Media Studies: Theories and Approaches

by Dan Laughey

With TV, internet, phone, radio, movies, music, magazines, and newspapers—just to name a few—how does one begin to understand today’s all-embracing media culture? In this book, all the key issues and debates in media studies are covered in a lively and accessible style, including the main features of global media corporations and approaches to the study of media effects, consumer power, celebrity, journalism, and new media. From surveillance to simulation, genre to gender, political economy to the postmodern, the reader will be guided through a matrix of intellectual endeavor on all media matters. Whether for a student, researcher, or practitioner, this handy reference guide offers a journey through a complex but fascinating subject.

Genres: Sociology

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Dan Laughey was born in Otley and bred in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, a hop and a skip away from the Leeds setting of his Chloe thrillers featuring no-holds-barred Detective Inspector Carl Sant. He now lives in nearby Guiseley and shares his time between England and Thailand, home of his in-laws. He lectures at Leeds Beckett University where he teaches a course called ‘Youth, Crime and Culture’. He holds a PhD in Sociology from Salford University and an MA in Communication Studies from the University of Leeds.

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised by how good and useful this book is – and, given I’ve been reading quite a few books recently on media studies, what a gap this one fills. Media studies is pretty well the definition of the much maligned ‘Mickey Mouse’ subject. And this is a real pity, as in many ways subjects like media studies ought to be the way universities move. Not because it is ‘relevant’, but because media studies spans a range of other disciplines and so some knowledge is necessary of those other disciplines before you can really say anything sensible about the media. For example, media organisations are very large organisations, so understanding how they operate and why they are profitable and how this impacts the kinds of products they produce requires some knowledge of economics. Media organisations play a role in setting political agendas, even if this is merely in reporting the issues associated with these, and ‘agendas’ connected directly with politics. Media sells its products by appealing to people’s tastes, so some notion of aesthetics is also good to know. Media represent social relations, so a bit of sociology is also useful, as is some psychology. Media use or manipulate various narrative structures and genres – so, a familiarity with literature doesn’t go astray. And media present content that has various forms of cultural meaning – so, some form of semiotics is needed too. The point I’m making is that to really study the media, you need to be able to have some notion of how you might study society and the people in society and their communicative needs. This hardly seems ‘Mickey Mouse’ to me.

This book provides chapters on the main concerns of media studies and then some nice (and short) thumbnails on some of the major theorists that have contributed to media theory. For instance, the book starts with a quick discussion on McClure, specifically concerned with his idea that the affordances of media technologies shape what is likely to be said by these new technologies. This is his, ‘the media is the message’ idea. Essentially, he felt that all media were extensions to our senses – radio lets us hear over greater distances, television lets us see over greater distances, reading lets people speak even after they are dead. The other aspect of his theory discussed here is his notion of hot and cold media – basically, the more detail the medium is capable of providing, the ‘hotter’ it is. So, cinema is hotter than television, for example. These thumbnails of various theories are incredibly useful – particularly since many other books allude to these theorists and their ideas, but do little more than that. I guess, in some ways, this is a bit like one those brief introduction books.

As I said, this book provides a very general ‘scope’ of the subject of media studies. It is simply written and covers most of the topics that other more detailed books cover too.

[Nabila Cyrilla Imani (bookcabinets) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though I took advertising as my focus on my study of communication, I still have the interest of media studies by heart. I bought this book first because it's written by Dan Laughey whose book was used by my lecturer of media theory class. I was amazed by how handy and thorough this book is. It covers almost all of the media theories with a very dense description that anyone without a communication background can understand. As someone who has studied media theories before, this book can help me remember the fundamental ideas of each theory. Alas, this book will still be enlightening for someone with no understanding of media studies before. I recommend this for anyone who wants to get a peek into the media studies. Remember, today is the 21st century and the media has never been more powerful than it is right now.