What is news? Why does news turn out like it does? What factors influence the creation, production, and dissemination of news? Cultural Meanings of News takes on these deceptively simple questions through an essential collection of seminal and contemporary studies by leaders in the fields of mass communication and media studies. Similar in format and purpose to editor Dan Berkowitz's award-winning Social Meanings of News, this new volume represents a conceptual update, a continuation of the discourse about the nature of news and how it comes to be, moving ideas ahead from the earlier tradition of sociological approaches to the more pervasive cultural perspectives that inform understandings about news. Cultural Meanings of News provides a carefully selected set of readings, organized into thematic areas that each probe a dimension of the literature: from sociological roots to cultural perspectives; news as narrative and cultural text; newswork as cultural ritual; news as cultural myth; news and its interpretive communities; news as a source and reflection of collective memory; toward the future of news research. This text-reader provides students and scholars with first-hand exposure to cultural approaches to the study of news, while also providing an organizing framework for understanding the commonalties and differences between threads in the research. The goals are to engage readers through guided immersion in the material.

This Reader presents classic news studies representing several methodologies and approaches to guide students in their initial exploration into the topics.

The Handbook of Media and Mass Communication Theory presents a comprehensive collection of original essays that focus on all aspects of current and classic theories and practices relating to media and mass communication. Focuses on all aspects of current and classic theories and practices relating to media and mass communication Includes essays from a variety of global contexts, from Asia and the Middle East to the Americas Gives niche theories new life in several essays that use them to illuminate their application in specific contexts Features coverage of a wide variety of theoretical perspectives Pays close attention to the use of theory in understanding new communication contexts, such as social media 2 Volumes

Modernity and Postmodern Culture is a critical introduction to claims concerning the postmodernization of culture and society. Contemporary culture may be 'postmodern' in the sense of fluidity of meaning, changing power relations and commodification in art, entertainment and everyday life, but modernity persists in the dynamics of capitalist civilization, albeit in an increasingly reflexive mode characterized by widespread uncertainty about social existence, progress and rationality. The theories of Baudrillard, Beck, Castells, Giddens, Habermas, Haraway, Jameson, Lyotard and others on the contemporary scene are discussed, and specific issues concerning architecture, theme parks, screen culture, science, technology and the environment are examined. Jim McGuigan argues that there have been tensions between instrumental and critical reason throughout the history of modernity that are still being played out.

This book offers a fresh and accessible introduction to the relationship between media power and cultural production. By marshalling a range of theoretical perspectives from political economy and cultural studies, The Media and Cultural Production invites the reader to analyze the relationship between the making of meaning, political, economic and social power and the machinery of cultural production - the media. The book: critically examines the notion of the `cultural industries'; examines the regulatory framework in which the cultural industries operate; looks at the impact of globalization on cultural production; explores the way in which meaning is both produced and contested. The Media and

Cultural Protest in Journalism, Documentary Films and the Arts: Between Protest and Professionalisation entails a comprehensive account of the history and trajectory of contemporary journalistic, (documentary) film, and arts and cultural actors rooted (partially or wholly) in radical, alternative, community, voluntary, participatory and independent movements primarily in Britain and Germany. It focuses particularly on the examination of production and organisational contexts of selected case studies, some of which date from the countercultural era. The book takes a transnational and interdisciplinary approach encompassing a range of theoretical perspectives – drawn from the political economy of communication tradition; alternative media scholarship; journalism studies; critical sociological and cultural studies of media industries; cultural industries research; and critical and social theory – in conjunction with extensive ethnographic fieldwork. It does so to reveal the obscure nature of media and cultural production and organisation at seventeen media and cultural actors based in Britain and Germany, including South Africa and Nigeria. A particular focus is placed on how such actors balance competing imperatives of a civic/socio-political, professional, artistic and commercial nature as well as various systemic pressures, and on how they navigate the resultant ambivalences, paradoxes and tensions in their day-to-day work. In essence, the book highlights key insights into a changing nature and quality of engagement with social and political realities in protest cultures.

Media Control: News as an Institution of Power and Social Control challenges traditional (and even some radical) perceptions of how the news works. While it's clear that journalists don't operate objectively ? reporters don't just cover news, but they make it ? Media Control goes a step further by arguing that the cultural institution of news approaches and presents everyday information from particular and dominant cultural positions that benefit the power elite. From analysing how the press operate as police agents by conducting surveillance and instituting social order through its coverage of crime and police action to bolstering private business and neoliberal principles by covering the news through notions of boosterism, Media Control presents the news through a cultural lens. Robert E. Gutsche, Jr. introduces or advances readers' applications of critical race theory and cultural studies scholarship to explore cultural meanings within news coverage of police action, the criminal justice system, and embedding into the news democratic values that are later used by the power elite to oppress and repress portions of the citizenry. Media Control helps the reader explicate how the power elite use the press and the veil of the Fourth Estate to further white ideologies and American Imperialism.

This Reader presents classic news studies representing several methodologies and approaches to guide students in their initial exploration into the topics.

"This book compiles and integrates highly innovative work aimed at bridging the fields of anthropology and consumer behavior." —Journal of Consumer Affairs " . . . fascinating . . . ambitious and interesting . . . " —Canadian Advertising Foundation Newsletter " . . . an anthropological dig into consumerism brimming with original thought . . . " —The Globe and Mail "Grant McCracken has written a provocative book that puts consumerism in its place in Western society—at the centre." —Report on Business Magazine " . . . a stimulating addition to knowledge and theory about the interrelationship of culture and consumption." —Choice "[McCracken's] synthesis of anthropological and consumer studies material will give historians new ideas and methods to integrate into their thinking." —Maryland Historian "The book offers a fresh and much needed cultural interpretation of consumption." —Journal of Consumer Policy "The volume will help balance the prevailing cognitive and social psychological cast of consumer research and should stimulate more comprehensive investigation into consumer behavior." —Journal of Marketing Research " . . . broad scope, enthusiasm and imagination . . . a significant contribution to the literature on consumption history, consumer behavior, and American material culture." —Winterhur Portfolio "For this is a superb book, a definitive exploration of its subject that makes use of the full range of available literature." —American Journal of Sociology "McCracken's book is a fine synthesis of a new current of thought that strives to create an interdisciplinary social science of consumption behaviors, a current to which folklorists have much to contribute." —Journal of American Folklore This provocative book takes a refreshing new view of the culture of consumption. McCracken examines the interplay of culture and consumer behavior from the anthropologist's point of view and provides new insights into the way we view ourselves and our society.

Exploring the forms and meanings of mediated politics beyond the news cycle, this book encompasses genres drawn from television, radio, the press and the internet, assessing their individual and collective contribution to contemporary political culture through textual analysis and thematic review.