1st Edition
Classics in Media Theory
This comprehensive collection introduces and contextualizes media studies’ most influential texts and thinkers, from early 20th century mass communication to the first stages of digital culture in the 21st century.
The volume brings together influential theories about media, mediation and communication, as well as the relationships between media, culture and society. Each chapter presents a close reading of a classic text, written by a contemporary media studies scholar. Each contributor presents a summary of this text, relates it to the traditions of ideas in media studies and highlights its contemporary relevance. The text explores the core theoretical traditions of media studies: in particular, cultural studies, mass communication research, medium theory and critical theory, helping students gain a better understanding of how media studies has developed under shifting historical conditions and giving them the tools to analyse their contemporary situation.
This is essential reading for students of media and communication and adjacent fields such as journalism studies, sociology and cultural studies.
Introduction Stina Bengtsson, Staffan Ericson & Fredrik Stiernstedt 1. Walter Benjamin (1936) "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" Linus Andersson 2. Herta Herzog (1941) ‘On Borrowed Experience’ Jonas Andersson Schwarz 3. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (1947) ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’ Sven-Olov Wallenstein 4. Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton (1948) ‘Mass Communication, Popular Taste and Organised Social Action’ Sven Ross 5. Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver (1949) The Mathematical Theory of Communication Heike Graf 6. Erving Goffman (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Espen Ytreberg 7. Jürgen Habermas (1962) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society Anne Kaun 8. Marshall McLuhan (1967) The Medium is the Massage Ingrid Forsler 9. Michel Foucault (1971) The Order of Discourse Annika Egan Sjölander 10. Jean Baudrillard (1971) ‘Requiem for the Media’ Göran Bolin 11. Stuart Hall (1973) ‘Encoding and Decoding’ Johan Fornäs 12. Raymond Williams (1974) Television: Technology and Cultural Form Staffan Ericson 13. James Carey (1975) "A Cultural Approach to Communication" Lars Lundgren 14. Laura Mulvey (1975) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Sofia Johansson 15. Dallas Smythe (1977) ‘Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism’ Fredrik Stiernstedt 16. Gaye Tuchman (1978) Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality Anna Roosvall 17. Pierre Bourdieu (1979) Distinction Johan Lindell 18. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein (1979) The Printing Press as an Agent of Change Marie Cronqvist & Kajsa Weber 19. Roland Barthes (1980) Camera Lucida Patrik Åker 20. Benedict Anderson (1983) Imagined Communities Per Ståhlberg 21. Frederic Jameson (1984) ‘Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ Anders Burman & Magnus Rodell 22. Janice Radway (1984) Reading the Romance Stina Bengtsson 23. Neil Postman (1985) Amusing Ourselves to Death Michael Forsman 24. Friedrich Kittler (1985) Discourse Networks 1800/1900 Otto Fischer 25. Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz (1992) Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History Johanna Sumiala 26. N. Katherine Hayles (1999) How We Became Posthuman Jesper Olsson 27. John Durham Peters (1999) Speaking into the Air Johan Fredrikzon 28. Lev Manovich (2001) The Language of New Media Peter Jakobsson
Biography
Stina Bengtsson is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University. Her research covers media audiences, practices and ethics, and how people coexist with media technologies in everyday life. She has published several books and articles in journals such as Communication Theory, Media, Culture and Society and Journalism.
Staffan Ericson is Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University. He has previously co-edited special sections in the International Journal of Communications and Media War and Conflict. He is currently a participant in the project A Sea of Data: Mediated Temporalities of the Baltic Sea.
Fredrik Stiernstedt is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University. His research covers media industries, media policy, media history and media trust. Recent publications include Prison Media: Incarceration and the Infrastructures of Work and Technology (with Anne Kaun) and The Future of the Nordic Media Model: A Digital Media Welfare State? (with Peter Jakobsson and Johan Lindell).
"The risks of amnesia in media debates are huge, as we deal with the headlong rush of AI. But this outstanding collection reminds us of the deep roots media and communications studies has in the 20th century’s sociology, psychology and cultural theory classics. Twenty-eight helpful explanatory essays unpack those texts in illuminating ways and give today’s students all the context they need for understanding the latest media developments in a well-grounded way." - Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science
"Summarizing a milky way of stellar contributions to media and communication research and situating each contribution in wider disciplinary and interdisciplinary universes, Classics in Media Theory provides an essential companion and complement to the textbooks that commonly guide introductory courses in the field." - Klaus Bruhn Jensen, University of Copenhagen
"This valuable resource for professors and students provides elegant pedagogical translations of theoretical texts that have become conceptual pillars of Media and Communication Studies. Written with care, contemporary sensitivity and empathy for the newcomers to the discipline, the chapters compellingly demonstrate the abiding relevance of these works to the exploration and understanding of our current media world." - Maria Bakardjieva, University of Calgary, Canada
