Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences provides a framework to help students understand the relationship between media and society and helps students develop skills for critically evaluating both conventional wisdom and one's own assumptions about the social role of the media. The Seventh Edition retains its basic sociological framwork, but also includes additional discussions of new studies and up-to-date material about a rapidly changing media landscape. This edition significantly expands on discussions of the "new media" world, including digitization, the Internet, and the spread of mobile media devices, and the role of user-generated content, the potential social impact of "new" media on society, and "new" media's effect on traditional media outlets. The new edition includes updated research, the latest industry data, and current examples from popular media, which will help to illustrate enduring themes in the sociology of media.

Under the Cover follows the life trajectory of a single work of fiction from its initial inspiration to its reception by reviewers and readers. The subject is Jarrettsville, a historical novel by Cornelia Nixon, which was published in 2009 and based on an actual murder committed by an ancestor of Nixon's in the postbellum South. Clayton Childress takes you behind the scenes to examine how Jarrettsville was shepherded across three interdependent fields-authoring, publishing, and reading-and how it was transformed by its journey. Along the way, he covers all aspects of the life of a book, including the author's creative process, the role of the literary agent, how editors decide which books to acquire, how publishers build lists and distinguish themselves from other publishers, how they sell a book to stores and publicize it, and how authors choose their next projects. Childress looks at how books get selected for the front tables in bookstores, why reviewers and readers can draw such different meanings from the same novel, and how book groups across the country make sense of a novel and what it means to them. Drawing on original survey data, in-depth interviews, and groundbreaking ethnographic fieldwork, Under the Cover reveals how decisions are made, inequalities are reproduced, and novels are built to travel in the creation, production, and consumption of culture.