Includes index.

Contents: Making sense of mass communication: Some scenarios -- Focal points in mass communication -- Defining our terms: Mass -- Individualism and the mass media -- Defining our terms: Communication -- Levels of communication -- Laswell's communication model -- Gerbner's model of communication -- Jakobson's model of communication process -- The osgood-schramm circular model -- The sapir-whorf hypothesis and its implications for media study -- The play theory of mass communication -- A note on controversies -- Are media effects weak or powerful? -- Scholarly disputes in the study of mass communication -- A note on terms and definitions -- Summary -- The artwork (or text): Rashomon: A synopsis -- The rashomon phenomenon -- Analyzing and interpreting texts -- A semiotic interpretation of rashomon -- A psychoanalytic interpretation of rashomon -- A marxist interpretation of rashomon -- A feminist interpretation of rashomon -- A sociological interpretation of rashomon -- An ethical interpretation of rashomon -- A myth/ritual/symbol interpretation -- An aesthetic interpretation of rashomon -- A theoretical matter: The functions of texts -- Defining texts -- Understanding genres -- Content analysis -- Summary -- Media: Transportation, responsive chord, and ritual theories of media -- McLuhans's theory: The medium is the message -- McLuhan's theory of hot and cool media -- Media effects -- Ownership of the mass media -- The problem of violence -- The neglected matter of media aesthetics -- Summary -- The audience: Masses versus publics -- Cultures and subcultures in the United States -- Erik Erikson, life cycles, and station preferences -- A hypothesis on taste in music -- A hypothesis on heavy television use and addiction -- Aaron Wildavsky's theory of political cultures -- Uses and gratifications -- Functional analysis -- The problem of aberrant decoding -- The media and attitudes -- Socioeconomic aspects of decoding -- Durkheim on collective representations -- Reception theory -- Audience segmentation by marketers -- Summary -- America/Society: Four systems of mass communication -- Those who pay the piper call the tune -- Some social functions of mass communication -- A note on dysfunctions and latent functions -- Some criticisms of mass media and mass communication -- Emancipatory and domination theories of the media -- Resistance: Emancipatory uses of mass communication -- Humor and resistance: A case study -- Administrative versus critical research in mass communication -- Postmodernism and mass communication -- Summary -- The artist: Kinds of artists -- The artist as an encoder -- Writers and audiences -- Not all texts in the elite arts are masterpieces -- The medium shapes the message -- On the social functions of art -- New technologies and new media -- The irony of the artist's image -- Writing for the mass media -- The problem of intention -- The psychology of creation: A freudian perspective -- Auteur theory -- Kurosawa as an auteur -- Summary.