While examining exactly who owns the media and who produces the media, this text manages to encompass the systematic, critical, and analytical media in all its forms and concludes that the media is one of the most important generators and disseminators of meaning in contemporary society. Investigating the power relationships between the media and politics, culture, economy, society, and above all, democracy, this resource is well-suited for anyone with an interest in the modern role of media in society.

Exploring the media as an institution, this volume also introduces the topics of media regulation and content. The nature of communications policy is explained, following overviews of internal and external media regulation. Strategic ways of managing the media are discussed in addition to the guide's analysis of the ways that media presents issues of identity, race, gender, sexual orientation, the environment, AIDS, and terrorism.

Addressing both theory and method, this reference teaches the two interconnected areas of media content and audience response. Introducing the main paradigms and research techniques in these fields, the discussion deals with wide range of topics. In regards to content studies, students are introduced to semiotics, textual analysis, narrative, argument, and film theory; for audience studies, they are introduced to questionaires, field research, quanitative analysis, and psychological studies.

Media/History/Society offers a cultural history of media in the United States, shifting the lens of media history from media developments and evolution to a focus on changes in culture and society, emphasizing how media shaped and were shaped by these trends, policies, and cultural shifts. Covers the topics that instructors want to teach Provides a timely and relevant culturally determined perspective on media history in American society Organized thematically rather than chronologically Links history to contemporary issues, setting journalism into a broader historical context Includes alternate table of contents, discussion questions, an instructor’s manual, and sample exams

Focusing mainly on the development of newspapers, film, radio, television, and the Internet in the United States and Western Europe, Media and Society in the Twentieth Century fills a critical need for students and scholars by offering a historical introduction to the mass media in our time. Provides an up-to-date, readable, and informative survey of the history of mass media in the twentieth century. Offers a historical and comparative perspective to emphasize the importance of contemporary media and to explain why particular media systems exist. Focuses on the development of newspapers, film, radio, and television for purposes of entertainment, information, and persuasion. Explores recent media developments, including the Internet and globalization, from a historical perspective.

Challenging the popular myth of a present-day 'information revolution', Media Technology and Society is essential reading for anyone interested in the social impact of technological change. Winston argues that the development of new media forms, from the telegraph and the telephone to computers, satellite and virtual reality, is the product of a constant play-off between social necessity and suppression: the unwritten law by which new technologies are introduced into society only insofar as their disruptive potential is limited.