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Brian L. Ott

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Beschreibung

Master the critical tools for understanding media in today’s fast-evolving digital landscape

Critical Media Studies: An Introduction for the Digital Age provides students with a powerful framework for analyzing the impact of media on knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. In a world increasingly shaped by digital technologies and personalized information feeds, this leading textbook supplies the theoretical tools and knowledge to understand how media influence individuals and society.

With an interdisciplinary approach, Brian L. Ott and Robert L. Mack explore media’s role as a powerful socializing force, addressing the key areas of media technologies, industries, messages, and audiences. Each section delves into distinct critical perspectives, such as Marxist, feminist, and queer analysis, alongside exclusive chapters on pragmatic and erotic approaches.

The fourth edition includes significant updates, including a detailed examination of the ecological impact of digital media and unique engagement with Byung-Chul Han’s philosophy. Throughout this edition, revised chapters incorporate contemporary examples, cutting-edge pedagogical features, timely discussion of global trends, and much more.

Ideal for both undergraduate and graduate students, Critical Media Studies is perfect for courses in Media Studies, Communication, and Digital Media programs. Whether in introductory or advanced classes, students will find the text invaluable for fostering critical thinking, media literacy, and informed citizenship. Covering both introductory and advanced topics, it is also a valuable reference for scholars, media professionals, and those in communication-related fields.

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Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

About the Authors

Preface

About the Companion Website

1 Introducing Critical Media Studies

Categorizing Mass Media

Key Trends in Digital Media

Critical Media Studies

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

Part I: Media Technologies: An Ecological Perspective

2 Ecological Analysis

Medium Theory: An Overview

Harold A. Innis (1894–1952)

Marshall McLuhan (1911–80)

Walter J. Ong (1912–2003)

Neil Postman (1931–2003)

Byung‐Chul Han (1959–present)

The Digital Age

Conclusion

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

Part II: Media Industries: Marxist, Organizational, and Pragmatic Perspectives

3 Marxist Analysis

Marxist Theory: An Overview

Patterns of Media Ownership

Strategies of Profit Maximization

Advertising

Consequences of Ownership Patterns and Profit Maximization

Conclusion

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

4 Organizational Analysis

Organizational Theory: An Overview

The News Media: A Case Study

Conclusion

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

5 Pragmatic Analysis

Pragmatism: An Overview

A Pragmatic Approach to the Regulation of Media

Issues in the Regulation of US American Media

Violence in the Media: A Closer Look at Pragmatic Regulation

Conclusion

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

Part III: Media Messages: Rhetorical, Cultural, Psychoanalytic, Feminist, and Queer Perspectives

6 Rhetorical Analysis

Rhetoric: An Overview

Theories of the Sign

Texts and Rhetorical Structures

The Material Turn: Affect and Aesthetics

Digital Rhetorics

Conclusion

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

7 Cultural Analysis

Cultural Theory: An Overview

The Functions of Ideology

Ideological Processes: Myth, Doxa, and Hegemony

Cultural Studies: History, Theory, and Methodology

Ideology and Media Representations of Class

Media, Ideology, and Representations of Race and Ethnicity

Conclusion

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

8 Psychoanalytic Analysis

Psychoanalytic Theory: An Overview

Freudian Development

Lacanian Development

Psychoanalytic Studies of Media

Psychoanalysis and Film: Apparatus Theory

Psychoanalysis and Film: The Male Gaze

Psychoanalysis and Digital Media

Conclusion

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

9 Feminist Analysis

Feminism: An Overview

Stereotyping in US American Media

Gendered Stereotypes in US American Media

Postfeminism and Media Representation

Consequences of Sexist Media Representation

Conclusion

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

10 Queer Analysis

Queer Theory: An Overview

Queerness and Visibility I: Sexual Stereotypes in US American Media

Queerness and Visibility II: Positive Representation

Consequences of Heteronormative Media Representations

Queerness and Invisibility: Camp and the Fourth Persona

Conclusion

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

Part IV: Media Audiences: Reception, Sociological, and Erotic Perspectives

11 Reception Analysis

Reception Theory: An Overview

Encoding/Decoding: Stuart Hall

Polysemy: John Fiske, Celeste Condit, and Leah Ceccarelli

Interpretive Communities: Stanley Fish

Ethnographic Research and Memory

Conclusion

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

12 Sociological Analysis

Sociological Theory: An Overview

Dramaturgy

Frame Analysis

Equipment for Living

Digital Sociology

Conclusion

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

13 Erotic Analysis

Theories of Pleasure: An Overview

Transgressive Texts

Transgressive Practices

Reflections on Transgression

Conclusion

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

14 Conclusion

Critical Media Studies: An Overview

Applied Media Studies

SUGGESTED READING

NOTES

Appendix: Sample Student Essays

Ecological Analysis

REFERENCES

Marxist Analysis

REFERENCES

Pragmatic Analysis

REFERENCE

Organizational Analysis

REFERENCES

Rhetorical Analysis

REFERENCE

Cultural Analysis

REFERENCE

Psychoanalytic Analysis

REFERENCES

Feminist Analysis

REFERENCE

Queer Analysis

Reception Analysis

REFERENCES

Sociological Analysis

REFERENCES

Erotic Analysis

REFERENCES

Glossary

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 1

Table 1.1 The twofold socializing influence of media

Table 1.2 Average time (hours:minutes) spent per day with tradition...

Table 1.3 Number of print magazines in the United States from 2002 ...

Table 1.4 Number of commercial broadcast stations in the United Sta...

Table 1.5 Daily time spent (hours:minutes) on digital “media activi...

Table 1.6 Daily time spent (hours:minutes) with digital media in th...

Table 1.7 Research paradigms in communication and media

Chapter 2

Table 2.1 History of civilization from the perspective of media eco...

Table 2.2 Time‐biased versus space‐biased media

Table 2.3 Acoustic space versus visual space

Table 2.4 The age of typography versus the age of television

Table 2.5 Foucault's biopolitics versus Han's psychopolitics

Chapter 3

Table 3.1 Select holdings of the big four US‐based media conglomera...

Table 3.2 Annual revenues for The Walt Disney Company by unit (in b...

Table 3.3 Select holdings of the big five US‐based information tech...

Table 3.4 Top 10 highest‐grossing movie franchises (as of 2023)

Table 3.5 US consumer spending on home video rental and sales, 2000...

Table 3.6 US home entertainment consumer spending by category, 2010...

Table 3.7 Distribution of advertising spending in the United States...

Table 3.8 Cost of a 30‐second advertising spot on leading 10 US TV ...

Table 3.9 Prominent car brands in

The Fast and The Furious

film fra...

Chapter 4

Table 4.1 Key differences between photojournalistic images and adve...

Chapter 5

Table 5.1 Breakdown of television ratings in the United States

Chapter 6

Table 6.1 Comparison of tabloid and confessional talk shows

Table 6.2 Comparison of rhetoric's symbolic and material dimensions...

Chapter 8

Table 8.1 Comparison of Freud's and Lacan's theories of human menta...

Chapter 12

Table 12.1 Kenneth Burke's pollution–purification–redemption cycl...

List of Illustrations

Chapter 2

Figure 2.1 Linear and nonlinear systems.

Chapter 3

Figure 3.1 Marx's base/superstructure model.

Chapter 4

Figure 4.1 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography 2023 – Med...

Figure 4.2 Hot Wheels advertisement.

Figure 4.3 President Donald Trump holds a Bible while visiting St....

Figure 4.4 AllSides Media Bias Chart,

AllSides

.

Figure 4.5 Universe of misleading information.

Chapter 6

Figure 6.1 Constituents of a sign: the signifier and signified.

Figure 6.2 Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotic theory.

Figure 6.3 The relation of a denotative sign to a connotative sign...

Figure 6.4 Panzani advertisement.

Figure 6.5 Candie's Fragrances advertisement.

Figure 6.6 The elements of narrative.

Chapter 7

Figure 7.1 Bourdieu's doxa, orthodoxy, and heterodoxy.

Figure 7.2 National wealth held in the United States by group, Q1 ...

Figure 7.3 H&M clothing advertisement.

Figure 7.4 Chanel clothing advertisement..

Chapter 8

Figure 8.1 Diesel advertisement.

Figure 8.2 Nikon S60 advertisement.

Figure 8.3 Jimmy Choo advertisement.

Figure 8.4 Dolce & Gabbana advertisement.

Figure 8.5 Spicebomb advertisement.

Figure 8.6 Candie's Fragrances advertisement.

Figure 8.7 Roberto Cavalli advertisement.

Chapter 9

Figure 9.1 Fame advertisement.

Figure 9.2 Wild Turkey advertisement.

Figure 9.3 American Apparel advert.

Figure 9.4 Tom Ford advertisement.

Chapter 10

Figure 10.1 JBS advertisement.

Figure 10.2 Dolce & Gabbana advertisement.

Chapter 11

Figure 11.1 Hall's encoding/decoding model.

Chapter 13

Figure 13.1 Piece of street art by Banksy in Los Angeles, depicti...

Figure 13.2 Fan artwork:

South Park

movie poster parodies.

Figure 13.3 Fan artwork: slash image of Edward and Jacob, from th...

Figure 13.4 Fan artwork: slash image of Frodo and Sam, from

The L

...

Appendix

Figure A.1 The Doomer is a disheveled Wojak dressed in black and s...

Figure A.2 Doge is dressed as the Doomer with a caption that abbre...

Guide

Cover Page

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

About the Authors

Preface

About the Companion Website

Begin Reading

Appendix: Sample Student Essays

Glossary

Index

WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

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CRITICALMEDIASTUDIES

AN INTRODUCTION FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

Brian L. Ott andRobert L. Mack

Fourth Edition

Copyright © 2026 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial intelligence technologies or similar technologies.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per‐copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750‐8400, fax (978) 750‐4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748‐6011, fax (201) 748‐6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.

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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data Applied for:

Paperback ISBN: 9781394240340

Cover Design: WileyCover Image: © Ian Norman/Flickr/Wikimedia commons

About the Authors

Brian L. Ott is Distinguished Professor of Media and Communication at Missouri State University. He has been studying rhetoric, media, and their intersection for more than 25 years. Brian has authored more than 100 books, essays, and op‐eds on the changing nature of communication in the digital era. He has been interviewed by the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Atlantic, and Politico among others.

Robert L. Mack is Associate Teaching Professor and Honors Faculty Fellow at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University – named the “gold standard” of honors institutions by The New York Times. His research fuses approaches in rhetoric, psychoanalysis, and media studies in order to understand the management of appeal in popular culture. His work has appeared in The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, The Journal of Communication and Religion, and Quarterly Review of Film and Video.

Preface

“Welcome to introductory astronomy! In this book, you will learn all kinds of crap about stars, planets, and the boring space between them.” That's what we would be saying if this book was about astronomy, but it's not. It's a book about media. So why, you ask, would we choose an image of an individual staring up at the Milky Way Galaxy as the cover art for our book (and, yes, we chose it!). Thank you for asking … that's a super smart question! For us, the image reflects – metaphorically speaking – our contemporary media landscape in a couple of key ways.

First, we think the image of a person all alone gazing into the void captures a core feature of our digital landscape, namely the way it divides and atomizes people, stripping them of community and undermining the social relations that fundamentally make us human. If you read that sentence and thought, “gee whiz, that sounded kind of negative,” then, congratulations, you are not part of the 21% of US adults who are illiterate. We mention the matter of literacy because one of the central aims of our book is to foster and promote digital literacy. Turns out, today even fewer US Americans are digitally literate than print literate, and that's pretty shocking given how much time we spend engaging with digital media. It's difficult, of course, to say precisely how many people are digitally illiterate. (By “difficult” we mean we would have to look it up and that feels like a lot of work, even though it's really easy in a world where everything is just a few clicks away.) Alright, here it is: a 2019 Pew Research Center study estimates that only about 40% of US Americans are digitally literate. Hence, the need for a book that promotes digital literacy.

Second (and that's a little reminder we were enumerating the motivations for choosing the book's cover art, which you may have already forgotten thanks to decreasing attention spans in our digital world), we think the image also metaphorically captures the vastness of our digital media landscape. Despite some online claims to the contrary, our planet – let's call it Earth – revolves around the Sun, which is just one of 100 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Moreover, scientists (i.e. the people we largely don't trust or listen to today because of digital media) estimate that the Milky Way Galaxy is just one of 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. So, you see, you did learn something about stars, planets, and the boring space between them! But we digress … because, let's face it, it's hard to stay focused in a digital world that is constantly undermining our ability to think logically and reason causally. Anyway, much like stars in the Milky Way, the digital universe is filled with billions and billions of opinions and a couple million cat videos (for real!). All these opinions and cat videos can be pretty overwhelming. Fortunately, nobody has to listen to or watch them all. Thanks to invisible computer algorithms, people are fed a steady diet of opinions that they already agree with, which convinces them that they are right about everything. Being right about everything is awesome because it frees people from the responsibility of having to actually learn stuff.

Learning stuff takes time and can be hard, and who has the time or patience for that in our fast‐paced digital world? It's way easier to have ill‐informed, but strongly held opinions about things that we share widely on social media than to go through the tedious process of learning. Learning is so 2015! Are we right? You may be wondering (or not) how we settled on “2015” as the last time that being informed trumped just being opinionated. Hmm, it's a mystery (or not). In any case, for those seeking an answer to this mystery, or for those who may have developed a new appreciation for the necessity of learning in a digital world over the last few paragraphs, read on.

In closing, we wish to acknowledge our debt to the various individuals who have helped us bring this project to completion. In particular, we express our gratitude to the team at Wiley, but especially Janaki Gothandaraman, Managing Editor, Nicole Allen, Commissioning Editor, and Ed Robinson, Senior Editorial Assistant. We feel fortunate to have had such a dynamic, creative, and supportive team working with us. We also thank the permissions team for securing various copyright permissions for this edition of the book. Since it is cliché to conclude by saying that any and all mistakes are solely our own, we instead locate the blame squarely on our technocratic overlords (we're looking at you, Elon Musk).

Cheers,Brian and RobFebruary 2025

About the Companion Website

Critical media studies: An introduction for the digital age, 4th Edition, is accompanied by a companion website

www.wiley.com/go/criticalmediastudies/4e 

The website includes:

Test Bank – Interactive / hosted on a platform

Guide

Lab analysis

PPTs

1Introducing Critical Media Studies

KEY CONCEPTS

CONVERGENCE

CRITICAL CITIZENSHIP

CRITICAL MEDIA STUDIES

DECENTRALIZATION

DIGITIZATION

INDIVIDUALIZATION

INTERACTIVITY

INTERPRETIVIST PARADIGM

MASS MEDIA

MEDIUM

MOBILITY

SIMULATION

SKILL

SOCIALIZATION

THEORY

Many years ago, while listening to live music at a country and western bar with a friend, one of the authors of this book tried Rocky Mountain oysters for the first time. He had never heard of them before and knew nothing about them. But when the basket of deep‐fried treats arrived at the table, he confidently picked one up, dipped it in barbecue sauce, and popped it in his mouth. It was surprisingly chewy, gamey even, and he did not really care for it, especially after his friend revealed that “Rocky Mountain oysters” is just a clever name for bull testicles.

We begin with this brief anecdote because it illustrates one of the chief ways that we learn things, namely through first‐hand experience. We know what some things look, smell, feel, sound, or taste like because we have personally seen, smelled, felt, heard, or tasted them. In short, some of what we know about the world is based on direct sensory experience of our immediate surroundings or environment. You know what “sour” tastes like not because someone explained it to you or because you read about it in a book, but because you tasted something sour. But, as it turns out, direct sensory experience is not the only or even most common way we learn things.

A great deal of what we know we have learned through someone or something else such as a parent, friend, teacher, museum, book, film, television show, online video, or website. Thank goodness for Wikipedia! This type of knowing or learning is mediated, meaning that it was conveyed via some indirect channel or medium. Indeed, the word “medium,” which derives from the Latin word medius, means “middle” or that which comes between two things. Readers of this book who have never tasted Rocky Mountain oysters, for instance, now know that they are chewy, as that information has been mediated by or communicated through the medium of this book.

When we stop to think about all the things we know, we suddenly realize that the vast majority of what we know is mediated. We know things about places we have never visited, historical figures and celebrities we have never met, and practices and behaviors in which we have never personally engaged. Thanks to mediated experiences, we know things about faraway lands, including the deepest depths of the ocean and the furthest reaches of outer space, about Robert Oppenheimer and Taylor Swift, and, thanks to CSI and other crime‐based TV series, we may even know something about conducting a homicide investigation. In fact, in our ever‐connected digital world, when we are faced with something we do not know, we simply look it up. In short, much of what we know we have learned through media.

That having been said, we need to be careful not to assume that the things we learn through media are neutral or unbiased. The media, after all, do more than merely expose us to information, which can itself be accurate or not. They expose us to attitudes, values, and beliefs. In other words, media not only teach us about things but also shape our thoughts and feelings toward those things. As we will see throughout this book, it is impossible for media (any media) to teach us about things in a neutral or unbiased way. That is because media filter the world even when they do not intend to. There is no way for media, as their name suggests, not to “mediate” our experience, and, thus, no way for them not to filter it.

Because much of what we know, as well as much of what we think and feel about what we know, is a product of the media we consume, much of who we are – including our attitudes, values, and beliefs about virtually everything – is a product of the media as well. Before the advent of digital media, we were all largely exposed to similar if not the same media. This created a sort of monoculture that was widely shared. But in a networked digital world, where we are constantly fed targeted information based on computer algorithms that analyze our preferences and behaviors, we no longer share a common mediated experience. This shift carries profound implications for those who interact with media and especially for those who study media. So, we think it is worthwhile to take a moment to explore it in greater detail.

Take politics as an example. All of us have views – even if we are not conscious of them – about the proper role of government in people's lives. Some people believe that government ought to play a central role in our lives. These people tend to support social programs run by the government, as well as government regulations for things like guns. Other people believe that government should play a very limited role in our lives. These people tend to oppose government‐sponsored social programs along with regulations related to gun control. But how do people form these beliefs? Attitudes about government are shaped by, among other things, the media people consume, which is why whether one gets their news from MSNBC or Fox (and which, if either, is recommended by their newsfeed) matters quite a bit.

Nor is what we think and feel about the world limited to things as seemingly removed from daily life as politics. Your attitudes, values, and beliefs about love, romance, sex, marriage, friendship, and family are also shaped and influenced by media. Let us face it, long before you experienced the “feeling” of romantic love for the first time, you already had attitudes about it based on the music you listen to, the films and online videos you watch, and the social influencers you follow. Your whole conception of romantic love is, to some degree, shaped by your media environment, and the content of that environment may look very different than the content in someone else's media environment.

While media increasingly create personalized experiences, they are, nonetheless, a powerful socializing force. Socialization is the process by which social institutions like education, religion, family, and media teach us about the social world and our place in it. Given that the average person consumes more than 12 hours of media every day, there is likely no more powerful socializing force in your life today than media. After all, you do not spend 12 hours a day in school, in church, or interacting with your family. And even if you did, those institutions are themselves heavily influenced by the ideas and information circulating widely in our endlessly mediated world.

In the preceding paragraph, we shared what we take to be a relatively uncontroversial claim: that media are the most powerful socializing force in the world today because they – more so than any other social institution – shape what we know, as well as our thoughts and feelings about what we know. But media do something even more fundamental. In addition to influencing what we know (our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs) through their content, media also shape how we know (the very process of thinking itself) through their form. Media are much more than their messages, which carry meanings and values. They are also technologies, which condition our habits of mind and modes of consciousness. In other words, media convey both information (facts and data) and ideologies (attitudes, values, and beliefs) about the world and create epistemologies (modes of information processing). A post on X, for instance, both conveys a simple message like “here is what I am having for lunch” and, through habitual use, conditions us to think in simple ways. Table 1.1 summarizes media's twofold socialization influence.

Once one understands that media teach us not only what to think but also how to think, then one might conclude that media are not simply the most powerful socializing force in the world today, but that they have likely always been the most powerful socializing force in the world. We recognize this claim may seem counterintuitive and, thus, requires some explanation. After all, are not media a relatively recent invention? The short answer is no. Recall our definition of media as that which “mediates” or filters our experience of the world. This view is consistent with the work of Marshal McLuhan, who famously defined media as, “any extension of ourselves.”1

From this perspective, media would include everything from telescopes, which extend our sense of sight, to clocks, which manage our sense of time. It would also include cave drawings, which, as pictorial representations, mediate the experiences that they depict such as hunting. Not all media are as readily recognizable as telescopes, clocks, and cave drawings, however. One ancient and relatively “invisible” medium is language, and like cave drawings, it also mediates our experience of the world. The words we use for things are not the actual things themselves; they are linguistic representations of those things. The word “hammer” is not an actual hammer (and you cannot pound a nail with the word). As such, absolutely everything that anyone has ever told you is mediated, which is to say filtered, by language.

Table 1.1 The twofold socializing influence of media

What

we know

How

we know

The content of media messages conveys information and ideology, which shapes our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs

The form of media technologies creates epistemology, which conditions our habits of mind and modes of information processing

It is easy to forget this fact, of course, because when people hear the word “media,” they almost always think of mass media. But mass media are a subset of media, a much broader category that, as we have already discussed, includes any technology that mediates our experience. While our central concern throughout this book is, in fact, with mass media, we think it is important to situate it within the category of “media” more generally for a couple of reasons.

First, it serves as a reminder that different media filter the world in different ways. Every medium, which is to say every technology, activates and appeals to our senses differently. Some media are auditory, some are visual, some are tactile, and others appeal to multiple senses at once. So, while content is one kind of filter for experience, technology is another kind of filter, one that privileges certain types of sensory experience over others. This insight is the basis of the perspective we explore in Chapter 2. Hearing something and seeing something are, in fact, very different experiences, which is why the spoken word and the written word create different sensations even when they employ the same words. Once you understand this fact, you are better able to understand the ways that media shape our modes of consciousness.

Second, since our technologies are constantly changing, so too is our social world and the way we make sense of it. There used to be, for instance, a relatively clear distinction between interpersonal communication, which was private, and mass communication (MC), which was public. But in the digital age, interpersonal communication is often public on social media platforms where it potentially reaches a mass audience. Moreover, digital media decenters who produces media in society, creating the opportunity for virtually anyone with a computer or smartphone to be a mass producer of information. All of this is by way of saying that more and more of our media experiences are mass mediated experiences and more and more people are producing those experiences.

The consequences of these shifts are profound for what counts as mass media, how mass media operate in society, and how best to study them. Critical Media Studies aims to address each of these consequences and to equip you to better understand the role that contemporary media play in shaping both what and how we know. Toward that end, this book surveys a variety of perspectives for evaluating and assessing the role of mass media in our daily lives. Whether listening to Spotify while walking across campus, sharing pictures with friends on Instagram, receiving the latest sports scores via your mobile phone, reposting your favorite TikTok video, or binge‐watching popular Netflix series like Baby Reindeer or Dancing for the Devil, mass media are regular fixtures of everyday life. But before beginning to explore the specific and complex roles that mass media play in our lives, it is worth looking at who they are, when they originated, and how they have developed.

Categorizing Mass Media

As we saw in the previous section, “media” is a very broad term that includes an almost infinite array of technologies such as language, letters, cars, clocks, cameras, clothing, telephones, telescopes, microscopes, mirrors, cave drawings, and smoke signals. But our principal concern in this book is with mass media, those technologies that allow for communication with a potentially large audience in distant locations. We say potentially large audience because a medium having the capacity to reach a large audience does not mean that it always will. (Think about all the social media posts that are never seen by anyone.) Nor is mass media solely about audience size. A graduation speaker or musician, for instance, may address thousands of people in a stadium, but this is not considered mass media (unless it is also broadcast or viewed online) because the audience is not remote. So, based on this understanding, what counts as mass media?

For research and tracking purposes, mass media are often divided into two broad categories: traditional and new. Traditional media, which are also referred to as analog or legacy media, include print media (books, newspapers, magazines, and catalogs), broadcast radio and television, home video, motion pictures, physical sound recording, direct mail, and roadside billboards. New media, which are commonly referred to as digital media, include any online content accessed through mobile devices (smartphones and tablets), PCs (laptops and desktops), gaming consoles, and other connected devices (internet‐enabled TVs and over‐the‐top devices). New or digital media are often further subdivided into two primary types: (a) commercially generated content such as film and TV on streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, and Hulu, as well as online commercial newspapers, magazines, and podcasts; and (b) user‐generated content such as the text, links, images, and videos shared on social media sites like TikTok, X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as individually produced vlogs and podcasts.

The transition from traditional to new media is significant; so it is worth reflecting on what distinguishes these two categories. The most fundamental and important difference stems from the fact that traditional media are analog and new media are digital. Analog media and messages reflect a continuous, uninterrupted signal; that signal is made up of either matter (in the case of printed material) or energy (in the case of electronic media). Digital media and messages, by contrast, are comprised of discrete “bits,” which are strings of computer code involving 0s and 1s. Because bits have no color, size, or weight, they are easy to copy, manipulate, and change. This fact is the basis of several other key differences. Whereas traditional media are highly standardized, costly to alter and distribute, and passively consumed, digital media are highly targeted or personalized, easy to update and circulate, and more interactive. These differences have also contributed to the decentering of production, which is why user‐generated content is so central to digital media.

Given the advantages of new media over traditional media, media use is steadily moving away from traditional media in the direction of new media. As Table 1.2 illustrates, total media use (traditional + new) has hovered around 12 hours per day among adults (18+) in the United States for 10 years. However, during this time, digital media's share of total media use has grown from 47.3% in 2016 to 64.9% in 2025. All signs indicate that that trend will continue, and, in fact, 2017 was the last time traditional media use exceeded digital media use. It is worth noting that there was a significant spike in time spent with digital media in 2020, which was caused by remote learning during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Digital media use fell sharply immediately following the pandemic but has steadily increased since then, and 2025 was the first year that digital media use exceeded digital media use during the pandemic.

The distinction between traditional or analog media and new or digital media is – like any act of classification – arbitrary. In pointing out that it is arbitrary, we do not intend to suggest that it is not meaningful or motivated. We simply wish to stress that it is always possible to classify things in other ways, which would draw attention to different features. In choosing this classificatory schema, our aim is to highlight the major paradigm shift that is currently underway in our media environment. Today, our whole media environment is increasingly becoming a digital media environment, and that is consequential. But that has not always been the case. In the subsections that follow, we want to look at the historical development of mass media not in terms of a single grand paradigm shift from traditional to new media, but as a series of smaller shifts from mass printing to electronic media to broadcast media to digital media.

Table 1.2 Average time (hours:minutes) spent per day with traditional vs. new media by US adults, 2016−25

Source: Adapted from A. Guttmann, Time spent per day with digital versus traditional media in the United States from 2011 to 2025, Statista, May 2, 2025.

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

Traditional media

6:22

6:14

6:04

5:33

5:31

5:00

4:53

4:37

4:28

4:18

New media

5:43

5:53

6:24

6:49

7:50

7:01

7:19

7:34

7:46

7:58

Total media use

12:05

12:07

12:28

12:22

13:21

12:01

12:12

12:11

12:14

12:16

Print media

The first truly mass medium involved movable‐type mechanical printing. Bi Sheng invented ceramic movable type in China around 1040, during the Song Dynasty, though the oldest extant book printed using metal movable type, the Jikji, would not appear until 1377 in Korea. Movable type printing continued to be refined and developed by others, including the German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg, who, around 1450, implemented a series of innovations that resulted in movable‐type mechanical printing. Gutenberg's printing press sparked a revolution in how humans preserve, disseminate, and ultimately relate to knowledge.

Before the advent of the printing press, hand‐printed or woodblock‐printed materials were costly, laborious, and rare. The development of movable‐type mechanical printing allowed for the comparatively cheap production of a diverse array of documents, pamphlets, and books. The spread of printed materials touched almost every aspect of human life. Suddenly, knowledge could be recorded and preserved for future generations. More importantly, the press allowed for the unprecedented circulation of knowledge to cities across Europe and beyond. Though still limited by class distinctions, access to information from outside of one's immediate context was a real possibility.

Not long after the settlement of Jamestown in 1607, the new colonies' first printing press was established in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While much of the early printing in the colonies was religion‐oriented, such as the Bay Psalm Book,2 English novels such as Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Tom Jones (1749) were also popular. Religious tracts and novels were eventually followed by almanacs, newspapers, and magazines. The most well‐known early almanac, Poor Richard's Almanack, which included information on the weather along with some political opinions, was printed by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia from 1733 to 1757.

Though various cities had short‐lived or local non‐daily newspapers in the 1700s, the New York Sun, which is considered the first successful mass‐circulation newspaper, did not begin operations until 1833.3 The failure of earlier newspapers is often attributed to the fact that they were small operations run by local printers. It was not until newspapers began using editors and receiving substantial financial backing – first from political parties and later from wealthy elites like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst – that the newspaper industry mushroomed.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, the newspaper industry experienced rapid growth. This trend continued until 1973, at which point there were 1,774 daily newspapers in the United States with a combined circulation of 63.1 million. This meant that about 92% of US households subscribed to a daily newspaper. Since then, newspaper circulation has seen a steady decline. As of 2018, only 1,279 daily newspapers remained in the United States. By 2020, the estimated circulation of daily newspapers in the United States was 24.2 million, down from 55.8 million 10 years earlier.4 In that same time, newspaper revenue declined by more than half. Despite declining circulation among print newspapers, however, Americans are still consuming the news. They are simply turning to digital media to do so. As of 2020, 86% of Americans said they were getting their news online; this is more than twice as many as were getting their news online in 2016, just four years earlier.5

Table 1.3 Number of print magazines in the United States from 2002 to 2020 (in two‐year intervals)

Source: Adapted from A. Watson, U.S. Magazine Industry, Statista, May 16, 2024.

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

2018

2020

Number of magazines

5,340

7,188

6,734

7,383

7,163

7,390

7,289

7,216

7,218

7,416

The history of the print magazine industry in the United States is not quite as grim as that of the newspaper industry, having proved a bit more resilient. The first US magazine, American Magazine, was launched in 1741, though the industry did not really take off until the 20th century when it experienced a period of rapid growth. Since 2004, the total number of print magazines circulating in the United States has remained relatively stable, reaching its zenith in 2020 when 7,416 consumer magazines circulated in the United States. This edged out the previous highwater mark, which was established back in 2012. Table 1.3 shows the number of magazine titles in the United States from 2002 to 2020 in two‐year intervals.

Like the magazine industry, the book publishing industry has not experienced the deep losses that the newspaper industry has over the past two decades. Part of that has to do with the sheer number of books published each year. Annually, between 700,000 and 1 million new titles are printed, though about half of these are self‐published, which sell only about five copies on average. While initially book sales rose following the pandemic, print book sales declined 2.7% in the United States in 2023. Similarly, the global book market was valued at $132.4 billion in 2023, which was down from $138.35 billion in 2021. That having been said, the value of the global book market is projected to reach $163.89 billion by 2030 due in large measure to an uptick in eBook and audiobook sales, which have increased by more than 30% since 2020.6

Electronic media

For several hundred years, printing was our sole MC technology. But that would all change as our understanding and mastery of electricity developed. While some regard electricity itself as an MC technology − allowing it to send a message (namely, light) to a large audience in distant places − it is more common to think about it in terms of the communication technologies it facilitated, beginning with the telegraph and later sound recording and motion pictures.

From this perspective, the electrical telegraph is often regarded as the second mass medium. Telegraphy refers to long‐distance communication using symbolic codes and includes various systems such as flag semaphore or the use of visual signs to convey information at a distance. But electrical telegraphy, which was patented by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1837, encouraged something that simpler forms of telegraphy had not: the commodification of information. According to Neil Postman, “The telegraph made information into a commodity, a ‘thing’ that could be bought and sold irrespective of its uses or meaning.”7 As the electrical telegraph spread, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Samuel Findley Breese Morse, the information grid he helped to develop created the possibility of up‐to‐the‐minute “news” that was free from local context. Now, for instance, inclement weather in one area could be reported in another.

In addition to altering our understanding of news by displacing information from its immediate context, the electrical telegraph demonstrated the unique capacity of electronic communication technologies to make a distant place feel immediate or present. The development of sound recording and motion pictures − whose historical development is deeply intertwined, thanks in large part to Thomas Edison − further enhanced that capability. The capacity to record sounds and images, which could then be shared with a remote audience and at a later time, introduced people in a sensorially compelling way to experiences they may otherwise have never known.

In the span of 15 years, Edison and his assistant, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, created what would later develop into the first two new mass media since the telegraph. Edison's first invention, the phonograph, in 1877, was a device that played recorded sound, and his second, the kinetoscope, in 1892, was an early motion picture device that showed short, silent films in peepshow fashion to individual viewers. Edison's goal was to synchronize audio and visual images into a film projector that would allow for more than one viewer at a time. Though sound film did not become possible until the early 1920s, improvements in film projection – namely, the development of the vitascope – gave rise to the silent film era in the meantime. The eventual synchronization of sound and film launched talking pictures or “talkies.” The first commercially successful, feature‐length talkie was a musical film, The Jazz Singer, in 1927. Hollywood was about to enter its Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s, in which “the studios were geared to produce a singular commodity, the feature film.”8

With the motion picture industry firmly established, sound recording began to receive independent attention and the record industry came to dominate the music industry, which had previously been involved primarily in the production of sheet music. By the start of the 20th century, profits from the sale of sound recordings quickly eclipsed those from the sale of sheet music. This shift was fueled in large part by the continuous development of cheap and easily reproducible formats such as magnetic tape in 1926, long‐playing (LP) records in 1948, compact or audio cassettes in 1963, optical or compact discs (CDs) in 1982, and lossy bitcompression technologies such as MPEG‐1 Audio Layer 3 (MP3s) in 1995.

With the exception of magnetic tape for sound recording, which was invented by German engineer Fritz Pfleumer, and Columbia Records' LP, Sony and Philips were responsible for all of the previously mentioned recording formats, as well as the Betamax (1975), LaserDisc (1978), Video2000 (1980), Betacam (1982), Video8 (1985), Digital Audio Tape (1987), Hi8 (1989), CD‐i (1991), MiniDisc (1992), Digital Compact Disc (1992), Universal Media Disc (2005), Blu‐ray Disc (2006), and DVD (as part of the 1995 DVD Consortium) formats. Several of these more recent formats have had implications for the motion picture industry, as they allow for the playback and recording of movies on DVD players and computers at home. All these formats are, of course, steadily being replaced by the digital streaming of music and film.

Broadcast media

In taking advantage of electricity's unique properties, the telegraph did something even more fundamental than fostering context‐free information – it annihilated space and time. The telegraph was the first communication technology to separate messages from the mode of transportation. In a print‐based world, information could travel no faster than foot, horse, buggy, boat, or locomotive depending on the time period. This significantly slowed its dissemination and limited its reach. But by the late 1880s, telegraphy was evolving from a wired to a wireless technology, and in 1888, the German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz demonstrated the capability of transmitting a signal through the air using electromagnetic waves (radio waves).

That capability was the beginning of the broadcast revolution, which would transform our media landscape once again. Broadcast radio came on the scene first, experimenting with transmissions throughout the 1890s. By 1895, the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi had developed a wireless telegraphy system using Hertzian waves, and in 1901, he successfully transmitted a signal across the Atlantic Ocean. Radio was born, though initially radiotelegraphy lacked the continuous electromagnetic wave needed for audio modulation. The development of continuous radio wave transmitters solved this problem, and Westinghouse Electric began transmitting the first commercial radio broadcast under the call sign KDKA in Pittsburgh on 2 November 1920. According to the Federal Communications Commission, “Within just four years of the initial KDKA broadcast, 600 stations existed in the U.S. and radio's rapid popularity contributed to our shared national identity by providing syndicated news, sports, and music.”9

Inventors quickly realized that the principles governing the transmission of audio over airwaves could be used to transmit images, and work on television – which means “far‐vision” – began shortly thereafter. The history of TV is an interesting one that found the radio industry racing against a farm boy from Idaho, Philo T. Farnsworth, to develop it. Farnsworth ultimately finished first, securing the patent for television in 1927, although its commercialization would take some time. CBS launched the first television schedule in 1941. Not only do radio and television share an overlapping technological history, but they also share an overlapping professional history, as many of television's early stars came from radio. Further, they shared a number of technical challenges early on, not the least of which was broadcast interference. However, after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sorted out broadcast frequencies for radio in 1945 and for television in 1952, commercial broadcast stations spread rapidly (see Table 1.4).

Table 1.4 Number of commercial broadcast stations in the United States from 1950 to 2020

Source: Compiled from Broadcast Station Totals, The Federal Communications Commission, October 16, 2023.

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

AM radio stations

2,118

3,539

4,323

4,589

4,987

4,685

4,782

4,580

FM radio stations

493

815

2,196

3,282

4,392

5,892

6,526

6,726

Television stations

47

515

677

734

1,092

1,288

1,390

1,372

The number of commercial radio and television stations began to level off in the early 2000s before beginning a slow decline in the past decade. The shift away from broadcast radio and television is also evident in ownership and usage patterns. As of 2008, 96% of US households had at least one radio receiver (and the average household had three), but that number had fallen to 68% by 2020.10 While fewer people own home receivers today, radio continues to be a popular form of entertainment in automobiles and offices. The way people listen to the radio has also changed. Satellite radio, which provides a direct‐to‐consumer subscription service, was launched in 1997, though it did not become profitable until 2008 when Sirius and XM combined to form the sole satellite radio provider in the United States, Sirius XM Radio. As of 31 December 2023, Sirius XM had nearly 34 million subscribers and reported $8.953 billion in revenue.11

Like radio, the television landscape has changed dramatically in the past few decades. Whereas television was once dominated by over‐the‐air broadcast programming, fewer than 20% of US households owned a TV set capable of receiving free, broadcast programming in 2023.12 Meanwhile, the number of US households who received content via cable or satellite television increased exponentially from 1970 to 2011, growing from 7% to over 85%.13 Since 2014, cable and satellite TV subscriptions have decreased in favor of connected TV (CTV), which relies on a wired or wireless internet connection. Nor are changes in the television landscape limited to how content is received; they have also altered how television is consumed. In the broadcast era, television – even cable and satellite television – was mostly linear, meaning programming was scheduled for set days and times. Today, except for live sporting events, television is primarily consumed through over‐the‐top (OTT) technologies that support digital streaming services, meaning you watch what you want to watch when you want to watch it.

New media

The most recent and perhaps most dramatic revolution in our media environment is the transition from traditional or analog media to new or digital media. According to Lev Manovich:

The new revolution is arguable more profound than previous ones[.] … Indeed, the introduction of the printing press affected only one stage of cultural communication – the distribution of media. … In contrast, the computer media revolution affects all stages of communication, including acquisition, manipulation, storage, and distribution; it also affects all types of media – texts, still images, moving images, sound, and spatial constructions.14

In this section, we explore the development of new media.

New media is an expansive category that, as we saw earlier, includes everything from digital TV and video to podcasts, eBooks, video games, and social media. What unites this diverse array of cultural objects is the use of digital computing technology for creation, distribution, and circulation.15 As such, it is helpful to begin a history of new media with a brief overview of the development of the digital computer. The first digital computer was created by American physicist John V. Atanasoff and his graduate assistant, Clifford E. Berry, at Iowa State College in 1942. While Charles Babbage had invented a mechanical computer much earlier, the Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC) was the first computer to use binary code (0s and 1s) to represent all data, which allowed for its calculations to be performed using electronics.16

While digital computing is responsible for the explosion of digital content, the internet is largely responsible for access to all that content. The internet began its life as a project initiated by the US Department of Defense in 1969 known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). The project's aim was to create a decentered communication network premised on the idea of packet switching that could continue to operate in the event of nuclear war. But as the number of nodes proliferated, it quickly grew into a global digital network that was under no single authority. The Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that only 10% of US adults were using the internet in 1995. By August 2011, that number had grown to 78% of adults and 95% of teenagers.17 Today, millions of people use the internet for everything from online banking and bill paying to job searching and social networking.

Social networking plays a particularly prominent role in our digital world. Among US adults, the five most popular social media sites in 2023 were YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok (in that order).18 Among children, YouTube is the most recognized brand in the United States (ahead of even Disney), with 96% of children aged 6−12 reporting they are aware of YouTube, and 80% of those children using it on a daily basis.19 Moreover, user‐generated video content on YouTube gets 10x more views than brand‐generated content.20 Globally, Facebook is the most popular social media site with 2.9 billion users; YouTube is the second most popular with 2.5 billion users.21 There were 302 million social media users in the United States in 2023, which is a penetration rate of over 91%.22 On average, those users have 7.1 social media accounts where they spend 2 hours and 7 minutes a day; this is slightly lower than the global average where users have 8.4 accounts and spend 2 hours and 25 minutes a day.23 Users consume a wide variety of content on social media, though short‐form videos of less than one minute are among the most popular, capturing the attention of 66% of users.24

Table 1.5 Daily time spent (hours:minutes) on digital “media activity” via mobile devices, and PCs, laptops, and tablets, based on geographic region in 2023

Source: The Global Media Intelligence Report 2023, eMarketer, August 2023, p. 4.

Asia‐Pacific

Southeast Asia

Western Europe

Central and Eastern Europe

Latin America

Middle East and Africa

North America

Mobile

3:35

4:29

2:44

3:52

5:00

4:34

3:33

PC/laptop/tablet

2:22

2:55

2:56

3:44

3:52

3:37

3:35

Total time spent

5:57

7:24

5:40

7:36

8:52

8:11

7:08

When social media use is combined with other forms of digital media use, we spend more than eight hours a day consuming digital media alone. Time spent with traditional media brings the total daily average of media use to over 12 hours. Thus, it is worth considering in greater detail how that time is spent. Digital media use is tracked and measured in a variety of different ways and contexts, so it is important to be precise when reviewing data. Table 1.5 charts self‐reported time spent engaging in “media activity” on mobile devices and PCs, laptops, and tablets. It excludes time spent on digital media using other connected devices such as smart TVs and gaming consoles. Based on this data, the global average for daily time spent on media activity was 6 hours and 40 minutes (3:48 on mobile devices and 2:52 on PCs, laptops, and tablets). Time spent on digital media was greatest in Latin America and least in Asia‐Pacific, but these data tell us little about what is actually being consumed. Table 1.6 breaks down digital media use in the United States by both device and content type from 2019 to 2023.

Table 1.6 Daily time spent (hours:minutes) with digital media in the United States by device and type from 2019 to 2023

Source: Average Time Spent with Media in US, by Media, 2019–2023, eMarketer, April 2021.

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

Mobile (nonvoice)

3:45

4:16

4:23

4:29

4:35

Audio

1:07

1:10

1:16

1:19

1:22

Video

0:42

0:49

0:51

0:53

0:55

Social networks

0:52

1:03

1:03

1:03

1:04

Other

1:05

1:15

1:13

1:14

1:14

Desktop/laptop

1:54

2:03

1:59

1:56

1:56

Audio

0:16

0:20

0:20

0:20

0:20

Video

0:23

0:26

0:26

0:25

0:25

Social networks

0:07

0:07

0:07

0:06

0:06

Other

1:08

1:09

1:06

1:04

1:04