Key Concepts

‘Media studies’ (and related areas such as Cultural Studies) are now a huge and often confusing jungle of theories, specialist terms, approaches and resources. This section of The Media Student’s Book seeks to carve a way through these so as to give you confidence in handling the specific areas (music, film, sports coverage etc.) which your course may involve.

It offers ways of grasping the key conceptual areas (such as Representation, Narrative, Globalisation etc.) through clear explanation, as well as some sense of the histories of key terms, and the debates which exist around them.

This, like all of this 5th edition of The Media Student’s Book (MSB5), is illustrated by case studies, exploration boxes for your own testing, margin material and a lively use of other resources.

The chapters in this section are:

Chapter 1: Approaching media texts

Chapter 2: Narratives

Chapter 3: Genres and other classification

Chapter 4: Representations

Chapter 5: Globalisation

Chapter 6: Ideologies and discourses

Chapter 7: Media as business