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The New Media Environment
An Introduction

Andrea L. Press (Author), Bruce A. Williams (Author)

9781405127684, Wiley

Paperback / softback, published 2 July 2010

240 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.354 kg

"The book contains both extensive footnotes and a complete bibliography and index." (Communication Research Trends, 2011)

"If your students read just one book on the contemporary media environment, this should be it. Press and Williams deliver a masterful overview of the changing media landscape – addressing issues of ownership, politics, democracy, and identity – written in lively, lucid prose." (Laura Grindstaff, University of California at Davis)

"This accessible text draws readers into the complex new dynamics shaping our  media environment today. From film to news, economics to textual interpretation, Press and Williams provide an indispensable introduction to the debates that now drive media studies." (Nick Couldry, Goldsmiths, University of London)

“Solidly founded on responsible media scholarship, this crisp analysis of the new media environment makes the novel seem familiar and the familiar seem novel. Press and Williams’ bright and timely text demonstrates once again that there’s nothing so practical as good theory.” (Menahem Blondheim, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Media Studies examines the new and rapidly developing field of media studies to discover what insights it has to offer students and general readers as they negotiate their way through the new - and thoroughly saturated - media environment.

  • Explores how recent changes in our media affect the way we watch older media like television, movies, and radio, and offer up rich new interactive media, like video games and the internet
  • The perfect introduction to the field of media studies
  • Chronicles the recent dramatic changes in communication technologies, arguing that most of life itself is now experienced as 'mediated'
  • Discusses the development of cable and satellite television, VCRs, DVDs, the internet and personal computers
  • Emphasizes the broader political, social, and economic context within which these important new technologies have developed

Acknowledgements viii

1. Introduction: Modern Life Is a Media Experience 1
A Tale of Two Hurricanes 2
What Is a Media Environment? 8
The Importance of Changing Media Environments 10
The electronic media 12
Media in the Twenty-First Century: What Has Changed? 16
The age of the internet 19
Conclusion 21

2. Ownership and Control in the New Media Environment 26
Patterns of Media Ownership and Control 26
Ownership and Control of the Media: Assumptions and Realities 32
Alternative models of media ownership 35
Who owns the media? 37
Ownership and control in a global context 46
Does It Matter? The Consequences of Concentration and Conglomeration 48
The argument for market-driven media 48
The argument against market-driven media 49
What this means today 55
Conclusion 56

3. Media and Democracy 63
Introduction 63
Changing Media Environments and Changing Democratic Politics 68
Why nervous liberals are still with us: The enduring problem of propaganda 71
John Dewey and the reconstruction of media and democratic politics 74
Empirical research: How do media actually affect citizens? 75
Television and the "Age of Broadcast News" 79
Politics in the New Media Environment 84
Conclusion 87

4. Studying Popular Culture: Texts, Reception, and Cultural Studies 91
Introduction: Hollywood and Representations of Reality 91 Media Studies and the Study of Reception: A Brief History of Its Methods and Findings 101
Conclusion 107

5. Studying Inequalities: Class, Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Media Studies 112
A Critical Perspective on Inequality in Media Studies 112
The Frankfurt School 116
Cultural studies 116
Media studies research findings on class, gender, race, and sexuality 119
Gender in Media Studies Research: Are Gender Roles Culturally Reproduced? 124
Film and gender: Issues of reception and representation 128
Television and gender: Issues of reception and representation 132
Media and Race 136
Sexuality 144
Conclusion 148

6. Studying Media Texts and Their Reception in the New Media Environment 156
Transformative Images in the New Media Environment 160
Globalization and the new shape of media identities 162
Media Reception Research in the New Media Environment 163
Global reception in the new media environment 167
Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Class Inequality in New Media Reception: A New Study 169
New Studies: Gender and Social Class Identities in the New Media Environment 173
Politics, Media Impact and Use, and the New Media Environment 178
Old and New Media in the Individualized Media Environment: The New Media Environment Is Never Just New Media 181
Bias in old media and new 182
Civic engagement in the new media environment 184
Americans and Political Discussion: How the New Media Environment Is Changing the Civic Landscape 184
Conclusion 187

7. Conclusion 194
We Are Living in a Mediated Age 194
The Complexity of Our Relationship With the Media 196
Human Agency in Media Decisions and Directions 198
In Closing: The Case of the RFID 202

Index 205

Subject Areas: Electronics & communications engineering [TJ]
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