About the Book

Reviews

Stuart Hannabuss, Aberdeen Business School, in Library Review -

"The publication of the fourth edition of this well-established student text is welcome and comes as no surprise. It has been popular with students and it is a value-for-money work to have in multiple copies in school, college and university libraries supporting media studies courses. The fourth edition proves that a good text can be kept fully up-to-date: much has happened since 1996 when the first edition appeared (the second was 1999 and the third 2003), and the new edition reflects the structural shift to digital, changes in the industry, the effect of convergence, and above all the need to apply regular media concepts like representation and ideology, genre and narrative, audiences and media practices to new and topical issues and examples. In its field and of its type, this holds its own with any likely rival.

The emphasis of the book is that of media studies, and this is where most of the critical attention (and space) has gone. Readers will recognize familiar approaches like narrative, applied here to a new case study (that of CSI : Miami), demonstrating how theory can and should be applied, and like genre, again applied to new case-study material. Topically, too, it applies a good discussion of representation to immigration, and advertising to celebrity media coverage and marketing. This clearly drives the need for regular new editions but at the same time offers students and teachers very vivid material likely to resonate in the personal cultural lives of students. Text is clear and lively, with colour illustrations, informative shoulder-notes, contrasting boxes for different material, and activities. References are provided with every chapter and at the end of the book.

For readers interested in the media and communication industry, which crosses over in many ways with the information industry, chapters on industries (the commercial process of production and distribution, media production itself, acquisition and ownership, and case studies on major players like Time Warner and on the music industry) and on distribution (the impact of digital, film distribution, the tabloids and compacts) will be of interest. A chapter on ‘free choice and the free market’ provides good introductory coverage of regulation and self-regulation, and effects on pricing and content, but draws tantalisingly back from examining markets like the USA which regulate less, as well as really failing to make any sense of competition law. Issues for other works, clearly. A chapter on globalisation, while readable, slides over corporatism and convergence, and needs to prove its case about cultural imperialism and indigenous industry. Taking us ‘back’, as it were, to the mainstream of media studies are two further discussions of institutions (their shaping effect on what they say and what we know, editorial policy in television) and ideology and power (Gramsci, news pluralism, and discourse).

These are chapters to give an overall impression of what is going on, and, while they will provide students with plenty of thought, they will also challenge tutors to locate further information and provide some of. In a field as fast-changing and competitive as academic and professional media studies, this is a constant pressure on the librarian, who will find the book not only useful for what it recommends (the range of primary and secondary texts is good, above all for core collections) but also useful for sections on media research, including using search engines, with an applied example on research into mobile phones). For readers looking for relevant material on production – say, print and video – a chapter on production techniques will be interesting, though there is little directly on web work, and elsewhere there is material on magazine production.

So this new edition will continue to open up exciting and topical media issues to students, and do it in a media-savvy way using layout and colour and interactivity and an unfussy tone to do it. It all adds up to an effective introduction to its field and a lead-in to the numerous other more specialist works in its field (which really need to be followed up by tutors and located and provided by librarians). Its college and first-year-undergraduate target audience is clear from the start, and that is where it is best used." - Stuart Hannabuss, Aberdeen Business School