"Brazil is one of the world's most productive crucibles for new ideas and practices in innovation and collaboration. This meticulously researched book provides a sweeping tour of the issues arising form that leadership." —Jonathan Zittrain Professor, Harvard Law School

This volume illustrates and exemplifies the variety of ways in which the mass media have been researched over the past fifty or more years. It provides extracts from seminal works and relates them to developments in the field as a whole and to later works. The volume identifies the major divisions within the field, including mass society theory, the media effects tradition, political economy, the public sphere, media occupations and professionals, cultural hegemony, feminism, and "new" audience research.

"As delicious as a day spent with your funniest, smartest friend, this collection is also a call to action, inspiring readers to fight the fear of female power. As the many writers in here show, few wrongs are righted without a bitchfest first."—Cristina Page, author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex

"This is an excellent reference work for students, and should make an indispensible companion or first port of call."—Reference Reviews

"A riveting look into every part of what is called the 'media ecosystem,' which includes the Internet as well as newspapers, radio and television. Klinenberg grounds all of his reporting in human terms and gives concrete examples of what happens when too few own too much and, worse, control what information will be disseminated to the people. He also wisely includes news of the victories being achieved by media activists."—Joanne Collings, The Examiner

"In this ambitious book about technology's impact on politics, the author argues that the key issues of the 2008 election—business investment, education, health care, and global warming—all are tech issues at their core. But Graff, who ran Howard Dean's first Web site in 1997 (while still in high school!), is at his best when he maps the ways in which the internet is rewriting the rules of presidential campaigning."—Wired magazine

Tracing the history of the print, broadcast and film industries, this book offers a concise and enjoyable introduction to mass communication in Britain. It outlines the main landmarks in the development of the media, the changing nature of their industrial organisation and the resulting impact on audiences. It also looks at censorship and control, the concerns of powerful elites, new managers and moral entrepreneurs. This new edition further discusses 'dumbing down', the changing content of TV and the press, the growth of 'spin' and news management.

"Birkerts' argument is persuasive, not only in its content but in its manner. His writing, which questions and muses at the leisurely pace of human speech, and which evinces both intelligence and feeling, reveals a complex individual personality, providing that vertical kind of connectedness that a thousand e-mail messages cannot."—San Francisco Chronicle

"Brilliant...abounds with penetrating yet down-to-earth insights about the practice of academic history. One of the last half-century's most insightful, level-headed, and humane reflections on the practice of history and its cultural significance...(to be) welcomed by professional historians...also accessible to general readers and undergraduates."—History Journal