Media and Cultural Theory

 

In this book, we trace the development of media and cultural theory from the Enlightenment through to the present day. Along the way, we gesture towards a range of contemporary media texts including film, television, journalism, pop music, the Internet. With this in mind, we decided to make the scope of material covered fairly broad, ranging from Edmund Burke’s notion of the sublime to Paul Gilroy’s ideas about race and nationhood.

 

Though roughly chronological, we have organized chapters by theme and ideas. Inevitably there is some crossover between the two and where possible this is gestured to in the flow of the text. However, it is our view that it is often very difficult to isolate specific strands of thought when discussing the complex ways in which media and cultural texts communicate.

 

The aim of the book then is to provide students with an introduction to media and cultural theory in a way that is both readable and engaging. So many media students shy away from the theoretical application and this is a great shame as it is a useful tool to illuminate and enlighten our understanding of the texts we consume. Though the core of the work is grounded in the delineation of key theoretical perspectives, the book is not trying to shed new light on any of the theorists discussed per se. Rather, it is our intention to explore how these theoretical perspectives might inform thinking about contemporary media and cultural production.

 

In this direction, the book can be viewed as a starting point for students, guiding them as to how they might begin to incorporate the seemingly bewildering selection of theoretical perspectives on offer into their own work. Though we have endeavored to provide the reader with a usable précis of each writer’s key work and useful bibliographical advice, it should be emphasized that there is no substitution for reading the original texts. In this sense, we have tried to write the book we always wished we had had when we were students.

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