This innovative introduction to media studies challenges conventional accounts of what media do to people – focusing instead on what people do with media in the course of everyday life. By rejecting the conventional media studies approach, the book provides a fresh way of thinking about media cultures and provokes thought into how media influences daily social norms. Smartly organized, each chapter offers a broad discussion of various facets of media, such as technology, social media and industries. Key trends and traditions are also considered, helping to define how media has become so entwined in the everyday experience. Written by a respected author and academic in the field, the book offers an accessible overview for students of media, communication and cultural studies looking to explore how modern-day media practices impact on the experience of everyday life, making this the essential companion to introductory media studies courses.

This book explores how social media is used in South Africa, through a range of case studies exploring various social networking sites and applications. This volume explores how, over the past decade, social media platforms have deeply penetrated the fabric of everyday life. The author considers South Africans’ use of wearable tech and use of online health and sports tracking systems via mobile phones within the broader context of the digital data economy. The author also focuses on the dating app Tinder, to show how people negotiate and redefine intimacy through the practice of online dating via strategic performances in pursuit of love, sex and intimacy. The book concludes with the use of Facebook and Twitter for social activism (e.g. Fees Must Fall), as well as networked community building as in the case of the #imstaying movement. This book will be of interest to social media academics and students, as well as anyone interested in social media, politics and cultural life in South Africa.

What position have television, radio and other electronic media come to occupy in people's day-to-day lives and social relationships? Shaun Moores offers answers to this and other questions, drawing on a range of his investigations and reflections on media and everyday life in modern society.

Focuses on how people appropriate media in their daily lives. This book contributes to the burgeoning field of interactional linguistic media studies. It analyses the minutiae of the moment when people actively appropriate media for their own purposes in different fashions.

The Audience in Everyday Life argues that a media audience cannot be studied in front of the television alone--their interaction with media does not simply end when the set is turned off. Instead, we must study the daily lives of audiences to find the undercurrents of media influence in everyday life. Bird provides a host of useful tools and methods for scholars and students interested in the ways media is consumed in everyday life.

Digital Media, Sharing and Everyday Life provides nuanced accounts of the processes of sharing in digital culture and the complexities that arise in them. The book explores definitions of sharing, and the roles that our digital devices and the platforms we use play in these practices. Drawing upon practice theory to outline a theoretical framework of sharing practice, the book emphasizes the need for a coherent and consistent framework of sharing in digital culture and explains what this framework might look like. With insightful descriptions, the book draws out the relationship of sharing to privacy and control, the labored strategies and boundaries of reciprocation, and our relationships with the technologies which mediate sharing practices. The volume is an essential read for researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students in Media and Communication, New Media, Sociology, Internet Studies, and Cultural Studies.

'Narratives in Popular Culure, Media and Everyday life provdes a sweeping coverage of the multiple facets of narrative theroy... Berger must be commended for his attempt to put together a reader friendly report on the lives of many rich and famous narrative theories' - Narrative Inquiry