Introduction to Mass Communication

by Stanley J. Baran

This text encourages students to take more active roles as media consumers and gives them a deeper understanding of the role that the media play in both shaping and reflecting culture. Through this cultural perspective, students learn that audience members are as much a part of the mass communication process as are the media producers, technologies, and industries. This was the first university-level text to make media literacy central to its approach.

Building on this tested emphasis, the fifth edition features a newly merged chapter on Cable and Television, a new chapter on The Evolving Mass Communication Process, updates on recent technologies and government rulings, including the Patriot Act, the Supreme Court ruling on Peer-2-Peer file-sharing on Grokster, "net neutrality," municipal WiFi, new advertising industry metrics such as ROI, BitTorrent, video news releases, and much more!

Genres: Textbooks, School, Nonfiction

1340 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[W. M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this one for a class but was wonderfully surprised by how good this was. Most textbooks aren't riveting. Enjoyed learning all about how communications are all around us and affect everyday life.

[Chloe Bright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some parts of this book were excruciatingly boring. I can't quite blame the book for that because it had to talk about the history of the inventions like the radio, television, computer, etc. but those parts were so boring, but they could've at least tried to make it a little more interesting than just info-dumping random dates and names, blah blah blah.

I read an ebook version online through my University, and I did appreciate how it highlighted only the most important sections to really focus on instead of all the other filler information that was not necessary. The quizzes that were made in correspondence to the textbook software that I had to take weekly were also awful. You had to memorize every little statistic, date, and person's name the book mentioned and they gave you like 30 of them each chapter, so that was really annoying.

Overall, it helped me know what I needed to for the course, but it wasn't enjoyable. If it hadn't been absolutely necessary to read for my course, I would have preferred to not touch it.

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

My major is print communications so this book was a mandatory rfead for our clasa. This text book was actaully interesting. I found many of the chapters very interesting.

[Sin Tien Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best academic book I've read. The heights of sarcasm just make everything so much more interesting. Entertaining yet informative at the same time.

[madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my textbook for my COMM 290: Elements of Media course this semester. We skipped maybe one or two chapters but I read the bulk of it. As a textbook, it was very insightful and it read almost conversationally at times which made it easier to follow than a textbook with strictly technical speech. The chapter topics ranges from the history of TV & radio to the video game industry to the mass communication process in general, and I feel it taught me a lot. Each chapter also started with a real-world example, which helped illustrate the issues we would be discussing in a more relatable manner. This obviously wasn't my preferred genre, though, hence the four stars.

[Britta Paye · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gives a bigger picture of the media sector. It's so entertaining and adventurous.

[Lilake · Rating 4 out of 5]

I needed this for my thesis but it's kind of outdated already. Used it for basics.

[Lola He · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tool to know the basic about Communication Studies.

[Kara Rochester Garcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the newest 2023 version. It had some political bias, but overall was one of the least boring textbooks!

[Sonam Puri · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good book for mass communications, media management,media industry students.
Since it's a foreign author book examples are to be found out by the reader.
Thus first year students ma not be able to relate.

[Uwaysulkarni]

nice

[03218839126]

want to collect definition

[Emily Colby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shoutout to this textbook for being my comfort and inspiration my first semester at college. Definitely not selling this one.