This book introduces undergraduates to critical perspectives on the relationship between media and society, and to ideas about the production of meaning through media. The opening chapters provide a foundation to understanding the triangular relationship between media businesses (institutions) and texts and audiences. Succeeding chapters look at specialist areas such as popular music, news, new technologies, advertising and globalization. .There is a development and application of ideas about such key terms as representation, difference, discourse and ideology. The student reader is encouraged to take on different views around issues relating to questions of media power, media influence, audience consumption. There is an emphasis on applying ideas to media practices and media texts. There is engagement with debates around such topics as public service broadcasting and the public sphere. Students are introduced to a range of key thinkers and their ideas as concepts, issues and debates are introduced..The reader is engaged through key questions, case studies, illustrations and diagrams, as well as a clearly argued text bedded in examples. .This book is already used both as a foundation at level 1 for degree courses in media studies, as a key text for general media modules at different levels, and as a key text at various levels in respect of specific chapters supporting specific modules and their topics..