• Presents an engaging and comprehensive introduction to a broad range of critical approaches to the field written in an accessible way
• Features a new chapter on sociological analysis that reveals how audiences use media in their everyday lives to manage social roles, relationships, and contexts
• Offers substantial updates to examples used in the book to reflect contemporary industry standards, textual forms, and audience behaviors
• Delivers up-to-date media references that resonate with today’s undergraduates
• Updated with more global examples for broader appeal
• Enhanced online resources, including PowerPoint slides, test bank, study guides and sample assignments, available upon publication at www.wiley.com/go/criticalmediastudies

Brian L. Ott is Associate Professor of Media and Rhetorical Studies in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver. He is the author of The Small Screen: How Television Equips Us to Live in the Information Age (2007), and co-editor of It's Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era (2008) and Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials (2010).

Robert L. Mack is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His writing has appeared in The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts and The Journal of GLBT Family Studies.

Preface vi

1 Introducing Critical Media Studies 1

Part I Media Industries: Marxist, Organizational, and Pragmatic Perspectives 21

2 Marxist Analysis 23

3 Organizational Analysis 56

4 Pragmatic Analysis 81

Part II Media Messages: Rhetorical, Cultural, Psychoanalytic, Feminist, and Queer Perspectives 107

5 Rhetorical Analysis 109

6 Cultural Analysis 134

7 Psychoanalytic Analysis 162

8 Feminist Analysis 193

9 Queer Analysis 214

Part III Media Audiences: Reception, Sociological, Erotic, and Ecological Perspectives 243

10 Reception Analysis 245

11 Sociological Analysis 266

12 Erotic Analysis 285

13 Ecological Analysis 312

14 Conclusion: the Partial Pachyderm 335

Appendix: Sample Student Essays 351

Glossary 375

Index 382