The new edition of this widely adopted book reveals how the popular media contribute to widespread myths and misunderstanding about cultural diversity. While focused on the impact of television, feature film, and popular music, the authors reach far beyond media to explore how our understanding, values, and beliefs about race, class, gender and sexual orientation are constructed. They analyze how personal histories, combined with the collective history of oppression and liberation, contribute to stereotypes and misinformation, as well as how personal engagement with media can impact prospects for individual and social freedom. Along with updated media examples, expanded theories and analysis, this edition explores even more deeply the coverage of race in two chapters, discusses more broadly how men and boys are depicted in the media and socialized, and how class issues have become even more visible since the Great Recession of the 21st century and the Occupy movements. Special activities and exercises are provided in the book and an online Instructor's Manual is available to adopters.

Analyzing Media Messages provides a comprehensive and comprehensible guide to conducting content analysis research. It establishes a formal definition of quantitative content analysis; gives step-by-step instruction on designing a content analysis study; and explores in depth research questions that recur in content analysis, in such areas as measurement, sampling, reliability, data analysis, validity, and technology. This Second Edition maintains the concise, accessible approach of the first edition while offering an updated discussion and new examples. The goal of this resource is to make content analysis understandable, and to produce a useful guide for novice and experienced researchers alike. Accompanied by detailed, practical examples of current and classic applications, this volume is appropriate for use as a primary text for content analysis coursework, or as a supplemental text in research methods courses. It is also an indispensable reference for researchers in mass communication fields, political science, and other social and behavioral sciences.

Covering print, photography, film, radio, television, and new media, this textbook instructs readers on how to take a critical approach to media and interpret the information overload that is disseminated via mass communication. This fourth edition of Keys to Interpreting Media Messages supplies a critical and qualitative approach to media literacy analysis. Now updated with conceptual changes, current examples, updated references, and coverage of new developments in media— particularly in digital, interactive forms—this book addresses all forms of information disseminated via mass communication. Organized into three sections, the book first presents a theoretical framework for the critical analysis of media text that covers the definition of media literacy as well as fundamental principles and concepts. Part II focuses on the application of this methodological framework to the analysis of advertising, journalism, American political communications, and interactive media. Part III considers specific mass media issues, such as violence in the media, media and children, and global communications, and discusses outcomes of having a media-literate population.

Characterized by its multi-level interdisciplinary character, communication has become a variable field -- one in which the level of analysis varies. This has had important ramifications for the study of communication because, to some extent, the questions one asks are determined by the methods one has available to answer them. As a result, communication research is characterized by the plethora of both qualitative and quantitative approaches used by its practitioners. These include survey and experimental methods, and content, historical, and rhetorical analyses. A variety of tools has been developed in cognitive psychology and psychophysiology which attempts to measure "thinking" without asking people how they do it. This book is devoted to exploring how these methods might be used to further knowledge about the process of communication. The methods chosen have all been used extensively in cognitive and experimental psychology. Each chapter in this book is designed to describe the history of the method being introduced, the theory behind it, how to go about using it, and how it has already been used to study some area of communication. The methods introduced here vary widely in terms of the amount of equipment and training needed to use them. Some require only theoretical knowledge and a paper and pencil; others require more elaborate hardware and software for implementation. These methods also vary widely in terms of what sorts of variables they can be used to measure. Some of them adapt quite readily to traditional communication variables like persuasion, attitude change, and knowledge; others are more applicable to process type variables such as attention, arousal, involvement, encoding, and retrieval.

The new edition of this widely acclaimed book reveals how the popular media contributes to widespread myths and misunderstanding about cultural diversity. Along with updated media examples, expanded theories and analysis, this edition explores even more deeply the coverage of race in two chapters, discusses more broadly how men and boys are depicted in the media and socialized, and how class issues have become even more visible during the Great Recession of the 21st century and the Occupy movements.

Media Messages and Public Health addresses the full range of methodological and conceptual issues involved in content analysis research, specifically focused on public health-related messages and behaviors. Uniquely tailored to the challenges faced by content researchers interested in the study of public health topics, coverage includes: Conceptual and methodological foundations involved in the practice of content analysis research used to examine public health issues. Measurement challenges posed by the broad range of media. Use of content analysis across multiple media types. The potential for individual differences in audience interpretation of message content. Case studies that examine public health issues in the media to illustration the decisions that are made when developing content analysis studies. The volume concludes with a set of guidelines for optimal content analysis research, and suggests ways in which the field can accommodate new technologies and new ways of using media. Developed for researchers in communication, media, and public health, this unique resource demonstrates how the variety of decisions researchers make along the way allows the exploration of traditions, assumptions and implications for each varying alternative and ultimately advances the science of content analysis research.

Analyzing Media Messages provides a comprehensive and comprehensible guide to conducting content analysis research. It establishes a formal definition of quantitative content analysis; gives step-by-step instruction on designing a content analysis study; and explores in depth research questions that recur in content analysis, in such areas as measurement, sampling, reliability, data analysis, validity, and technology. This Second Edition maintains the concise, accessible approach of the first edition while offering an updated discussion and new examples. The goal of this resource is to make content analysis understandable, and to produce a useful guide for novice and experienced researchers alike. Accompanied by detailed, practical examples of current and classic applications, this volume is appropriate for use as a primary text for content analysis coursework, or as a supplemental text in research methods courses. It is also an indispensable reference for researchers in mass communication fields, political science, and other social and behavioral sciences.

Focusing on language and media in Asian Russia, particularly in Buryat territories, Mixed Messages engages debates about the role of minority media in society, alternative visions of modernity, and the impact of media on everyday language use. Kathryn E. Graber demonstrates that language and the production, circulation, and consumption of media are practices by which residents of the region perform and negotiate competing possible identities. What languages should be used in newspapers, magazines, or radio and television broadcasts? Who should produce them? What kinds of publics are and are not possible through media? How exactly do discourses move into, out of, and through the media to affect everyday social practices? Mixed Messages addresses these questions through a rich ethnography of the Russian Federation's Buryat territories, a multilingual and multiethnic region on the Mongolian border with a complex relationship to both Europe and Asia. Mixed Messages shows that belonging in Asian Russia is a dynamic process that one cannot capture analytically by using straightforward categories of ethnolinguistic identity.

This provocative book takes a look at children's consumption of sexualized media messages while providing parents, teachers, and professionals with strategies for abating their influence. In this eye-opening book, experienced child psychologist Jennifer W. Shewmaker contends that the manner in which a child is raised influences how they respond to media messages, particularly those shaded by sexual overtones. This text takes a hard look at the impact of advertisements, products, and entertainment on a child's psyche and offers strategies for helping kids become critical, active media consumers. Drawing from research in a wide variety of disciplines, this book explores the interpersonal factors within children's lives that impact how they learn to process sexualized media messages. The book argues that an increase in marketing to children along with media-based fabrications of beauty, masculinity, and femininity impact the confidence and character of young children who are often greatly affected by what they see and hear. The author shares invaluable tips for promoting strengths in children and adolescents of both genders and presents the protective influence of communities to help children dismiss distorted media images.