With a strong emphasis on media convergence throughout, The Media in Your Life helps students develop a system-wide view of the interacting social, historical, economic, and technological forces at work in today's rapidly evolving mass media.Written by two highly regarded scholars and teachers, this text goes beyond other textbooks to help students understand where, how, and why they fit into the contemporary media environment. Too often, mass communication texts rely only on popular publications or on academic research. Folkerts and Lacy believe that all forms of scholarship provide insight into mass communication. In this interactive text, they have combined the concrete practice of journalism with empirical research, enabling students to comprehend the impact of the dynamic media that are an integral part of our lives today.Folkerts and Lacy guide your students through today's whirlwind of mass communication by providing them with the information and critical thinking skills necessary to consider objectively the media and its roles in their lives. Students are challenged to look at their own use of the media and to observe patterns they see in media industries, personalities, structures, and market trends in order to become more informed media consumers.