This new edition updates and expands the scholarship of the 1st edition, examining media effects in

Grounded in theoretical principle, Media Effects and Society help students make the connection between mass media and the impact it has on society as a whole. The text also explores how the relationship individuals have with media is created, therefore helping them alleviate its harmful effects and enhance the positive ones. The range of media effects addressed herein includes news diffusion, learning from the mass media, socialization of children and adolescents, influences on public opinion and voting, and violent and sexually explicit media content. The text examines relevant research done in these areas and discusses it in a thorough and accessible manner. It also presents a variety of theoretical approaches to understanding media effects, including psychological and content-based theories. In addition, it demonstrates how theories can guide future research into the effects of newer mass communication technologies. The second edition includes a new chapter on effects of entertainment, as well as text boxes with examples for each chapter, discussion of new technology effects integrated throughout the chapters, expanded pedagogy, and updates to the theory and research in the text. These features enhance the already in-depth analysis Media Effects and Society provides.

"Media Effects offers students an in-depth examination of the media's constant influence on individuals and society. W. James Potter frames media's effects in two templates: influence on individuals and influence on larger social structures and institutions. By positioning the different types of effects in the forefront, Potter helps students understand the full range of media effects, how they manifest themselves, and the factors that that are likely to bring these effects into being. Throughout the book, Potter encourages students to analyze their own experiences by searching for evidence of these effects in their own lives, making the content meaningful on a personal level." -- Provided by publisher.

Part III emphasizes the various factors that influence the critical functions of message selection and processing central to a host of mass media application contexts.

Publisher description

Addressing a multitude of questions and issues surrounding how we use the media, Media Effects and Beyond represents the results of an international research programme into the use and effects of television, video and music. Seeing the viewer not simply as passive object but as a very active subject, the contributors engage with every aspect of children's, adolescents' and families' use of the media - its character, causes and consequences. Topics explored include media and social mobility; family commumication, and consumer lifestyles. Confronting the two traditions of lifestyle research and effects research, Media Effects and Beyond offers a much-needed reconceptualization of both. Written at a time when traditional European public service media systems struggle against a tidal wave of commercial electronic media, this book will be important reading for students of contemporary culture and communications, as well as media policy for decision makers.

People have always depended on the mass media for information and entertainment. With mobile devices and easy access to the internet, people are now in constant connection with an ever growing source of information and entertainment and they contribute their own content to those sources through social media. As their media usage shifts towards digital media with their immediacy, interactivity, and intrusiveness, the way media affects people has fundamentally changed. Digital Media Effects focuses on those changes in media effects. While the author acknowledges the findings from the very large literature of effects from exposure to traditional media. Expanding from traditional media effects studies, this book focuses attention on the kinds of effects that have arisen in the new digital age.

Whether we are watching TV, surfing the Internet, listening to our iPods, or reading a novel, we are all engaged with media as a member of an audience. Despite the widespread use of this term in our popular culture, the meaning of the "audience" is complex, and it has undergone significant historical shifts as new forms of mediated communication have developed from print, telegraphy, and radio to film, television, and the Internet. Media Audiences explores the concept of media audiences from four broad perspectives: as "victims" of mass media, as market constructions & commodities, as users of media, and as producers & subcultures of mass media. The goal of the text is for students to be able to think critically about the role and status of media audiences in contemporary society, reflecting on their relative power in relation to institutional media producers.

The daily news plays a major role in the continuously changing mix of thoughts, feelings and behavior that defines public opinion. The News & Public Opinion details these effects of the news media on the sequence of outcomes that collectively shape public opinion, beginning with initial attention to the various news media and their contents and extending to the effects of this exposure on the acquisition of information, formation of attitudes and opinions and to the consequences of all these elements for participation in public life. Sometimes called the hierarchy of media effects, this sequence of outcomes describes the communication process involved in the formation of public opinion. Although the media landscape is undergoing rapid change, key elements remain the same, and The News & Public Opinion emphasizes these basic principles of communication established over decades of empirical social science investigations into the impact of mass communication on public opinion. The primary audience for this book is students, both advanced undergraduates and graduate students, as well as members of the general public who want to understand the role of the news media in our civic life.