This book is about communication, a universal, yet particular, form of linking people and ideas. It details the growing and multiform uses, functions, interactions, and effects of communication in the contemporary “world-society”, and highlights the dialectic between society and communication. It will also serve to stimulate critical thinking. The book is structured as a compendium of the sociology of communication, providing a practical and pedagogical-didactic resource especially for students, including case studies, summary-tables, questions for review, and excerpts from selected works and authors. This book is a major contribution to cultural, media, and digital studies, and will be of interest to those who live in an increasingly digital, technological, and global society, and want to understand a phenomenon as social as it is inevitable, spontaneous, and influential.

When first published, Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media made history with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and life in the twentieth century.

Mass communication is a sub-field of communication studies and often associated with media studies. It is the process by which a person or organization forms a message and conveys it to a large, anonymous, heterogeneous audience. Mass communication includes advertising, journalism, public relations, social media, audio media, convergence, film and television, photography, interactive media, and ebooks. A form of media that uses electronic devices for distribution is known as digital media. This media is created, viewed, modified, and distributed using electronic devices. An individual's ability to find, evaluate and compose information through writing and other media on various digital platforms is termed as digital literacy. This book discusses the fundamentals as well as modern approaches to mass communication. Its extensive content provides the readers with a thorough understanding of the subject. This book aims to serve as a resource guide for students and experts alike and contribute to the growth of the discipline.

New and updated English translation of the highly successful book on digital media This book introduces readers to the vast and rich world of digital media. It provides a strong starting point for understanding digital media’s social and political significance to our culture and the culture of others—drawing on an emergent and increasingly rich set of empirical and theoretical studies on the role and development of digital media in contemporary societies. Touching on the core points behind the discipline, the book addresses a wide range of topics, including media economics, online cooperation, open source, social media, software production, globalization, brands, marketing, the cultural industry, labor, and consumption. Presented in six sections—Media and Digital Technologies; The Information Society; Cultures and Identities; Digital Collaboration; Public Sphere and Power; Digital Economies—the book offers in-depth chapter coverage of new and old media; network infrastructure; networked economy and globalization; the history of information technologies; the evolution of networks; sociality and digital media; media and identity; collaborative media; open source and innovation; politics and democracy; social movements; surveillance and control; digital capitalism; global inequalities and development; and more. Delivers a reliable, compact and quick introduction to the core issues analyzed by digital culture studies and sociology of information societies Interweaves main topics and theories with several examples and up-to-date case studies, often linked to our everyday lives on the internet, as well as suggestions for further readings Anchors examples to discussions of the main sociological, political, and anthropological theoretical approaches at stake to help students make sense of the changes brought about by digital media Uses critical sociological and political theory alongside every day examples to discuss concepts such as online sociality, digital labor, digital value creation, and the reputation economy Clear and concise throughout, Introduction to Digital Media is an excellent primer for those teaching and studying digital culture and media.

Media Cultures in Latin America updates and expands contemporary global understandings of the region’s media and cultural research. Drawing on forty years of contributions made by Latin American cultural studies to the global media research, the book connects this history to newly developing work that has yet to be given deep consideration in anglophone scholarship. The authors emphasise themes that are key to media and cultural scholarship: distinctive from other world regions, these intellectual debates have been central to how media and communication is studied and produced in Latin America. This approach provides students and scholars with a better framework for engaging with Latin American research beyond the specificities of just one place or one kind of cultural product or technology. The book is an essential read for upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students of media studies, anthropology, cultural studies, communication studies, and Latin American studies. It will also be of interest to students and scholars learning about human rights, environmental, indigenous and political activism.

In this provocative book Terhi Rantanen challenges conventional ways of thinking about globalization and shows how it cannot be understood without studying the role of the media. Rantanen begins with an accessible overview of globalization and the pivotal role of the media.

The work of cultural and political theorist Stuart Hall, a pioneer of Cultural Studies who passed away in 2014, remains more relevant than ever. In Stuart Hall Lives, scholars engage with Hall’s most enduring essays, including "Encoding/Decoding" and "Notes on Deconstructing the Popular," bringing them into the context of the 21st century. Different chapters consider resistant media consumers, online journalism, debates around the American Confederate flag and rainbow flags, the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, and contemporary moral panics. The book also includes Hall’s important essay on French theorist Louis Althusser, which is introduced here by Lawrence Grossberg and Jennifer Slack. Finally, two reminiscences by one of Hall’s former colleagues and one of his former students offer wide-ranging reflections on his years as director of Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK, and as head of the Department of Sociology at The Open University. Together, the contributions paint a picture of a brilliant theorist whose work and legacy is as vital as ever. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication.