Media/Society: Industries, Images and Audiences

"Croteau and Hoynes have written the clearest, most comprehensive, and useful textbook I’ve seen on the media, American Society, and their interconnections. As sage as it is thoroughgoinga, it serves as an encyclopedic reference book as well as a cogent summation of what scholars know. My congratulations to the authors."

"The most comprehensive and insightful book on the role of media in life and society. If students, scholars, and all those concerned about our culture had to pick one book to enlighten and inform them, this would be the book."

-- George Gerbner, Bell Atlantic Professor of Telecommunication, Temple University

In a society saturated by mass media, from newspapers and magazines, television and radio, to digital video projects and the worldwide web, most students possess a great deal of media knowledge and experience before they ever enter the classroom. What they often lack, however, is a broader framework for understanding the relationship between media and society. Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences provides that context and helps students develop skills for critically evaluating both conventional wisdom and one’s own assumptions about the social role of the media.

The first two editions of Media/Society introduced thousands of students to a sociologically informed analysis of the media process. The new Third Edition builds on this success with revised Internet resources, the latest data on the media industry, new examples from the independent media sector, and updated discussions of media policy, online media, and independent media. Media/Society is unique among media texts in that it offers:

Media/Society: Industries, Images and Audiences, Third Edition engages the reader with accessible analyses that are historically grounded but draw upon current media debates such as regulation of the Internet, concentration of media ownership, portrayals of gays in the media, and the growth of global media. Media/Society an outstanding text for courses in mass media and sociology.

About the Author

David Croteau is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where he teaches courses on the sociology of media. He is the author of Politics and the Class Divide: Working People and the Middle-Class Left.

William Hoynes is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he teaches courses on media, culture, and social theory. He is the author of Public Television for Sale: Media, the Market, and the Public Sphere.

Croteau and Hoynes are the co-authors of By Invitation Only: How the Media Limit Political Debate (1994) and The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest (2001).

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