Understanding Media Cultures : Social Theory and Mass Communication

by Nick Stevenson

• ISBN13: 9780761973638
• ISBN10: 076197363X
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-05-09
• Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd

Summary

The Second Edition of this book provides a comprehensive overview of the ways in which social theory has attempted to theorize the importance of the media in contemporary society. Understanding Media Cultures is now fully revised and takes account of the recent theoretical developments associated with New Media and Information Society, as well as the audience and the public sphere.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(9)
Marxism and Mass Communication Research	9	(38)
Debates within Political Economy and Ideology: Raymond Williams, Glasgow University Media Group and Stuart Hall
Marxism, Political Economy and Ideology	9	(2)
Raymond Williams: Communications and the Long Revolution	11	(4)
Cultural Materialism and Hegemony	15	(3)
Raymond Williams and Material Culture: Television and the Press	18	(2)
Raymond Williams and Communication Theory	20	(6)
The Glasgow University Media Group and Television Bias	26	(1)
Two Case Studies: Bad News and Good News	26	(2)
The Eye of the Beholder and Objectivity in Media Studies	28	(4)
Ideology and the Glasgow University Media Group	32	(2)
Stuart Hall, Mass Communications and Hegemony	34	(1)
Policing the Crisis: the Press, Moral Panics and the Rise of the New Right	35	(1)
Ideology: the Return of the Repressed?	36	(5)
Encoding and Decoding Media Discourse	41	(1)
The Over-inflation of Discourse and Other Related Critiques	42	(4)
Summary	46	(1)
Habermas, Mass Culture and the Public Sphere	47	(28)
Public Cultures	47	(1)
The Bourgeois Public Sphere	48	(3)
Habermas, Mass Culture and the Early Frankfurt School	51	(5)
Problems with Mass Culture: Habermas and the Frankfurt School	56	(6)
The Public Sphere and Public Broadcasting	62	(6)
Habermas, the Public Sphere and Citizenship	68	(6)
Summary	74	(1)
Critical Perspectives within Audience Research	75	(43)
Problems in Interpretation, Agency, Structure and Ideology
The Emergence of Critical Audience Studies	75	(3)
David Morley and the Television Audience: Encoding/Decoding Revisited	78	(1)
Semiotics, Sociology and the Television Audience	79	(4)
Class, Power and Ideology in Domestic Leisure	83	(6)
John Fiske and the Pleasure of Popular Culture	89	(3)
Life's More Fun with the Popular Press	92	(2)
Pointless Populism or Resistant Pleasures?	94	(8)
Feminism and Soap Opera: Reading into Pleasure	102	(1)
Feminism, Mass Culture and Watching Dallas	103	(2)
Psychoanalysis, Identity and Utopia	105	(3)
Reading Magazine Cultures	108	(5)
Feminism and Critical Theory	113	(3)
Summary	116	(2)
Marshall McLuhan and the Cultural Medium	118	(30)
Space, Time and Implosion in the Global Village
Technical Media	118	(1)
Innis, McLuhan and Canadian Social Theory	119	(2)
The Medium is the Message	121	(7)
Space and Time: Technology and Cultural Studies	128	(4)
Oral, Print and Modern Cultures: Jack Goody and Anthony Giddens	132	(6)
More Critical Observations	138	(8)
Summary	146	(2)
Baudrillard's Blizzards	148	(36)
Postmodernity, Mass Communications and Symbolic Exchange
Postmodernism as a Heterogeneous Field	148	(1)
Baudrillard, Althusser and Debord	149	(4)
Postmodernism, Symbolic Exchange and Marxism	153	(9)
The French McLuhan: Simulations, Hyperreality and the Masses	162	(5)
Baudrillard and Jameson	167	(6)
Baudrillard's Irrationalism	173	(9)
Summary	182	(2)
New Media and the Information Society	184	(32)
Schiller, Castells, Virilio and Cyberfeminism
Herb Schiller and Media Imperialism	186	(6)
Informationalism, Networks and Social Movements: Manuel Castells	192	(4)
The Limitations of Informational Politics	196	(4)
Virilio, Speed and Communication	200	(6)
Virilio and the Media of Mass Communications	206	(4)
Critical Questions within Cyberfeminism	210	(4)
Summary	214	(2)
Conclusion	216	(10)
The Three Paradigms of Mass Communication Research	216	(10)
Possible Futures	223	(3)
Glossary	226	(6)
Notes	232	(3)
References	235	(15)
Index	250