Jornalismo com o rigor criativo de um pensamento autónomo.Estão, portanto, reunidas as melhores condições para uma profícua produção científica que, nesta obra de quatrocentos páginas, se organiza em cinco partes. A primeira, intitulada 'Actualidades', compreende textos sobre 'Celebração e a excomu-