This book will play an important role in providing structure to a broad, fragmented discipline. I believe it will, at the very least, create important dialogues about what we now know//understand about areas of mass media, and where we should move as a discipline.a[Thisabook will]ahelp orient future scholars about the imperative to organize our re search more efficiently so that we can expand our knowledge about media phenomena. a Dr. Potter is an excellent writer, able to distill important ideas in a compelling, yet en gaging way. His passion about the topic clearly shines through and this is a major rea son why I believe scholars (and future scholars) will gravitate toward this book.oa --Roger Cooper, Ohio UniversityIn Arguing for a General Framework for Mass Media Scholarship, media scholar and bestselling author W. James Potter challenges media scholars and students to change the way they think about the media.a His goals are to: (1) take a macro approach and focus on explanations that span across four major facets of the mass media: (2) present a critical analysis of the mass media literatures and offer a recalibration of what we know about the media; anda(3) provide structure to mass media scholarship that is focused on the most useful ideas in the phenomenon of the mass media, not lines of research.The arguments and findings in the book are based on sound, in-depth research and analysis. The book presents scholars with an innovative way of thinking about the mass media. It challenges many of their assumptions and practices: Some scholars will find this very stimulating and will learn a great deal by working through the arguments presented in the book; other scholars will likely find themselves arguing against some of Potter's positions u but in so doing, they will be examining their own assumptions to a much deeper level and thereby be stimulated by the experience of reading the book.KEY FEATURES &BAD:amp; BENEFITS**The book is respectful of the wide range of theories and methodologies. Potter does not take an approach that sanctions one world view, method, or theory over others. All are important and useful. However, we need to integrate the value of all approaches instead of arguing over differences. On first reading, his arguments might appear as subversive with so many challenges to past thinking and practices; however,ahe takes a constructive approach: not solely criticizing faulty practices, but providing detailed recommendations about alternative assumptions, re-conceptualizations, and alterations in research practices.**The book is more interested in the future than in the past. It is not just a review of the literatures. It identifies shortcomings and proposes strategies for overcoming them. It presents an innovative plan for moving beyond the base of scholarship produced in the last century and into a new generation of thinking that will provide even more useful explanations for the next millennium.** Most explanations of the mass media focus on only one sub-topic of the overall phenomenon u such as one effect, one type of content, one issue of audience construction, or one type of channel. This book takes a macro approach and focuses on explanations that span across all four major facets of the mass media u the organizations, the content, the audiences, and the effects. ** The few treatments of the mass media that exist are general in nature and are very descriptive, that is, they present thumbnail descriptions of one theory after another, or one research finding after another.a This book presents a critical analyses of the mass media literatures. It presents arguments why certain parts of those literatures u while fairly large u have not produced much value for the field, while other writings u often overlooked or discounted u contain powerful ideas that can be fashioned into elegant explanations about some persistently puzzling aspects of the mass media. This critical analysis results in a re-calibration of what we know about the media.** This re-calibration of important findings along with some creative speculations are synthesized into a fresh approach to explaining the mass media.**The book is not structured by media channels, theories, world-views, or other typical devices used to organize books on the mass media. Instead, it is structured by a vision of what Potter considers the most important ideas to have been generated by mass media scholarship over the last half century. **The focus is on the mass media phenomenon itself more so than on the contours of the research about the mass media.
This text considers how far culture can be regulated through formal controls on the media and how such controls are shaped and contested in an age of cultural diversity and global cultural industries. The book deals with such aspects of regulation as: sexuality, which poses issues of the control of representations, pornography and censorship; ......
'The notions of 'creative industry' and 'creative economy' have become ever more insistent in contemporary cultural, economic and urbanistic debates. Provoking vociferous opposition as well as overblown hyperbole the questions raised by these ideas can no longer be side-stepped or dismissed. This extremely rich book surveys the full range of the creative economy, from ethnic-based craftspeople to digital second lifers, and includes Africa and Asia alongside the heartlands of USA and Europe. In so doing it tackles some fundamental questions head-on. It gives full voice to those anxious about global homogenisation and those powerfully critical of the monopolisation and concentration of ownership and control by the mega-corporations. But as the key introductory and concluding chapters make clear, it is simply not possible any longer to ignore the enormous transformational power of the creative economy. We have to both understand the new cultural and economic landscape in which we live and to avoid the blanket condemnations of those who would argue that this global creative economy is inimical to meaningful culture. In this book we find the tools to help achieve both of these' - Professor Justin O'Connor, School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds 'This catholic volume has succeeded admirably in drawing together a range of leading academics and renowned artists, cultural activists, and consultants to interrogate a series of critical questions about the cultural economy. Drawing from diverse disciplinary and theoretical positions, questions such as whether and how the cultural economy is becoming more globalized, the relationship between commodification and aesthetics, national and transnational patterns of investment, production, distribution and consumption of cultural goods and services, and the policy implications of these various trends, have been critically explored. These diversities of questions, perspectives and authors have been matched by an equally impressive geo-cultural coverage' - Lily Kong, Professor of Geography, National University of Singapore 'In the age of globalization we are no longer home alone. Migration brings other worlds into our own just as the global reach of the media transmits our world into the hearts and minds of others. Often incommensurate values are crammed together in the same public square. Increasingly we all today live in the kind of 'edge cultures' we used to see only on the frontiers of civilizations in places like Hong Kong or Istanbul. The resulting frictions and fusions are shaping the soul of the coming world order. I can think of no other project with the ambitious scope of defining this emergent reality than "The Cultures and Globalization Project". I can think of no more capable minds than Raj Isar and Helmut Anheier who can pull it off' - Nathan Gardels, Editor-in-Chief, NPQ, Global Services, Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune Media 'This series represents an innovative approach to the central issues of globalization, that phenomenon of such undefined contours. This volume relates these to the cultural and creative industries in a wide range of powerful analytical perspectives' - Lupwishi Mbuyumba, Director of the Observatory of Cultural Policies in Africa The world's cultures and their forms of creation, presentation and preservation are deeply affected by globalization in ways that are inadequately documented and understood. The Cultures and Globalization series is designed to fill this void in our knowledge. In this series, leading experts and emerging scholars track cultural trends connected to globalization throughout the world, resulting in a powerful analytic tool-kit that encompasses the transnational flows and scapes of contemporary cultures. Each volume presents data on cultural phenomena through colourful, innovative information graphics to give a quantitative portrait of the cultural dimensions and contours of globalization. This second volume The Cultural Economy analyses the dynamic relationship in which culture is part of the process of economic change that in turn changes the conditions of culture. It brings together perspectives from different disciplines to examine such critical issues as: " the production of cultural goods and services and the patterns of economic globalization " the relationship between the commodification of the cultural economy and the aesthetic realm " current and emerging organizational forms for the investment, production, distribution and consumption of cultural goods and services " the complex relations between creators, producers, distributors and consumers of culture " the policy implications of a globalizing cultural economy By demonstrating empirically how the cultural industries interact with globalization, this volume will provide students of contemporary culture with a unique, indispensable reference tool.
This book will play an important role in providing structure to a broad, fragmented discipline. I believe it will, at the very least, create important dialogues about what we now know//understand about areas of mass media, and where we should move as a discipline.a[Thisabook will]ahelp orient future scholars about the imperative to organize our re search more efficiently so that we can expand our knowledge about media phenomena. a Dr. Potter is an excellent writer, able to distill important ideas in a compelling, yet en gaging way. His passion about the topic clearly shines through and this is a major rea son why I believe scholars (and future scholars) will gravitate toward this book.oa --Roger Cooper, Ohio UniversityIn Arguing for a General Framework for Mass Media Scholarship, media scholar and bestselling author W. James Potter challenges media scholars and students to change the way they think about the media.a His goals are to: (1) take a macro approach and focus on explanations that span across four major facets of the mass media: (2) present a critical analysis of the mass media literatures and offer a recalibration of what we know about the media; anda(3) provide structure to mass media scholarship that is focused on the most useful ideas in the phenomenon of the mass media, not lines of research.The arguments and findings in the book are based on sound, in-depth research and analysis. The book presents scholars with an innovative way of thinking about the mass media. It challenges many of their assumptions and practices: Some scholars will find this very stimulating and will learn a great deal by working through the arguments presented in the book; other scholars will likely find themselves arguing against some of Potter's positions u but in so doing, they will be examining their own assumptions to a much deeper level and thereby be stimulated by the experience of reading the book.KEY FEATURES &BAD:amp; BENEFITS**The book is respectful of the wide range of theories and methodologies. Potter does not take an approach that sanctions one world view, method, or theory over others. All are important and useful. However, we need to integrate the value of all approaches instead of arguing over differences. On first reading, his arguments might appear as subversive with so many challenges to past thinking and practices; however,ahe takes a constructive approach: not solely criticizing faulty practices, but providing detailed recommendations about alternative assumptions, re-conceptualizations, and alterations in research practices.**The book is more interested in the future than in the past. It is not just a review of the literatures. It identifies shortcomings and proposes strategies for overcoming them. It presents an innovative plan for moving beyond the base of scholarship produced in the last century and into a new generation of thinking that will provide even more useful explanations for the next millennium.** Most explanations of the mass media focus on only one sub-topic of the overall phenomenon u such as one effect, one type of content, one issue of audience construction, or one type of channel. This book takes a macro approach and focuses on explanations that span across all four major facets of the mass media u the organizations, the content, the audiences, and the effects. ** The few treatments of the mass media that exist are general in nature and are very descriptive, that is, they present thumbnail descriptions of one theory after another, or one research finding after another.a This book presents a critical analyses of the mass media literatures. It presents arguments why certain parts of those literatures u while fairly large u have not produced much value for the field, while other writings u often overlooked or discounted u contain powerful ideas that can be fashioned into elegant explanations about some persistently puzzling aspects of the mass media. This critical analysis results in a re-calibration of what we know about the media.** This re-calibration of important findings along with some creative speculations are synthesized into a fresh approach to explaining the mass media.**The book is not structured by media channels, theories, world-views, or other typical devices used to organize books on the mass media. Instead, it is structured by a vision of what Potter considers the most important ideas to have been generated by mass media scholarship over the last half century. **The focus is on the mass media phenomenon itself more so than on the contours of the research about the mass media.
Media's reach penetrates nearly every corner of the world. But it has also been a contested realm, embodying class politics and the interests of monopoly capital. This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the economic and political powers that seek to consolidate private control of media with increasing profit - all at the expense of democracy.
`This book appears to fill a substantial gap in the literature at present. There are, quite simply, no books available which engage seriously and competently with the presentation of health issues in the media, and certainly none which focuses on representations of health and illness in as thematically coherent a manner as Seale proposes to do' - ......
A Sociological Theory of Performance and Imagination
`This book is worth reading for a number of reasons. It is the first introductory work of critical audience research that suggests how we can study the connection of media consumption in general with every day life, and it also goes beyond its competitors in showing how postmodern thinking can help us in the analysis of a "whole way of life"' - Journal of Communication Audiences are problematic and the study of audiences has represented a key site of activity in the social sciences and humanities. Offering a timely review of the past 50 years of theoretical and methodological debate Audiences argues the case for a paradigmatic shift in audience research. This shift, argue the authors, is necessitated by the emergence of the `diffused audience'. Audience experience can no longer be simply classified as `simple' or `mass', for in modern advanced capitalist societies, people are members of an audience all the time. Being a member of an audience is no longer an exceptional event, nor even an everyday event, rather it is constitutive of everyday life. This book offers an invaluable review of the literature and a new point of departure for audience research.
Representing Black Britain offers the first critical history of Black and Asian representation on British television from the earliest days of broadcasting to the present day. Working through programmes as wide-ranging as the early documentaries to 'ethic sitcoms' and youth television, this book provides a detailed analysis of shifting ......
