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Media Studies: The Essential Resource
A unique collection of resources for all those studying the media at university and pre-university level, this book brings together a wide array of material including advertisements, political cartoons and academic articles, with supporting commentary and explanation to clarify their importance to Media Studies. In addition, activities and further reading and research are suggested to help kick start students' autonomy.
The book is organized around three main Reading the Media, Audiences and Institutions, and is edited by the same teachers and examiners who brought us the hugely successful AS Media The Essential Introduction.
This is an ideal companion or standalone sourcebook to help students engage critically with media texts - its key features
The book is organized around three main Reading the Media, Audiences and Institutions, and is edited by the same teachers and examiners who brought us the hugely successful AS Media The Essential Introduction.
This is an ideal companion or standalone sourcebook to help students engage critically with media texts - its key features
304 pages, Paperback
First published December 11, 2003
17 people want to read
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October 20, 2014
This is a lovely little textbook on Media Studies. It is really focused on the undergraduate market – and would make quite a good textbook for a semester course on the subject. What I liked most about it was that while it covered all the usual topics of Media Studies, it did this by reference to short passages from texts or even newspaper articles (there is even a part of a speech from HRH Prince Charles reprinted here). And then there are focus questions. The short passages are quite provocative and virtually every one of them had something interesting to say.
And the editors haven’t been afraid to point out that there is controversy in the field. One of the more interesting things I learnt from this is that there has been a shift in the demographics of people going to cinemas (towards people more my age) and that this might lead to films being made more for grownups – rather than the special effects films that are increasingly standard fair. However, there was a lovely rebuttal to this provided too. I really like the idea that a textbook is prepared to show live debates in a field – far too often textbooks present ‘the truth’ and it is only after you have gone deeper into the subject than undergraduate level that you learn that many of these ‘truths’ are, in fact, contested.
This is a really useful book. But it is also limited. It’s advantage is also its chief weakness (which is often the case, in life as in books), that the discussion presented is short enough to be useful for undergraduates. All the same, the book ends with a couple of interviews with people who have previously studied media studies and then gone on to have a career in the field – this is such a lovely thing to do, as it gives people a notion of the fact that there is life after study and what that life might look like. There are also very good suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter and these provide a sketch of the work suggested and what you might get out of it. Like I said, this is a nicely constructed textbook.
And the editors haven’t been afraid to point out that there is controversy in the field. One of the more interesting things I learnt from this is that there has been a shift in the demographics of people going to cinemas (towards people more my age) and that this might lead to films being made more for grownups – rather than the special effects films that are increasingly standard fair. However, there was a lovely rebuttal to this provided too. I really like the idea that a textbook is prepared to show live debates in a field – far too often textbooks present ‘the truth’ and it is only after you have gone deeper into the subject than undergraduate level that you learn that many of these ‘truths’ are, in fact, contested.
This is a really useful book. But it is also limited. It’s advantage is also its chief weakness (which is often the case, in life as in books), that the discussion presented is short enough to be useful for undergraduates. All the same, the book ends with a couple of interviews with people who have previously studied media studies and then gone on to have a career in the field – this is such a lovely thing to do, as it gives people a notion of the fact that there is life after study and what that life might look like. There are also very good suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter and these provide a sketch of the work suggested and what you might get out of it. Like I said, this is a nicely constructed textbook.
Displaying 1 of 1 review