Mediamaking : mass media in a popular culture

Taking a unique approach to the study of mass communication and cultural studies, MediaMaking presents the current knowledge and thoughts about the relationship among media, culture, and society. What sets this volume apart from competing texts is the approach taken and the distinguished scholarship. Rather than examining each major medium separately (newspapers, books, magazines, radio, television, film), the authors contend that mass communication cannot be studied apart from the other institutions. In society and the other dimensions of social life - each is shaping and defining the other. They hold that media can only be understood in relation to their institutional, economic, social, cultural, and historical context. As such, this book explores the variety of ways in which the media are involved in our social lives. The authors explore the different relationships between the media and the systems of social value and social differences that organize power in contemporary society. They examine how the media are reproduced and consumed and what they produce in turn. Theoretically and analytically organized with sections on media′s relationship to behavior, politics, media effects, the public, globalization, organizations, meaning, and ideology, this text offers students a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of media communication processes, an absolutely necessary part of understanding contemporary life. Broadly based and theoretically grounded, this introductory textbook will enable students of mass communication, cultural studies, and sociology, to better understand how the world is shaped by human actions and decisions, and media communication.