Customer Reviews

The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest

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The expert collaboration of David Croteau (Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richard, Virginia) and William Hoynes (Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology at Vasser College, Poughkeepsie, New York), The Business Of Media: Corporate Media And The Public Interest is a candid revealing and detailed study of the rapidly evolving media industry, especially in an increasingly media-saturated society. A thoroughly scholarly work which deftly presents its in-depth study in largely jargon-free and accessible terms ideal for the non-specialist general reader, The Business Of Media offers insights and a close scrutiny into what really goes on behind newspaper and broadcast journalism headlines.

The uniqueness of this book written by Croteau and Hoynes is above all that they introduce two approaches in understanding the characteristics of modern mass media and the correlations between the media and the social forces including public opinion, commercial, political and cultural conditions. Based on the two different categories - Market and Public sphere - it helps better understand the significant role and effectiveness of media that generate not only the public opinion, but also its influences on the mainstream in politics, business, education, culture and society. These two authors provide profoundly useful and informative resources to grasp the key points of media's role and power in society based on two distinctive perspectives introduced in this book. The main concept of this book is basically about understanding the media and economies in market and public theory and how these two spheres differ from each other in terms of circulation of information and commercial activities. The authors categorize two different approaches in order to effectively analyze the media system and each of these ideas is very well organized and clearly explained along with suitable and apparent examples provided which demonstrate the importance and different evaluation in each concept. Additionally, thanks to the great job that the authors showed in this book, the contents in each chapter are really uncomplicated and even interesting to understand without any confusion. I definitely recommend this book to people who have interest in media especially considered from business and economic views.

I purchased this text as part of my required reading for a graduate course. The text is clear, concise,and provides real world examples of how the media indsutry has changed and continues to change. I'm almost mid way through the semester and I find that this book provides a clear analysis of both the media indsutry from an economic standpoint and with the social and theoretical material. I'm not going to sell this book back.

For those who have an interest on this subject, as well as researchers, this is quite a good book.

I definitely recommend it.