How do media platforms organise social life?
How do media empower or disempower our identities?
How do we understand the impact of algorithms?
How are media audiences produced and managed?

Media & Society introduces the role of the media in social, cultural, political and economic life, unpacking the increasing entanglement of digital media technology with our everyday lives.

It explores the relationship between meaning and power in an age of participatory culture, social media and digital platforms. An age where we both create and consume content, and where we both give and gain attention - translating our social lives into huge flows of data.

Associate Professor Nicholas Carah shows how a critical approach to power helps us not only to understand the role media play in shaping the social, but also how we can become critically informed media citizens ourselves, able to participate and be heard in meaningful ways.

Media & Society expertly introduces all the key concepts and ideas you need to know, and then puts theory into practice by tying them to contemporary case studies. From using Ghostery to track how your personal data is being collected, to exploring misinformation on social media via Youtube, to the reality of internships and freelancing in today's digital media industry.

It is essential reading for students of media, communication and cultural studies.

About the Author
Nicholas Carah is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head of School in the School of Communication and Arts at The University of Queensland. His research examines the algorithmic and participatory advertising model of digital media platforms, with a focus on the digital alcohol marketing. Together with The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education he has published research on the use of Facebook by alcohol brands in Australia. He has also worked with the social change start up Hello Sunday Morning to design and evaluate their use of social and mobile media technologies to change drinking cultures. Nic's research has been published in New Media and Society, Television and New Media, Convergence, Consumption, Markets and Culture, Mobile Communication and Culture, Health and Journal of Public Affairs. His 2014 article 'Brand value' was awarded best paper in Consumption, Markets and Culture. He is the author of Brand Machines, Sensory Media and Calculative Culture (2016), Media and Society: production, content and participation (2015), Pop Brands: branding, popular music and young people (2010). He is the co-editor of Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media (2018).

Reviews
Nicholas Carah has provided a crucial and brilliantly written text for our time: a clear-eyed and comprehensive approach to the operation of media power in the era of digital capitalism. Finally, we have a rich resource that does justice to the profound transformations wrought by the media that permeate our social world. -- Mark Andrejevic
As our lives become ever more entangled with media of all kinds, and as digital media platforms grow in power, it is more important than ever to understand the fundamental role of media forms, technologies, and industries in society at large, as well as in the most intimate settings of everyday life. In this rich and thoughtfully compiled book, Carah has provided both a comprehensive account of traditional media studies approaches and a supremely useful guide to the contemporary digital phenomena that are propelling the field forward. -- Jean Burgess



Book Information
ISBN 9781529707953
Author Nicholas Carah
Format Paperback
Page Count 416
Imprint Sage Publications Ltd
Publisher Sage Publications Ltd
Weight(grams) 750g