This up-to-date, reader-friendly presentation of the mass media helps instructors "use the media to teach the media" and explore its excitement, complexity, and impact on our lives. Widely praised for his ability to make learning interesting, Vivian excites students as they explore the ever-changing subject of mass communication. This edition retains the emphasis on the challenges of today's media while building on its extensive coverage of media history, effects, and culture. The coverage of media literacy, an underlying theme since the first edition, has been enhanced with a new feature. The three part-organization-the media, media messages, and media issues-has been strengthened by the addition of a totally new chapter on entertainment to balance the coverage of other types of media messages.
I used the updated 12th edition for this textbook. My version was the loose-leaf three whole punch format and one of the issues I had was that it had several grammatical errors and several times I noticed there were missing words in sentences. Obviously this then ruined the flow as I was trying to read the textbook. With that aside, I also feel this textbook could have been organized better. Some of the chapters seemed redundant and the information could have been combined in some ways. Also, many of the vocabulary words actually did not really explain the meaning of the words so many of the definitions were not actually accurate. But I did like how all of the information was updated and way more relevant especially in the ever-changing world of mass media with today's technology.