Media and Power

Communication and Society

by James Curran

Media and Power addresses three key questions about the relationship between media and society.
*How much power do the media have?
*Who really controls the media?
*What is the relationship between media and power in society?

In this major new book, James Curran reviews the different answers which have been given, before advancing original interpretations in a series of ground-breaking essays.
This book also provides a guided tour of the major debates in media studies. What part did the media play in the making of modern society? How did 'new media' change society in the past? Will radical media research recover from its mid-life crisis? Is public service television the dying product of the nation in an age of globalization? Media and Power provides both a clear introduction to media research and an innovative analysis of media power.

Genres: Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 8, 2002

About the author

James Curran is Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths College, London. He has published over 18 books, including Culture Wars: The Media and British Left (with Ivor Gaber and Julian Petley) (Edinburgh University Press, 2005), Power without Responsibility (with Jean Seaton), 6th edition (Routledge, 2003), Mass Media and Society (ed. with Michael Gurevitch), 4th edition (Arnold, 2005) and Media and Power (Routledge, 2002).

Reviews

[Leo · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, i’m possibly slightly biased because this book is by my PhD supervisor. Now with that disclaimer out of the way let me tell you how great this book is.

This is a superb collection of essays on various topics in media studies, from a radical left perspective that, while open to Marxist ideas, is not fully Marxist in approach. Anyone interested in media studies ought to read it, really.

The essays range from 1977 to 2002, although they were updated for the book. The really outstanding ones are ‘Rival narratives of media history’ - a brilliant synoptic view of the field; ‘Capitalism and control of the press’ - where James lays out the powerful and influential argument he also makes in Power Without Responsibility about how the end of state censorship in mid-19th century Britain wasn’t the dawn of press freedom but merely a transition to a new form of ‘market censorship’; ‘New revisionism in media and cultural studies’ - a sharp attack on a turn in those fields during the 1980s towards an accommodation with, even celebration of, the market; ‘Renewing the radical tradition’ - an excellent account of some of ideas for developing a better radical (or Marxist) theory of the media, one that in my opinion provides a far more useful basis for doing so than e.g. the (still useful but more flawed) ‘propaganda model’ of Chomsky and Herman.

The other essays are all worth reading too, although some are slightly more dated and/or flawed. Even the more dated essays like the one on globalisation theory are useful guides to the history of debates in the field.

Across all of them James has an extraordinary ability to summarise and sharply review vast fields of academic literature in extremely readable prose. A real model of scholarship.

[Anjali · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really appreciate the first few chapters esp identifying the narratives about journalism history:)

[MEDEVi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I´m going to talk about this book. This book is definitely awesome.