The Media Student's Book is a comprehensive introduction for students of media studies. It covers all the key topics you will encounter in the area, and provides a detailed, lively and accessible guide to concepts and debates. This fourth edition, now in color, has been thoroughly revised, re-ordered and updated, with many very recent examples and expanded coverage of the most important issues currently facing media studies. It is structured in four main parts, addressing key concepts, media practices, and media debates as well as providing rich resources for your own research in the fourth reference section. Individual chapters include: Interpreting media * Narratives * Gndres and other classifications * Institutions * Questions of representation * Ideologies and power * Industries * Audiences * Advertising and branding * Research * Production organization * Production techniques * Distribution * Documentary and "reality TV" * Whose globalization? * "Free choices' in a "free market?"

Chapters are supported by case studies which include: Ways of interpreting * CSI: Miami and crime fiction * The Ring cycle * Television as institution * Images of migration * News * The media majors * The music industry, technology and synergy * Selling audiences * Celebrity * Researching new media technologies * Contemporary British cinema

The Media Student's Book has been written by two people experienced in writing, researching and teaching across different levels of pre-undergraduate and undergraduate study, with an awareness of the needs of those students. The book is specially designed to be easy and stimulating to use with:

* marginal terms, definitions, references and even jokes, allied to a comprehensive glossary

* follow-up activities, suggestions for further reading, useful websites and resources and a companion website to support the book at www.routledge.com/0415...

* references and examples from a rich range of media forms, including advertising, television, films, radio, newspapers, magazines, photography and the internet.</P>