Mass Communication: Living in a Media World Review

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(More customer reviews)If you want to know all there is to know about how we are living in a media world, this is the book for you. Are you aware of all the ways radio, TV, newspapers, magazines and movies impact our lives - every single day! Written in a clear style, with pictures to help in understanding, this is a book that will open your eyes.

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Mass Communication delivers an engaging and compact introduction to the field of mass comm without the glitz that does little to improve students' ability to be smarter consumers of media or think critically about the media's role in today's society. Ralph E. Hanson combines solid content, incisive analysis, fun and conversational writing in a highly readable and informative text that will save your students as much as $50.

Employing an effective media literacy perspective, Hanson shows students that media are not something to be feared or demonized, but rather are an essential part of our lives that should be thoughtfully consumed. Updated to reflect changes in the media landscape, Mass Communication offers expanded discussion of:

• the role of social media in breaking domestic and international news stories; • video games as a form of interactive media; • the newspaper industry's continuing financial woes; • further consolidation of the media industry with the NBC/Comcast merger and the News Corporation's purchase of the Wall Street Journal; • public relations as a way of creating, developing, and nurturing relationships between an organization and its key publics; and • integrated marketing communication in the advertising chapter.

UNIQUE FEATURES HELP REINFORCE THE BOOK'S APPROACH: • Chapter-opening vignettes feature media professionals from Jon Stewart and Annie Leibovitz to Steve Jobs and Twitter founders Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, and Biz Stone. • Timelines place important media events in a broader historical context. • Test Your Media Literacy boxes showcase current research, interviews, or noteworthy events with questions that model critical thinking, helping to cultivate critical media consumption. • A marginal glossary helps reinforce learning of key concepts as students read.

THE SEVEN TRUTHS "THEY" DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT THE MEDIA: 1. The media are essential components of our lives. 2. There are no mainstream media (MSM). 3. Everything from the margin moves to the center. 4. Nothing's new—everything that happened in the past will happen again. 5. New media are always scary. 6. Activism and analysis are not the same thing. 7. There is no "they."

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Media Today: An Introduction to Mass Communication Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I teach a course in Mass Media and this is the text we use. Regarding the other review left here for the book.. it is really not meant to be casual or 'easy' reading -- it is meant to be an in depth exploration of (often) complicated issues.
Things I like about the text:
- important vocabulary is pulled out to the margins for easy identification
- the importance of media literacy and cultural implications are explored
- various types of media are addressed *as well as* important tangental issues like conglomerates, advertising, etc.
- modern examples that are easily recognizable to students are used
Things I'd like to see done differently:
- The questions at the end of each chapter/unit could be better. Many of them are purely reading comprehension.. which is fine.. but I'd also like to see questions that require more synthesis or depth of understanding.
- It would be great if there could be some sort cross-reference done within the text.
Overall, I give this book high marks for solid information well presented.

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Media Today puts mass communication students at the center of the profound changes in the twenty-first century media world - from digital convergence to media ownership - and gives them the skills to think critically about what these changes mean for the role of media in their lives. Comprehensive and engaging, Media Today features:an interactive companion website featuring a full range of instructor and student materials including study podcasts at www.routledge.com/textbooks/mediatodaya three-pronged media systems approach focused on media literacy, convergence, and emerging trends in today's media cultureup-to-date coverage of the latest political, economic, technological, and cultural issues affecting media industriesexciting new resources including an enclosed free DVD with media examples. Completely revised with updated examples, case studies, and media resources, the third edition of this innovative mass communication textbook is built upon a media systems approach that gives students an insider's perspective on how mass media industries operate. By making students more knowledgeable about the influences that guide media organizations, Media Today builds media literacy skills to make students sensitive to ways of seeing media content as a means of learning about culture. Joseph Turow emphasizes throughout the many ways in which media convergence has blurred distinctions between and among various media. Each chapter of Media Today will:guide students through the essential history of media industriesexamines the current forces shaping their creation, distribution and exhibitionexplores the impact of emerging trends in media and society from globalization to social networking to video games. Media Today is designed to be used independently, but can also be used with the supplemental textbook edited by Brooke Erin Duffy and Joseph Turow, Key Readings in Media Today.

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