This engaging text focuses on the role of technology in the development of the various media and the professions of advertising, journalism and public relations. The book is a highly visual text with its central components including the impact of the Internet on various media and the professions, the history of each medium and the demassification of various media. The issue of corporate ownership is also addressed and its effect on individuals and society. Christopher Harper writes in a lively, direct and journalistic style, which will have enormous appeal to students. Additionally, the text incorporates numerous aid boxes to assist learning such as: - Timeline boxes - Think About It boxes - Personal Journal boxes - People in the Media boxes

Anthropological interest in mass communication and media has exploded in the last two decades, engaging and challenging the work on the media in mass communications, cultural studies, sociology and other disciplines. This is the first book to offer a systematic overview of the themes, topics and methodologies in the emerging dialogue between anthropologists studying mass communication and media analysts turning to ethnography and cultural analysis. Drawing on dozens of semiotic, ethnographic and cross-cultural studies of mass media, it offers new insights into the analysis of media texts, offers models for the ethnographic study of media productio and consumption, and suggests approaches for understanding media in the modern world system. Placing the anthropological study of mass media into historical and interdisciplinary perspectives, this book examines how work in cultural studies, sociology, mass communication and other disciplines has helped shape the re-emerging interest in media by anthropologists. A former Washington D.C. journalist, Mark Allan Peterson is currently Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. He has published numerous articles on American, South Asian and Middle Eastern media, and has taught courses on anthropological approaches to media t at he American University in Cairo, the University of Hamburg, and Georgetown University.

Rev. ed. of: Media and culture. 2nd ed. c2000. Includes bibliographical references (p. 575-582) and index.

In this large-scale, postindustrial society, the mass media has become deeply embedded into the lifestyles of everyday citizens. People are lured by television ratings, celebrity-sponsored products, and high-profile crimes and scandals, all finding their way into living rooms across America by satellites, cable wires, and modems. This book examines the real, imagined, and potential effects of the mass media on individuals and society. The book explores the processes through which the mass media is enabled and constrained by such factors as technology, law, industry structure, and occupational careers, accounting for the vast changes that have developed in recent years. This book is divided into two parts. Part I defines mass communication and locates its role in social life. Part II considers the factors which influence media content, providing insight into how the industry operates. Sociologists, Communication and Mass Media specialists, film, music, and pop culture critics, and enthusiasts of these fields.

Media influenced politics, culture, and everyday life long before the invention of the Internet. This book shows how the advent of new media has changed societies in modern history, focusing not on the specifics of technology but rather on their distribution, use, and impact. Using Germany as an example for international trends, it compares the advent of printing in Europe and East Asia, and the impact of the press on revolutions, nation building, and wars in North America and Europe. The rise of tabloids and film is discussed as an international phenomenon, as the importance of media during National Socialism is looked at in comparison with Fascist Italy and Spain. Finally, this book offers a precise analysis of media during the Cold War, with divided Germany providing the central case study.

At the heart of this book is an explication conveyed in overt and subtle tones of media convergence-that condition signifying a united state of media wherein all media forms and instruments come together by virtue of computers and digitization. This second edition is designed to fit the changes into a coherent pattern, detailing the transformation taking place in the media as they adjust to new information-age realities.