Culture and Power: A Media, Culture & Society Reader

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This broad-ranging book offers an introduction to the issues and debates which are currently central to media studies.The journal Media, Culture & Society has been one of the core sources for the development of media studies since its foundation in 1979. This new reader draws together a set of major articles published in the journal in the period 1985-91. Like the previous Media, Culture & Society: A Critical Reader, it will be a standard textbook for students of media studies. Reflecting the direction in which media studies have moved since publication of the previous reader, Culture and Power draws out a new series of questions. The first part outlines and surveys some key theoretical developments: the growth of cultural studies approaches to the media; heightened attention to the theoretical challenges of feminism and concerns over identity and ethnicity; and debates over the idea of postmodernism and the presumed centrality of the media in the formationof a postmodern society. The second part addresses the key area of recent research around the audience. Combining overviews and case studies, the contributions illustrate the variety of theoretical and empirical projects relating to the audience. Recent audience research is linked into the context of cultural studies and the broader project of the theorization of everyday life.The last section addresses the public sphere. The role of the media in production and dissemination of information, ideas and images is explored within its national, political and social dimensions, and in terms of its consequences for citizenship.Drawing together key work from the breadth of current critical media research, Culture and Power is an invaluable student textbook and a complement to the library of the individual researcher.