ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we argue that anxiety over infotainment (and its close relative “fake news”) is less about the blurring of lines between news and entertainment or fact and fiction (lines virtually impossible to draw in any intellectually satisfying way) than reaction to the dramatic changes in the media environment over the last two decades. These changes undermine the authority of professional journalism and raise fresh questions about how political information is produced, consumed, and circulated in the twenty-first century. Addressing the implications of these changes for democracy requires a perspective free of a priori assumptions, rooted in dubious conclusions from the recent past, about the appropriate forms or sources of political information. We offer a pragmatic approach, based upon our concept of changing “media regimes” which have, over the last two centuries, structured the patterns and practices of ordinary citizens as they search for political information.
