Making Sense of Media: A Cultural-Historical Approach

Book Synopsis: News, advertising, entertainment, public relations, propaganda, and other forms of social and public expression circulating through a wide range of media outlets have left few human experience aspects untouched. At perhaps no time in our history has the systematic study of these forms of media and social discourse within the context of the legal, political, economic, cultural, and historical factors more urgent and necessary. As the country increasingly moves into cultural cocoons fostering disembodied divisive communities along with social separation and fragmentation, students taking foundation courses with a range of titles should benefit from studying with this book. These include media literacy, mass communication, media and culture, media dynamics, communications, media rhetoric and persuasion, cultural studies, journalism, popular culture, mass media and freedom of expression, mass communication and society, and press and the public.With the Grim Reaper lurking nearby, pursuing a traditional publisher seemed impractical and unproductive. While getting critiques and suggestions from a diverse range of professors teaching foundation courses is worthwhile, the process invariably involves publisher pressure to put the material into a worn-out mold resulting in a media text bearing little difference from what’s already abundantly available. Writing with no one looking over my shoulder with the bottom line in mind proved liberating, freed, as it were, from the descriptive approach most leading publishers demand.