Representation [Paperback]

Written especially for undergraduate students, Representationsynthesises and updates our understandings of representation - and the tools for its analysis - for use in the new mediascape.

Jenny Kidd uses an engaging range of current examples and a lively style to explore a number of key questions reflecting existing and contemporary debates about representation.

These key questions include: Who owns and manages representations? Whose realities are foregrounded, and whose are consigned to invisibility? To what extent are increased opportunities for self-representation altering the landscape? And what happens to representation within the noisy, playful and often subversive communications of the Internet?

Kidd considers the political, social and cultural importance of representation across a broad spectrum of cultural and creative industries.

This examination of the relationship between media/cultural representations and the construction of reality, identity and society makes it an ideal text for students that need to get to grips with this core thematic of media and cultural studies.

Introduction: The Ongoing Significance of Representation  1. Theories of Representation  2. Language as Power  3. Self-representation Online  4. Reality TV  5. The Mediated Past  6. Subversive and Alternative Media Messages  Bibliography

This book charts new and competing realities coming together to shape culture, society and people in powerful ways through media representation. To focus upon representation is more important now than ever before. 'Produce' or 'be produced' goes the saying, and this book offers unique ways of evaluating the representational strategies at play.

Joanne Garde-Hansen, Associate Professor Culture, Media and CommlĐ