At the heart of modern democracy lies the public sphere, which is most centrally shaped by those actors that integrate it discursively-the mass media. The media draws together the different strands of political debates, they grant access to some actors and arguments while excluding others, and thus decisively mould the political process. Although their role is clearly a powerful one as gatekeepers, platforms for, and contributors to political discourse, however, they are not independent from the forces and dynamics that shape the "informal public sphere". To what extent do they include different voices and viewpoints-particularly those from civil society-how do they relate the different actors to each other and how actively do they contribute to the debate themselves?In this book, Thomas Haussler examines how the media reflects and reacts to the wider context in which they are embedded. More specifically, he focuses on whether their discourse demonstrates systematic differences with regard to the two main public sphere types that they co-constitute, according to deliberative theory. Putting the deliberative paradigm at its centre, particularly the work of Jurgen Habermas, Haussler investigates the five most central dimensions of deliberative quality: the inclusiveness of political debates, the reciprocal orientation of the actors, the degree of change in dialogic roles between speakers and addressees, the overall level of reflexivity and the range of the justifications expressed.