The ninth edition of Media and Culture takes the digital turn, keeping pace with the technological, economic, and social effects of today’s rapidly changing media landscape.
Part openers show how convergence shapes our media experience. Each of the book’s five parts opens with a new overview offering broad, cross-medium context for the chapters that follow and draws connections to other sections of the book. Each part opener also includes an eye-catching infographic full of facts and figures related to how we consume media, in their various forms, right now.
New Chapter 3 recognizes and explains video games as a mass medium. This comprehensive new chapter, “Digital Gaming and the Media Playground,” explores the gaming industry’s journey from diversion to full-fledged mass medium—a transition that would not have been possible without convergence and the digital turn. In addition to covering the history, economics, and technology behind the industry, Chapter 3 also examines how gaming consoles function as an epicenter of media convergence.
New Past-Present-Future boxes explore where the media have been, how they have converged, and where they’re headed.Media and Culture goes beyond simply telling students about the latest media technologies. The ninth edition analyzes the social and economic impact of these developments—from how the publishing industry is adapting to e-books and digital readers to how filmmakers are harnessing the power of social media to promote their movies.
Print and media converge with fully integrated VideoCentral clips. The new VideoCentral feature merges and converges Media and Culture with the Web. Video clips, added to every chapter, get students to think critically about the text and the media by giving them an insider’s look at the media industries through the eyes of leading professionals, including Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, and Junot Díaz, addressing topics like net neutrality, the future of print media, media ownership, and more. These clips are showcased throughout the book and easily accessible online, where accompanying questions make them perfect for media response papers and class discussions. For more ideas on how using VideoCentral can enhance your course, see the Instructor’s Resource Manual. For a complete list of available clips and access information, see the inside back cover or bedfordstmartins.com/mediaculture.