Anthropological interest in mass communication and media has exploded in the last two decades, engaging and challenging the work on the media in mass communications, cultural studies, sociology and other disciplines. This is the first book to offer a systematic overview of the themes, topics and methodologies in the emerging dialogue between anthropologists studying mass communication and media analysts turning to ethnography and cultural analysis. Drawing on dozens of semiotic, ethnographic and cross-cultural studies of mass media, it offers new insights into the analysis of media texts, offers models for the ethnographic study of media productio and consumption, and suggests approaches for understanding media in the modern world system. Placing the anthropological study of mass media into historical and interdisciplinary perspectives, this book examines how work in cultural studies, sociology, mass communication and other disciplines has helped shape the re-emerging interest in media by anthropologists. A former Washington D.C. journalist, Mark Allan Peterson is currently Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. He has published numerous articles on American, South Asian and Middle Eastern media, and has taught courses on anthropological approaches to media t at he American University in Cairo, the University of Hamburg, and Georgetown University.

Rev. ed. of: Media and culture. 2nd ed. c2000. Includes bibliographical references (p. 575-582) and index.

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.

In this large-scale, postindustrial society, the mass media has become deeply embedded into the lifestyles of everyday citizens. People are lured by television ratings, celebrity-sponsored products, and high-profile crimes and scandals, all finding their way into living rooms across America by satellites, cable wires, and modems. This book examines the real, imagined, and potential effects of the mass media on individuals and society. The book explores the processes through which the mass media is enabled and constrained by such factors as technology, law, industry structure, and occupational careers, accounting for the vast changes that have developed in recent years. This book is divided into two parts. Part I defines mass communication and locates its role in social life. Part II considers the factors which influence media content, providing insight into how the industry operates. Sociologists, Communication and Mass Media specialists, film, music, and pop culture critics, and enthusiasts of these fields.

The reference will discuss mass media around the world in their varied forms—newspapers, magazines, radio, television, film, books, music, websites, and social media—and will describe the role of each in both mirroring and shaping society.

Mass media has become an integral part of the human experience. News travels around the world in a split second affecting people in other countries in untold ways. Although being on top of the news may be good, at least for news junkies, mass media also transmits values or the lack thereof, condenses complex events and thoughts to simplified sound bites and often ignores the essence of an event or story. The selective bibliography gathers the books and magazine literature over the previous ten years while providing access through author, title and subject indexes.

Globalization, Development and the Mass Media gives a comprehensive and critical account of the theoretical changes in communication studies from the early theories of development communication through to the contemporary critiques of globalization. It examines two main currents of thought. Firstly, the ways in which the media can be used to effect change and development. It traces the evolution of thinking from attempts to spread ′modernity′ by way of using the media through to alternative perspectives based on encouraging participation in development communication. Secondly, the elaboration of the theory of media imperialism, the criticisms that it provoked and its replacement as the dominant theory of international communication by globalization.