The Media and Social Theory

David Hesmondhalgh is Professor of Media and Music Industries in the Institute of Communcations Studies at the University of Leeds. His books include The Cultural Industries (2nd edition, 2007), Media Production (2006) and Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity (with Jessica Evans, 2005).

This collection brings together major and emerging media analysts to consider key processes of media change, using a number of critical perspectives. The editors present a formidable range of theoretical viewpoints and approaches, applied to a broad and fascinating variety of case studies, from reality television to the BBC World Service, from blogging to control of copyright.

1. Why Media Studies Needs Better Social Theory Part 1: Power and Democracy 2. Media and the Paradoxes of Pluralism 3. Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and Change in Media Systems in the Late Twentieth Century 4. Recognition and the Renewal of Ideology Critique 5. Cosmopolitan Temptations, Communicative Spaces and the European Union Part 2: Spatial Inequalities 6. Neoliberalism, Imperialism and the Media 7. One Letter, Two Presidents and a Global Audience: The Shifting Spatialities of Contemporary Communication 8. Rethinking the Digital Age 9. Media and Mobility in a Transnational World Part 3: Spectacle and the Self 10. Form and Power in an Age of Continuous Spectacle 11. Spectacular Morality: Reality Television, Individualisation and the Remaking of the Working Class 12. Variations on the Branded Self: Theme, Invention, Improvisation and Inventory Part 4: Media Labour and Production 13. Step Away from the Croissant: Media Studies 3.0 14. Sex and Drugs and Bait and Switch: Rockumentary and the New Model Worker 15. Journalism: Expertise, Authority and Power in Democratic Life 16. Media Making and Social Reality