Changing landscape of media is topic for Flagler lecture

As part of the Government and Public Policy lecture series at Flagler College, Lee Rainie of the Pew Research Center will provide updates on the changing landscape of news reporting with the advent of Internet, mobile connectivity, and social media. He will also discuss the organization’s latest findings on the state of politics and democratic institutions in the United States.

Rainie is the director of Internet, Science and Technology at the center, a non-partisan “fact tank” that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. The Pew Research Center conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research, now including analysis of “big data”. The Center does not take policy or partisan positions.

“The capacity of people and groups to create and share information is unparalleled because of the rapidity and breadth of change in science and technology which has never occurred before,” Rainie told Historic City News local reporters in announcing his guest appearance. “We have not ever seen the kinds of disruptions in basic institutions that we are witnessing now. Organizations that arose in the Industrial Era – big government bureaucracies, big corporations, big media companies, big labor unions – are all undergoing significant change.”

In his presentation, titled “The New Age of Politics and Media,” Rainie will describe how the campaign and early days of the Trump administration have shown that major institutions, like political parties and the news media, have been challenged and changed by a fractured news environment, shifting trust in major institutions and an increasingly polarized political landscape.

Historic City News readers are invited to attend this informative lecture, free of charge, on Thursday, February 16 at 7:00 p.m. in the Lewis Auditorium located at 14 Granada Street in St Augustine. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.

Rainie will also draw from his book, “Networked: The new social operating system,” in describing how the unprecedented adoption of technology has changed the way people engage in social and political activities.

Rainie has issued more than 600 reports based on the center’s surveys that examine people’s online activities and the Internet’s role in their lives. He also directs Pew’s new initiative on the intersection of science and society. Rainie is the co-author of five books on the future of the Internet, based on Pew surveys about the subject. Prior to launching the Pew Internet Project, he was managing editor of U.S. News & World Report.

For more than 30 years, the Flagler College Forum on Government and Public Policy has invited nationally recognized journalists and commentators to St. Augustine to discuss issues of importance in regional, state and federal government.