The Media and Social Theory

by Hesmondhalgh; David

• ISBN13: 9780415448000
• ISBN10: 041544800X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2008-07-07
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Media studies needs richer and livelier intellectual resources. This book brings together major and emerging international media analysts to consider key processes of media change, using a number of critical perspectives. Case studies range from reality television to professional journalism, from blogging to control of copyright, from social networking sites to indigenous media, in Europe, North America, Asia and elsewhere. Among the theoretical approaches and issues addressed are: critical realism post-structuralist approaches to media and culture Pierre Bourdieu and field theory public sphere theory '¬ ; including post-Habermasian versions actor network theory Marxist and post-Marxist theories, including contemporary critical theory theories of democracy, antagonism and difference. This volume is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers of cultural studies, media studies and social theory.

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xiii
Why media studies needs better social theory	p. 1
Power and democracy	p. 25
Media and the paradoxes of pluralism	p. 27
Neoliberalism, social movements and change in media systems in the late twentieth century	p. 43
Recognition and the renewal of ideology critique	p. 59
Cosmopolitan temptations, communicative spaces and the European Union	p. 75
Spatial inequalities	p. 93
Neoliberalism, imperialism and the media	p. 95
A contemporary Persian letter and its global purloining: The shifting spatialities of contemporary communication	p. 112
Rethinking the Digital Age	p. 127
Media and mobility in a transnational world	p. 145
Spectacle and the self	p. 159
Form and power in an age of continuous spectacle	p. 161
Spectacular morality: 'Reality' television, individualisation and the remaking of the working class	p. 177
Variations on the branded self: Theme, invention, improvisation and inventory	p. 194
Media labour and production	p. 211
'Step away from the croissant': Media Studies 3.0	p. 213
Sex and drugs and bait and switch: Rockumentary and the new model worker	p. 231
Journalism: Expertise, authority, and power in democratic life	p. 248
Media making and social reality	p. 265
Index	p. 280
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