The Media Studies Toolkit

Description

In this critical primer, Michael Z. Newman introduces newcomers to the key concepts, issues, and vocabulary of media studies. Across ten chapters, Newman examines topics from text and audience to citizenship and consumerism, drawing on a myriad of examples of media old and new. Film and TV rub shoulders with mobile games and social media, and popular music and video sharing platforms with journalism and search engines. While the book takes a critical, cultural approach, it covers topics that apply across many kinds of media scholarship, bridging the humanities and the social sciences and looking at media as a global phenomenon. It considers media in relation to society and its unequal structures of power, and relates media representations to their conditions of production in media industries and consumption in the everyday lives of audiences and users. Spanning the historical periods of mass media and online participatory culture, it also probes assumptions about media that were formulated in a previous era and looks at how to update our thinking to address an ever-changing digital mediascape. With its clear and accessible style, this book is tailor-made for undergraduate students of media, communication, and cultural studies, as well as anyone who would like to better understand media. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Acknowledgments 1 Introduction Analytical, Critical, Cultural Surveying the Terrain 2 Industry Revenue Streams Political Economy and the Structures of Media Companies Horizontal and Vertical Integration Legacy Media and the Tech Giants Studying the Media Industries Following the Money 3 Text Breaking It Down Levels of Analysis Textual Analysis in Practice Meanings and Intentions Denotation and Connotation Texts and Readers 4 Audience Naming and Counting the Audience Why Care About Audiences? Audiences Making Meaning Dominant, Oppositional, Negotiated Communication as Transmission and Ritual Fans in the Audience Researching Audiences A Useful Fiction 5 Representation Reflecting, Constructing, and the Work of Representation Visibility and Symbolic Annihilation The Burden of Representation Positive and Negative Images Stereotypes and Regimes of Representation Modes of Address Voice and the Power to Represent All Your Faves Are Problematic 6 Ideology Ideology Critique Ideological Formations Identities and Ideologies Tensions and Contradictions The Whole Ideological Environment 7 Policy and Regulation Public and Private Interests Regulation of What? Why Broadcasting Is Different Public Service Media National Cultural Policy and Canadian Media Boundaries of Expression 8 Citizenship The Public Sphere Journalism as Civic Culture Pop Culture Is Civic Culture Too The Internet as Democratizing Media Citizenship as Belonging 9 Consumerism Advertising Then and Now Pop Culture and Gendered Consumerism The Citizen-Consumer Social Media and the Branded Self Always Be Selling 10 Technology From Mass Media to Participatory Culture New and Renewed Media From Novelty to Domestication Technologies as Agents, Users as Innovators The Politics of Media Technologies Thinking Historically 11 Global and Local Media and Empire Global Media Flows Global Media Hybridity Audiences and Users as Localizers Asymmetry and Interconnection Index