This study is based on the authors' fieldwork inside Cultural Enterprise Office, a small Scottish agency that supports creative businesses. It discusses UK policy on the creative economy, the rise of intermediaries between policy-making and the marketplace, and the playing out in the delivery of business advice services to creative microbusinesses.

Media and communication research is a diverse and stimulating field of inquiry, not only in subject matter but also in purposes and methodologies. Over the past twenty years, and in step with the contemporary shift toward trans-disciplinarity, Media Studies has rapidly developed a very significant body of theory and evidence. Media Studies is here to stay and scholars in the discipline have a vital contribution to make. The SAGE Handbook of Media Studies surveys and evaluates the theories, practices, and future of the field. Editor John Downing and associate editors Denis McQuail, Philip Schlesinger, and Ellen Wartella have brought together a team of international contributors to provide a varied critical analysis of this intensely interesting field of study. The Handbook offers a comprehensive review within five interconnected areas: humanistic and social scientific approaches; global and comparative perspectives; the relation of media to economy and power; media users; and elements in the media mosaic ranging from media ethics to advertising, from popular music to digital technologies, and from Hollywood and Bollywood to alternative media. The contributors to The Handbook are from Australia, Austria, Britain, Canada, France, Guatemala, India, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, and the United States. Each contributor offers a unique perspective on topics broad in scope. The Handbook is an ideal resource for university media researchers, for faculty developing new courses and revising curricula, and for graduate courses in media studies. It is also a necessary addition to any academic library.

This text offers a critical review of approaches and concerns that have recently defined the field of media research. The contributors to this volume analyze and reflect upon dominant themes and debates that have made media research an increasingly important element of political, social and cultural enquiry. Contributors drawn from the UK, USA, Canada and Belgium consider the relationships between media research and media policy in different national and international contexts. Focusing on the European Union, East-Central Europe, North America and Latin America, these chapters assess the impact of social, economic and political circumstances on policy debates and the shaping of a research agenda. The final chapter adopts a trans-atlantic perspective in tracing and analyzing the history of the medias role in reporting war. This survey firmly places media research in the wider context of political and social change and its analysis, and provides a defining but also questioning perspective on its achievements.

International Media Research offers a rigorous and critical review of key approaches and concerns that have recently defined the field of media research. The contributors to this volume analyse and reflect upon dominant themes and debates that have made media research an increasingly important element of political, social and cultural enquiry. The book opens with an introduction which surveys the current state of the field, and continues with a critical evaluation of the work of the leading media scholar, Elihu Katz. It goes on to explore the relationship between media studies and adjacent fields: cultural studies and new work on gender and sexuality. Contributors drawn from the UK, USA, Canada and Belgium consider the relationships between media research and media policy in different national and international contexts. Focusing on the European Union, East-Central Europe, North America and Latin America, these chapters assess the impact of social, economic and political circumstances on policy debates and the shaping of a research agenda. The final chapter adopts a transatlantic perspective in tracing and analysing the history of the media's role in reporting war. This major survey firmly places media research in the wider context of political and social change and its analysis, and provides a defining but also questioning perspective on its achievements.

Media and Globalization shows why the state matters to media and telecommunications industries in a globalizing world: governments control and regulate these industries in important ways and states remain central arenas for policymaking and international agreements. Using case studies drawn from around the world, this book sheds light on the extent of state power in the face of transnational pressures and explores policy, economics, and culture as they factor into media globalization. Visit our website for sample chapters

Scottish devolution brought high hopes for an open political culture. But how far have these been fulfilled? Open Scotland? argues that in the field of political communication the old, established ways of the British state still remain firmly in place. Westminster and Whitehall still cast long shadows over Edinburgh. This book offers the first full-scale coverage of how media, politicians and lobbyists interact in the new Scotland. Based on their exceptional first-hand access to the key players, Philip Schlesinger, David Miller and William Dinan have written an inside account of the struggles to establish the rules of the game for covering politics. They have talked to the journalists of Scotland's political media pack who are at the heart of the new political system and who have a decisive impact on the image of the Scottish Parliament and government. They have observed and interviewed the professional lobbyists and reveal their strategies for achieving a respectable image in Scottish public life. And they have analysed some of the key rows and the failures of news management inside Scotland's government. Open Scotland? offers an insight to the world of lobbyists, journalists and spin doctors, revealing the motivations behind the news stories in Scottish politics today.

"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.

Drawing on interviews with leading film executives, politicians and industry stakeholders including all of the UKFC's chairs (Alan Parker, Stewart Till and Tim Bevan) and its CEO John Woodward, this book provides an empirically grounded analysis of the rise and unexpected fall of the UK Film Council, the key strategic body responsible for supporting film in the UK for over a decade. As well as offering a critical overview of the political, policy and technological contexts which framed the organisation's creation, existence and eventual demise, the book provides a probing analysis of the tensions between national and global interests in an increasingly transnational film industry, not least underlining how both US and EU interests and pressures have played themselves out.