A new approach

Using a political economy approach, the authors argue the era of mass communication—of broadcast communication to mass audiences—is over. In the digital age, audiences have been atomised down to a single individual with a mobile phone—the message is narrowcast to the audience, which is composed of singular citizen-consumers.

Comprehensive introduction to media and communications

• Traces the historical development from mass communication to new technologies
• Examines the economic organisation of media old and new
• Presents theoretical frameworks about the media
• Explores how ‘new' media extends and eclipses ‘old' media
• Focuses not only on industries and technologies but also on their social and political impacts
• Introduces the unique concept of the surveillance economy
• Delivers a strong focus on ethics, regulation and governance

• Packed with features to help students learn, including examples, case studies, chapter objectives, key words and concepts
• Focused and sequential in themes
• An engaging and direct style of writing
• Real-life examples from new media practitioners about their transition to new technologies
• Examples and case studies based on real knowledge of how the communication industries work

Part 1 Political Economy, Technology, Culture , Media and Capitalism
Chapter 1: Digital futures: How the mobile phone has replaced the television
Chapter 2: Digital dilemmas: Contradictions and conflict in thinking about communication
Chapter 3: The political economy of communication and media
Chapter 4: Media and capitalism: The role of technology in production and communication

Part 2 From Hot Metal to Hotmail: The (Recent) History of Mass Communication
Chapter 5: From Gutenberg to Global News: A brief history of the print media
Chapter 6: Industrial light and magic: A brief history of still and moving pictures
Chapter 7: Telegraphy, the talking wireless and television
Chapter 8: The governance, regulation and ethics of the mass communication media

Part 3 The Emergence of Convergence: New Century, New Media
Chapter 9: From calculation to Cyberia: The 2500 year history of computing
Chapter 10: The golden age of the Internet?
Chapter 11: Who's a journalist now? The expanded reportorial community
Chapter 12: The techno-legal time gap: Can the law keep up with the digital revolution

Part 4 From Broadcasting to Narrowcasting: The Emergence of a Surveillance Economy
Chapter 13: I know what you did last summer: The surveillance society has arrived
Chapter 14: That's the way the cookie rumbles: A surveillance economy
Chapter 15: Politics and new media
Chapter 16: Can we influence the future of narrowcasting?

Glossary

John Harrison – Lecturer in Communication and Public Relations, University of Queensland

Martin Hirst – Lecturer in Journalism and Mass Communication, Edith Cowan University.