Paddy Scannell worked for many years at the University of Westminster (London) where he and his colleagues established, in 1975, the first undergraduate degree program in Media Studies in the UK. He is a founding editor of Media, Culture and Society which began publication in 1979 and is now issued six times yearly. He is the author of A Social History of British Broadcasting, 1922-1939 which he wrote with David Cardiff, editor of Broadcast Talk and author of Radio, Television and Modern Life. He is currently working on a trilogy. The first volume, Media and Communication, was published in June 2007. Professor Scannell is now working on the second volume, Television and the Meaning of 'Live.' The third volume, Love and Communication, is in preparation. His research interests include broadcasting history and historiography, the analysis of talk, the phenomenology of communication and culture and communication in Africa.
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"This is a much-needed and timely follow-up to an earlier reader by the well-respected British communications journal, Media, Culture & Society. . . . This reader is much needed and timely for several reasons. It re-establishes the politico-economic dimension in the study of the relation between culture and power. . . . Another and probably even more significant reason why this reader is sorely needed is that it capsulizes the most damaging criticisms of postmodernist theory and its curious obfuscation, if not total denial, of the structuralist concern with the role of domination in the study of culture. . . . This volume is certainly correct in making explicit its full-toned apprehension about the dubious postmodernist pretensions to valid social inquiry. . . . This comprehensive reader of integrated critical media research will surely become an invaluable asset for all those scholars and students of media studies struggling to place power relations back at the center of the debate about the nature and dynamics of the culture-society relationship."
--Canadian Journal of Communication
On the cutting edge of media studies, Culture and Power presents a solid introduction to the current issues and debates central to media studies. The chapters derive from major articles published in Media, Culture & Society from 1985-1991. The book divides into three parts. The first part outlines and surveys some key theoretical developments in media studies, including the increased use of feminist and cultural studies approaches to the media and the development of the postmodernism debate. The second part addresses the pivotal area of recent research around the audience; the last section addresses the public sphere as a whole.
This broad-ranging volume will be an invaluable text in communication, cultural studies, and sociology.
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