A Media Sociology for the Networked Public Sphere: The Hierarchy of Influences Model

We have promoted a hierarchy of influences model for understanding the complex factors shaping media—particularly news—content: from the individual to social-system level. Meanwhile, technology-enabled changes in the media eco-system have shifted old boundaries and encouraged new, more spatially oriented concepts, such as fields and networks. In this essay we revisit our levels-of-analysis perspective, which in the historical context of communication research was a response to the media effects paradigm, and incorporate within the model examples from recent research. We argue that the hierarchical of influences can still take into account new realignments of media and other forces. Emerging spaces in the network public sphere may not fit as easily into the once familiar professional, organizational, and institutional containers, but the new media configurations supporting these spaces must still be understood with reference to a larger framework of power.