Addressing a multitude of questions and issues surrounding how we use the media, "Media Effects and Beyond" represents the results of an international research programme into the use and effects of television, video and music. Seeing the viewer not simply as passive "object" but as a very active "subject", the contributors engage with every aspect of children's, adolescents' and families' use of the media - its character, causes and consequences. Topics explored include media and social mobility; family communication, and consumer lifestyles. Confronting the two traditions of lifestyle research and effects research, "Media Effects and Beyond" offers a much-needed reconceptualization of both. Written at a time when traditional European public service media systems struggle against a tidal wave of commercial electronic media, this book should be important reading for students of contemporary culture and communications, as well as to media policy decision-makers.

Addressing a multitude of questions and issues surrounding how we use the media, Media Effects and Beyond represents the results of an international research programme into the use and effects of television, video and music. Seeing the viewer not simply as passive object but as a very active subject, the contributors engage with every aspect of children's, adolescents' and families' use of the media - its character, causes and consequences. Topics explored include media and social mobility; family commumication, and consumer lifestyles.
Confronting the two traditions of lifestyle research and effects research, Media Effects and Beyond offers a much-needed reconceptualization of both. Written at a time when traditional European public service media systems struggle against a tidal wave of commercial electronic media, this book will be important reading for students of contemporary culture and communications, as well as media policy for decision makers.

Written as an introduction for beginning students, this book offers a thorough, yet lively, overview of human communication in all its aspects.

Accessibly written and assuming no prior knowledge of the discipline Communication: An Introduction: offers a thorough, yet lively, examination of all aspects of human communication, including: a summary of its nature, form and function; a detailed analysis of all the levels of communication; a description and overview of the different traditions of communication studies; and a consideration of the future of communication - as a phenomenon and as a field of research.

The chapters in this volume provide an excellent overview of the diversity of comparative mass communication research being conducted today. --Contemporary Sociology "Obviously, a "review" cannot do justice to the depth of analysis reflected in each of the individual exemplars. What this review can do, however, is to assure potential readers that Comparatively Speaking generates questions that should stimulate discussion among scholars. The editors encourage other explorations of comparative research and, indeed in their final chapter offer directions for future research. Whether the questions raised focus on theory or methods, Comparatively Speaking will no doubt prove useful to scholars with various emphases in communication studies. The editors should be commended for their quest to help generate at body of literature directly connected to comparative research. And, the individual authors should be commended for engaging in research that directly relates to broader societal issues. This text will answer some questions, but more importantly, it will raise questions, which ultimately will stimulate discussion in this most important avenue of research. Overall, this text most certainly provides the groundwork for a generative approach to comparative studies." --Jeanine Congalton, California State University, Fullerton Comparative research challenges preconceptions about the universal applicability of communication theories. By opening our eyes to communication patterns and problems that may go unnoticed if considering only one time or one place, comparative research forces us to define boundaries of application for these theories. With a wider awareness encouraged by this volume, we can explicitly or implicitly construct larger scale theories within which variations in time, space, and culture contribute. Inspired by the 1989 International Communication Association Conference, Comparatively Speaking both demonstrates how comparative research can be done successfully and provides a variety of analytical structures useful for research and teaching. Exemplar chapters span the range of communication research, from nonverbal expectancies to the economics of media industries--across levels of analysis, and over historical and individual-developmental time. Comparatively Speaking presents the benefits, pitfalls, and trade-offs of comparative research with wit and precision. Scholars and professionals from popular culture, sociology, political science, and all branches of communication will be stimulated to analyze varying exemplars against each other using the analytic structures of the editors and of the critics of comparative research.