Contents:
Contributors: Ian Connell, Ann N. Crigler, James Curran, Peter Dahlgren, Klaus Jakubowicz, Todd Gitlin, Michael Gurevitch, Suzanne Hasselbach, Mark R. Levy, Paolo Mancini, John M. Phelan, Vincent Porter, Itzhak Roeh, Colin Sparks, Liesbet van Zoonen

Several of the most important and influential political economists of communication working today explore a rich mix of topics and issues that link work, policy studies, and research and theory about the public sphere to the heritage of political economy. Familiar but still exceedingly important topics in critical political economy studies are well represented here: market structures and media concentration, regulation and policy, technological impacts on particular media sectors, information poverty, and media access. The book also features new topics for political economy study, including racism in audience research, the value and need for feminist approaches to political economy studies, and the relationship between the discourse of media finance and the behavior of markets.

Coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky saga followed in a long trail of media exposures of the more personal details of the lives of public figures. Many commentators have seen stories like this, and TV shows like Jerry Springer's, as evidence of a decline in the standards of the mass media. This increasing interest in private lives and the falling off of coverage of serious news is often described as Otabloidization.O The essays in this book are the first serious scholarly studies of what is going on and what its implications are. Reality, it turns out, is much more complex than some of the laments suggest. As the contributors show, this is not just a U.S. problem but is repeated in country after country, and it is not certain that the media anywhere are getting more tabloid. What is more, there is no consensus about whether tabloidization is just Odumbing downO or whether it is a necessary tactic for the mass media to engage with new audiences who do not have the news habit. Tabloid Tales will be of interest to students and scholars in journalism, mass communication, political science, and cultural and media studies.

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book reports the results of a comparative survey of journalism students in university-level institutions in 22 countries of the major world regions. The survey and analysis are guided by a critical discussion of concepts of journalistic professionalism and the role played by education and training in developing such ideas. The book explores the origins and motivations of students, and the ambitions they have as future journalists. The students had three different concepts of the role of the press: the enlightenment model in which the prime functions is to educate and inform; the power model, ensuring the views of socially powerful groups are publicized; and the entertainment model, which provides the audience with distractions. With a strong desire for professional status, they believe that the form of media ownership dominant in their own society is a major threat to press freedom.

Colin Sparks provides a challenging reassessment of the impact of the collapse of communism on the media systems of Eastern Europe. He analyzes both the changes themselves and their implications for the ways in which we think about the mass media, while also demonstrating that most of the orthodox accounts of the end of communism are seriously flawed. There are much greater continuities between the old system and the new than are captured by the theories that argue that there has been a radical and fundamental change. Instead of marking the end of critical inquiry or the end of history, as some have suggested, Sparks argues that the collapse of the communist systems demonstrates how very limited and frequently incorrect the main ways of discussing the mass media are. He concludes with a provocative discussion of the ways in which we need to modify our thinking in the light of these developments.

Colin Sparks provides a challenging reassessment of the impact of the collapse of communism on the media systems of Eastern Europe. He analyzes both the changes themselves and their implications for the ways in which we think about the mass media, while also demonstrating that most of the orthodox accounts of the end of communism are seriously flawed. There are much greater continuities between the old system and the new than are captured by the theories that argue that there has been a radical and fundamental change. Instead of marking the end of critical inquiry or the end of history, as some have suggested, Sparks argues that the collapse of the communist systems demonstrates how very limited and frequently incorrect the main ways of discussing the mass media are. He concludes with a provocative discussion of the ways in which we need to modify our thinking in the light of these developments.

This book reports the results of a comparative survey of journalism students in university-level institutions in 22 countries of the major world regions. The survey and analysis are guided by a critical discussion of concepts of journalistic professionalism and the role played by education and training in developing such ideas. The book explores the origins and motivations of students, and the ambitions they have as future journalists. The students had three different concepts of the role of the press: the enlightenment model in which the prime functions is to educate and inform; the power model, ensuring the views of socially powerful groups are publicized; and the entertainment model, which provides the audience with distractions. With a strong desire for professional status, they believe that the form of media ownership dominant in their own society is a major threat to press freedom.

"This is a much-needed and timely follow-up to an earlier reader by the well-respected British communications journal, Media, Culture & Society. . . . This reader is much needed and timely for several reasons. It re-establishes the politico-economic dimension in the study of the relation between culture and power. . . . Another and probably even more significant reason why this reader is sorely needed is that it capsulizes the most damaging criticisms of postmodernist theory and its curious obfuscation, if not total denial, of the structuralist concern with the role of domination in the study of culture. . . . This volume is certainly correct in making explicit its full-toned apprehension about the dubious postmodernist pretensions to valid social inquiry. . . . This comprehensive reader of integrated critical media research will surely become an invaluable asset for all those scholars and students of media studies struggling to place power relations back at the center of the debate about the nature and dynamics of the culture-society relationship." --Canadian Journal of Communication On the cutting edge of media studies, Culture and Power presents a solid introduction to the current issues and debates central to media studies. The chapters derive from major articles published in Media, Culture & Society from 1985-1991. The book divides into three parts. The first part outlines and surveys some key theoretical developments in media studies, including the increased use of feminist and cultural studies approaches to the media and the development of the postmodernism debate. The second part addresses the pivotal area of recent research around the audience; the last section addresses the public sphere as a whole. This broad-ranging volume will be an invaluable text in communication, cultural studies, and sociology.

In counterpoint to conventional examinations of images of journalism which tend to concentrate on its informational role in the political process, this book provides a lively analysis of journalism in its other guise - as entertainment.

In a series of interrelated studies, the authors examine the theoretical problems in assessing popular journalism and consider common examples of its manifestations - its relationship to media stars, the coverage of sport, and the presentation of news in a popular' form.

Globalization, Development and the Mass Media gives a comprehensive and critical account of the theoretical changes in communication studies from the early theories of development communication through to the contemporary critiques of globalization. It examines two main currents of thought. Firstly, the ways in which the media can be used to effect change and development. It traces the evolution of thinking from attempts to spread 'modernity' by way of using the media through to alternative perspectives based on encouraging participation in development communication. Secondly, the elaboration of the theory of media imperialism, the criticisms that it provoked and its replacement as the dominant theory of international communication by globalization.