Combining a critical survey of the field with a finely judged assessment of cutting-edge developments, this book is the ¿must have¿ text for any undergraduate student studying media and communication studies.

Paul Hodkinson is a sociologist whose work is focused upon youth cultures, online communications and on the relationships between media and cultural identities. He has conducted extensive research on goth subculture and is author of Goth. Identity, Style and Subculture (2002, Oxford: Berg). He is also co-editor of Youth Cultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes (2007, London: Routledge).

He is currently researching young people¿s use of online communications - notably through social networking sites. He is based in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey. He joined the department of sociology in August 2003. He was previously Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at University College Northampton and prior to that, he studied at the University of Birmingham at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Chapter 1: Introduction: From Representation to Mediatisation
PART ONE: ELEMENTS OF MEDIA
Chapter 2: Media Technologies
Chapter 3: Media Industries
Chapter 4: Media Content
Chapter 5: Media Users
PART TWO: MEDIA, POWER AND CONTROL
Chapter 6: Media as Manipulation? Marxism, Ideology and Exploitation
Chapter 7: The Construction of News
Chapter 8: Media Purpose and Control
Chapter 9: Advertising
Chapter 10: Media, Democracy and the Public Sphere
PART THREE: MEDIA, IDENTITY AND CULTURE
Chapter 11: Media, Community and Individualisation
Chapter 12: Media, Race and Ethnicity
Chapter 13: Mediated Gender
Chapter 14: The Mediation of Everything