ABSTRACT
The three chapters in this section are concerned, each in their own way, with the relationship between the media, political communication, and the public sphere. In this chapter, I offer a short synopsis of the main arguments presented by the authors based on their extensive assessments of the state of the art in each of the fi elds of scholarship they address. I follow this with a refl ection on the directions for future research that are suggested in the light of ongoing debates surrounding the theorization of the public sphere in modern politics. My comments begin with a discussion of chapter 7 on public deliberation, followed by that on nanotechnology (chapter 6), and fi nally the review of research on personalization in politics as presented in chapter 8.
