The Media and Social Theory [Paperback]

Media studies needs richer and livelier intellectual resources. This book brings together major and emerging international media analysts to consider key processes of media change, using a number of critical perspectives. Case studies range from reality television to professional journalism, from blogging to control of copyright, from social networking sites to indigenous media, in Europe, North America, Asia and elsewhere. Among the theoretical approaches and issues addressed are:

• critical realism
• post-structuralist approaches to media and culture
• Pierre Bourdieu and field theory
• public sphere theory  including post-Habermasian versions
• actor network theory
• Marxist and post-Marxist theories, including contemporary critical theory
• theories of democracy, antagonism and difference.

This volume is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers of cultural studies, media studies and social theory.

1. Why Media Studies Needs Better Social Theory, David Hesmondhalgh and Jason Toynbee  Part 1: Power and Democracy 2. Media and the Paradoxes of Pluralism, Kari Karppinen  3. Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and Change in Media Systems in the Late Twentieth Century, Daniel C. Hallin  4. Recognition and the Renewal of Ideology Critique, John Downey  5. Cosmopolitan Temptations, Communicative Spaces and the European Union, Philip Schlesinger  Part 2: Spatial Inequalities  6. Neoliberalism, Imperialism and the Media, David Hesmondhalgh  7. One Letter, Two Presidents and a Global Audience: The Shifting Spatialities of Contemporary Communication, AnnabellelÃÃ