Understanding Media cites current scholarship to shed light on how celebrities are manufactured by media and why audiences respond as they do. With case studies ranging from King Louis XIV to pop star Kylie Minogue, it examines the construction of celebrity in four concepts: history, text, production, and audience. Areas of discussion include:

Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity

Politics & Social Sciences

Hesmondhalgh, David

Evans, Jessica

Social Sciences

Open University Press

Visit the Understanding Media series microsite.  “David Hesmondhalgh's Media Production is a valuable contribution to the literature in Media Studies, one that is remarkably comprehensive and concise at the same time. The authors expertly map the contours of the field, and provide sophisticated interpretations of key debates about media ownership, media texts, and media audiences. Each of the chapters grapples with a central question in Media Studies, and Hesmondhalgh's introductory and concluding chapters articulate with great clarity how these questions are connected to broader debates about media, power, knowledge, and change. An impressive set of excerpts from classic Media Studies texts and a series of thoughtful learning activities make Media Production a uniquely outstanding resource for teachers and students.” William Hoynes, Professor of Sociology and Director of Media Studies, Vassar College   “This is a lucid, highly readable and scholarly work. It is comprehensive, up to date and presents a wide range of theoretical perspectives on media production in a lively and engaging way. It will be highly valued by students and academics alike.” Angela McRobbie, Professor of Communications, Goldsmiths College London.  Do the media primarily serve the interests of the wealthiest and most powerful sections of society? How intertwined are change and continuity in contemporary media production? In what ways do media producers draw on, and construct, knowledge, values and beliefs? In order to address these questions, we need to know about the people who make the media, their working practices and conditions, and how they make the media products that dominate so much of our communicative landscape.  This book goes behind the scenes to offer an essential introduction to media production. It guides students through the key issues, debates and controversies within the field. These include the increasing internationalisation of the media industries, power and control in media organisations, audience and market research and the experience of working in the media. The authors take students carefully through these and other topics, using readings from key research, carefully designed student activities and many contemporary case studies, including The Simpsons, Silvio Berlusconi, CNN, the BBC and Al-Jazeera, audience measurement devices, war and crime reporting, and rap music.

Media Production

What is it like to work in the media? Are media jobs more ‘creative’ than those in other sectors? To answer these questions, this book explores the creative industries, using a combination of original research and a synthesis of existing studies. Through its close analysis of key issues – such as tensions between commerce and creativity, the conditions and experiences of workers, alienation, autonomy, self-realization, emotional and affective labour, self-exploitation, and how possible it might be to produce ‘good work’ Creative Labour makes a major contribution to our understanding of the media, of work, and of social and cultural change. In addition, the book undertakes an extensive exploration of the creative industries, spanning numerous sectors including television, music and journalism. This book provides a comprehensive and accessible account of life in the creative industries in the twenty-first century. It is a major piece of research and a valuable study aid for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of subjects including business and management studies, sociology of work, sociology of culture, and media and communications.

Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (CRESC)

Baker, Sarah

Routledge

What is it like to work in the media? Are media jobs more ‘creative’ than those in other sectors? To answer these questions, this book explores the creative industries, using a combination of original research and a synthesis of existing studies. Through its close analysis of key issues - such as tensions between commerce and creativity, the conditions and experiences of workers, alienation, autonomy, self-realisation, emotional and affective labour, self-exploitation, and how possible it might be to produce ‘good work’ - Creative Labour makes a major contribution to our understanding of the media, of work, and of social and cultural change. In addition, the book undertakes an extensive exploration of the creative industries, spanning numerous sectors including television, music and journalism. This book provides a comprehensive and accessible account of life in the creative industries in the 21st century. It is a major piece of research and a valuable study aid for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of subjects including business and management studies, sociology of work, sociology of culture, and media and communications.

Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (Culture, Economy and the Social) (CRESC)

Business & Money

Job Hunting & Careers

Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music

This innovative collection of articles offers a major comprehensive overview of new developments in cultural theory as applied to Western music. Addressing a broad range of primarily twentieth-century music, the authors examine two related phenomena: musical borrowings or appropriations, and how music has been used to construct, evoke, or represent difference of a musical or a sociocultural kind. The essays scrutinize a diverse body of music and discuss a range of significant examples, among them musical modernism's idealizing or ambivalent relations with popular, ethnic, and non-Western music; exoticism and orientalism in the experimental music tradition; the representation of others in Hollywood film music; music's role in the formation and contestation of collective identities, with reference to Jewish and Turkish popular music; and issues of representation and difference in jazz, world music, hip hop, and electronic dance music. Written by leading scholars from disciplines including historical musicology, sociology, ethnomusicology, anthropology, popular music studies, and film studies, the essays provide unprecedented insights into how cultural identities and differences are constructed in music.

Arts & Photography

Born, Georgina

Music

University of California Press

The Cultural Industries combines a political economy approach with the best aspects of cultural studies, sociology, communication studies and social theory to provide an overview of the key debates surrounding cultural production. The book:  Considers both the entertainment and the information sectors Combines analysis of the contemporary scene with a long-range historical perspective  Draws on an range of examples from North America, the UK, Europe and elsewhere

The Cultural Industries

Sage Publications Ltd.

The Cultural Industries combines a political economy approach with the best aspects of cultural studies, sociology, communication studies and social theory to provide an overview of the key debates surrounding cultural production. The book: <ul>
<li>Considers both the entertainment and the information sectors</li> <li>Combines analysis of the contemporary scene with a long-range historical perspective</li>
</ul>
<ul><li>Draws on an range of examples from North America, the UK, Europe and elsewhere</li></ul>

Why Music Matters

Wiley/Blackwell

Culture, Economy and Politics: The Case of New Labour (New Directions in Cultural Policy Research)

This book focuses on cultural policy in the UK between 1997 and 2010 under the Labour party (or 'New Labour', as it was temporarily rebranded). It is based on interviews with major figures and examines a range of policy areas including the arts, creative industries, copyright, film policy, heritage, urban regeneration and regional policy.

Lee, David

Oakley, Kate

Nisbett, Melissa

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hesmondhalgh, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hesmondhalgh, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hesmondhalgh, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity

Media Production

Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (CRESC)

Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (Culture, Economy and the Social) (CRESC)

Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music

The Cultural Industries

The Cultural Industries

Why Music Matters

Culture, Economy and Politics: The Case of New Labour (New Directions in Cultural Policy Research)

Culture, Economy and Politics: The Case of New Labour (New Directions in Cultural Policy Research)