Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Douglas Kellner (eds.): Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks (2006)

“Bringing together a range of core texts into one volume, this acclaimed anthology offers the definitive resource in culture, media, and communication.

* A fully revised new edition of the bestselling anthology in this dynamic and multidisciplinary field.
* New contributions include essays from Althusser through to Henry Jenkins, and a completely new section on Globalization and Social Movements.
* Retains important emphasis on the giant thinkers and “makers” of the field: Gramsci on hegemony; Althusser on ideology; Horkheimer and Adorno on the culture industry; Raymond Williams on Marxist cultural theory; Habermas on the public sphere; McLuhan on media; Chomsky on propaganda; hooks and Mulvey on the subjects of visual pleasure and oppositional gazes.
* Features a substantial critical introduction, short section introductions and full bibliographic citations.”

Keywords and phrases
postmodern, mass media, cultural studies, Star Wars, culture industry, feminism, Marxist, Frankfurt school, third world, hyperreal, Stuart Hall, hegemony, cultural imperialism, deterritorialization, labour power, Ideological State Apparatuses, simulacrum, television, media imperialism

Publisher Wiley-Blackwell, 2006
ISBN 1405132582, 9781405132589
755 pages

Publisher

PDF, PDF (updated on 2016-8-14)

Paul A. Taylor, Jan Ll Harris: Critical Theories of Mass Media: Then and Now (2007)

With the exception of occasional moral panics about the coarsening of public discourse, and the impact of advertising and television violence upon children, mass media tend to be viewed as a largely neutral or benign part of contemporary life. Even when criticisms are voiced, the media chooses how and when to discuss its own inadequacies. More radical external critiques are often excluded and media theorists are frequently more optimistic than realistic about the negative aspects of mass culture.

This book reassesses this situation in the light of both early and contemporary critical scholarship and explores the intimate relationship between the mass media and the dis-empowering nature of commodity culture. The authors cast a fresh perspective on contemporary mass culture by comparing past and present critiques. They:

* Outline the key criticisms of mass culture from past critical thinkers
* Reassess past critical thought in the changed circumstances of today
* Evaluate the significance of new critical thinkers for today’s mass culture

The book begins by introducing the critical insights from major theorists from the past – Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor Adorno, Marshall McLuhan and Guy Debord. Paul Taylor and Jan Harris then apply these insights to recent provocative writers such as Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Zizek, and discuss the links between such otherwise apparently unrelated contemporary events as the Iraqi Abu Ghraib controversy and the rise of reality television.

Critical Theories of Mass Media is a key text for students of cultural studies, communications and media studies, and sociology.

Publisher Open University Press, 2007
ISBN 0335218113, 9780335218110
233 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)

Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964–) [EN, SC, CZ, DE, CR]

“When first published, Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media made history with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and life in the twentieth century. In Terrence Gordon’s own words, “McLuhan is in full flight already in the introduction, challenging us to plunge with him into what he calls ‘the creative process of knowing.'” Much to the chagrin of his contemporary critics McLuhan’s preference was for a prose style that explored rather than explained. Probes, or aphorisms, were an indispensable tool with which he sought to prompt and prod the reader into an “understanding of how media operates” and to provoke reflection.

In the 1960s McLuhan’s theories aroused both wrath and admiration. It is intriguing to speculate what he might have to say 40 years later on subjects to which he devoted whole chapters such as Television, The Telephone, Weapons, Housing and Money. Today few would dispute that mass media have indeed decentralized modern living and turned the world into a global village.”

First published in 1964
With a new introduction by Lewis H. Lapham
Publisher The MIT Press, 1994
ISBN: 0262631598, 9780262631594
392 pages

Wikipedia
Publisher

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (English, 1964/1994, updated on 2019-2-27)
Poznavanje opštila: čovekovih produžetaka (Serbo-Croatian, trans. Slobodan Đorđević, 1971, added on 2015-12-21)
Jak rozumět médiím: Extenze člověka (Czech, trans. Miloš Calda, 1991, added on 2014-3-13)
Die magischen Kanäle: Understanding Media (German, trans. Meinrad Amann, 1992, added on 2013-11-22)
Razumijevanje medija (Croatian, trans. David Prpa, 2008, added on 2013-11-22)