The Media: An Introduction [3 ed.] 9781405840361, 9781315834559, 2009031551

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures, photos and tables
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Publisher’s acknowledgements
Introduction
Contemporary European media and media study
Digitisation and its effects
But what are the media?
How to use this book
The media, studying the media and media studies
Questions
Part 1: Understanding the Media
Introduction
1. Approaches to the Media
Introducing the terrain
‘Replace capitalism with something nice’: Marxist approaches to media
‘Money, money, money’: political economy approaches to media
‘Time after time’: the Frankfurt School approaches to media
‘Dangerous minds’: more ideology approaches to media
‘Going native?’: ethnographic approaches to media
‘I can’t get no satisfaction’: uses and gratifications approaches to media
‘All about my mother’: psychoanalytical approaches to media
‘I saw the sign’: semiotic approaches to media
‘Girl power?’: feminist approaches to media
‘The end is just the beginning’
Questions
2. Media Form
Introduction
Form and content
Form and interpretation
Elements of formal analysis
‘9/11’
The future of form in media study
Exercises
Note
3. Models of Media Institutions
Introduction
The age of analogue television
The ‘old’ models of broadcasting
The pace of deregulation
The effects of broadcasting deregulation
Towards the digital era
The evolving model
Summary
Questions
4. The Media in Europe
Introduction
What is a media system?
How to compare media systems
Classifications of European media systems
Leading media systems in Europe: Britain, France and Germany
Media systems in Central and Eastern Europe and the Post-Communist model
The media systems of small states
Conclusion
Questions
Part 2: What are the Media?
Introduction
5. Comics
Introduction
Albums for all tastes
Respectability: a ‘ninth art’?
Cultural crossovers
Economic factors
The position of the UK
Continuing marginalisation
Questions
6. Photography
Introduction
Identity and meanings
Selling photography
Popular photography
The photograph as document
Photography as art
Photography as entertainment
Questions
7. Book Publishing
Chapter overview
Background
A brief history
Categories of books
Publishers
Subsidies and prices
Sales outlets
Rights and territories
Digital developments
The future of the book
Questions
8. Public Relations
Introduction
News and media strategies
The rise of ‘promotional culture’
Promotional resources
Policing enclosure and disclosure
Iraq: the use of propaganda and PR activities
Promotional strategies: lobbying versus media relations
Problems of coherence and division
Media factors
The impact and success of promotional strategies
Changing trends?
Conclusion
Questions
9. Newspapers
Chapter overview
Introduction
National newspaper industries: a framework for analysis
Newspapers in the information age
Conclusion
Questions
10. Magazines
Magazines in Europe
The magazine business
Production and distribution
Magazine industry sectors
Strategies for success? Celebrity culture in magazines
Questions
11. Radio
Radio’s first centenary: sound in health?
Public service and commercial competition: an enduring duopoly?
Whither radio – or will radio wither – in the digital age?
Questions
12. Television
What is television?
A 20th century development
The 1990 Broadcasting Act
Television now – programmes: content is king
The growth of ‘the ordinary’ and the death of serious programming
Composition of the industry
Recent events: 2007 a remarkable year
Questions of trust
Events and what they tell us about the medium of television
Loosening and losing control
The future is digital – content and distribution
Questions
13. Cinema
Introduction
Public support for cinema in Europe
France: a case study
Competition
Challenges and opportunities for cinema in Europe in the digital age
Conclusion
Questions
14. Popular Music
Introduction
Gatekeepers and cultural intermediaries
The record companies
Music retail
Radio and the charts
The music press
Film and television
MTV
Live music
The music industry goes online
Questions
15. The Internet and the Web
Introduction
History of the internet and the web (www)
The tools
Online communication
Community building in web 2.0
Questions
16. News Agencies
What are news agencies and why are they important?
Origins of the international news system
The global news agencies
National news agencies
Issues
Questions
17. News Media
Defining news and news journalism
News media and vectors of change
The technological vector of change for news media
Scenario one: news convergence
Scenario two: the personalisation of the news
The journalistic vector of change for news media
Converging news media ownership
News journalism and the personalisation of news
Questions
Notes
18. Advertising
Advertising: growth and transformation
Advertising texts: authenticity and the audience
The emergence of modern advertising
Advertising institutions
Fragmentation and segmentation
Conclusion
Questions
Notes
Part 3: The Media Environment: Policy,
Economics and institutions
Introduction
19. Economics
Introduction
Media commodities
Prices
The market mechanism
Competition
Conclusion
Questions
20. Policy
Chapter overview
Introduction
Purposes and instruments of media policy
Policy regulation and competition
Multilayer television policy and convergence with telecommunications
Emerging issues
Conclusion
Questions
21. Public Service Broadcasting in Europe
Introduction
The history of PSB: bedrock or fragile consensus?
North/South: the great divide?
Crises and weaknesses
Does PSB still matter?
Questions
22. Censorship and Freedom of Speech
The European Convention on Human Rights
Dreams of freedom
Goodbye to freedom?
Market censorship
Sua Emittenza
Questions
Part 4: Audiences, Influences and Effects
Introduction
23. Administrative Research of Audiences
Introduction
The purposes of audience research
The beginnings of broadcasting audience research
Television audience research
Radio audience research
Newspaper and magazine readership
Measuring readership
Film audience measurement and evaluation
Posters
The Target Group Index
The internet and digital media
Mobile devices
Conclusions
Questions
24. Effects
History of concerns
Early research
Imitation
Limitation
Realisation
Red herrings
Damning links
Missing links
Time bomb . . .
. . . or damp squib?
Priming aggression
Training kids to kill?
. . . or just torturing data?
Violence in the media
Violence to the media
Questions
25. Impacts and Influences
The effects of communication: a brief history of theoretical approaches
Straw-men, babies and bath water: discrediting the question of effects/influence
Evidence of effects and influence: ‘the new effects/ influence research’
Jhally and Lewis’s study of The Cosby Show
Gamson’s study of politics
Corner, Richardson and Fenton’s study of nuclear power
Audience reception work at the Glasgow University Media Unit
A continuing enquiry: audience research in the 21st century
Conclusion
Questions
Note
26. Active Audiences
Introduction
Uses and gratifications versus media and cultural studies
Questioning media and cultural studies research on audiences
Conclusion
Questions
Part 5: Media Representations
Introduction
27. Sexualities
Introduction
Sexual stereotypes
Analysing media constructions of sexuality
Sexuality in contemporary Italian media production
Conclusions
Questions
28. Gender
Introduction
Early feminist media critique
Contemporary shifts
Gender representations in news
Gender in advertising
Conclusion
Questions
Note
29. Social Class
Introduction
Class and social exclusion
Big Brother: reality TV and class
Bourdieu and the production of the elite in France
Class and space in France
Class, ethnicity and the banlieues
Popular uprising in the banlieues and the media
Representation of class in French cinema
Class and language in L’Esquive
Conclusion
Questions
30. Race and Ethnicity
Introduction
Different approaches to reading ‘race’ in the media
Stereotypes: positive and negative images
Early representations of ‘blackness’ on British television
Media access and the emergence of multicultural programming
The politics of multicultural programming
New trajectories
Conclusion: future scenarios
Questions
31. Media and Religion
Now that religious diversity is with us, can multicultural societies accommodate it?
The Dutch and Muslims: mutual sentiments and resentment
Media: a dark mirror of reality?
Research questions
News frames
Islam in the Dutch newspapers: a cross-sectional study
General features
Muslim actors, relations and points of view
Comparing the newspapers
Islam in Dutch newspapers: a longitudinal study
Discussion
Questions
Note
32. Youth
‘Hoodie law’ in ‘broken Britain’: images of youth, crime and social decline
Mod mayhem: youth, media and moral panic
‘The teenage revolution’: media representations of ‘youth-as-fun’
From ‘cool Britannia’ to ‘violent Britain’: moral panics revisited
Mixed metaphors: representations of youth in the contemporary media
Questions
33. The Body, Health and Illness
Introduction
Beginning-of-life issues: test-tubes, designer genes and stem cells
Disordered eating
Disability, lifestyle and enhancement
End-of-life issues: dying well and living forever
Conclusion
Questions
Notes
34. Nationality
Introduction
Creating a sense of national identity
‘Good’ and ‘bad’ nations
Who belongs to the nation?
The national and the global: changing times?
The national and the transnational: media and diaspora
Conclusions
Exercises
35. Sport
Introduction
The media–sport nexus
Why sport matters in the digital age
An English league abroad
Identity, media and managing ‘the nation’
Conclusion
Questions
36. Sex Acts
Introduction
The history of sex acts in the media
The rise of pornography
Sex acts in the 20th century
From porn to art: sexual representation in non-pornographic culture
Conclusion
Questions
Index