Critical Media Studies: An Introduction

Fully revised to reflect today’s media environment, this new edition of Critical Media Studies offers students a comprehensive introduction to the field and demonstrates how to think critically about the power and influence of media in our daily lives. Material new to this edition includes a chapter on sociological analysis and reveals new ways audiences use media in their everyday lives to manage social roles, relationships, and contexts. Readers will also appreciate the extensive updating of previously discussed examples to reflect contemporary industry standards, textual forms, and audience behaviors and the inclusion of more international material to reflect contemporary media’s global reach.

Continuing its well-received writing style that is both engaging and accessible, the book’s twelve perspectives provide readers with a diverse array of critical approaches to media studies, including original approaches such as erotic, sociological, and ecological analysis. Combining the best of well-tested theory with cutting-edge scholarship, this new edition of Critical Media Studies, offers invaluable insights into our current understanding of the nature and consequences of media in today’s world.

Updated and enhanced online resources for instructors – including PowerPoint slides, test bank, study guides, and sample assignments – can be found at www.wiley.com/go/criticalmediastudies.

Brian L. Ott is Associate Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver. He is the author of The Small Screen: How Television Equips Us to Live in the Information Age (Wiley Blackwell, 2007) and co-editor of It's Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era (2008).

Robert L. Mack is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His writing has appeared in The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts and The Journal of GLBT Family Studies.