Product Description

This book gives students an overview of the entire media process - from production to content to audiences - with an emphasis on how social forces influence the media and how media potentially affect society. A key emphasis throughout the work is how various elements in the media process interact with each other. This Third Edition of Media/Society provides students with conceptual tools for understanding the role of media in contemporary society - where mass media images come from, how and why they matter, and the kinds of questions and dilemmas that mass media raise about social life. 

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24779 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Shooting history on the wing
Media-disseminated messages flood our every waking second, affecting us in ways we often do not readily discern. Croteau and Hoynes take the reader on an exploration of these media forces in a sociological journey that walks then leaps from the birth of printed words for the masses to cyberspace for the individual. In the process, we learn a lot along the way. Not only about media, but, about ourselves. Unlike most college course texts in Media and Society (in sociology or journalism), "Media Society" is written in understandable English and is not ruefully Marxian in ideological slant. The work plays it straight down the middle. The authors' goal, to which they succeed, is to provide information that shows the complexity of social relationships in, around and through which information from all sources is sought and internalized by "receivers" then, through feedback, subtly affects the "senders" and subsequent messages as well. Surprisingly up-to-date in information, especially concerning the so-called New Media (a synthesis of current technologies, traditional entertainment programs-turned-political,and old news media). Croteau and Hoynes not only introduce the reader to the media mileau in society, they show how economics drive news coverage. At the same time they explain that media consolidations have not shrunk the markets as first feared, but have actually led--perhaps inadvertently--to an explosion of different, often smaller and more intimate media. The media pie, they attest, is growing bigger as the number of slices inexplicably increase. In later chapters, the authors do a commendable job acquainting the reader with communications theory, especially explaining how opinions are formed. My favorite chapter, given my predilections, are the chapters dealing with media and the political world (and the rest of the chapters in Part 4). The authors also enter the globalization fray by demonstrating not only how American pop culture is transforming traditional cultures (see Barber's McWorld v. Jihad for greater detail), but also how traditional cultures are influencing American pop culture in ways greater than we had intuited. Anyone interested in gaining a sense of how media is impacting his or her daily life and how we, as social beings, react to that impact, should certainly read this wonderful book.

Great Overview
This is a great introduction to media studies. It generally covers a lot of theories and their originators. It does not go into a great deal of depth on any one of them, however, this book is great to get ideas for a theory that one might wish to expand on in detail. I have used this many times for short papers in which I want to incorporate an idea, but do not want the hassle of a lot of in depth research on topic.

Good book
I have this book for a class. It discusses some very interesting topics. I highly recommend it!