Polity’s Why It Matters series

In these short and lively books, world-leading thinkers make the case for the importance of their subjects and aim to inspire a new generation of students.

Helen Beebee & Michael Rush, Philosophy

Nick Couldry, Media

Robert Eaglestone, Literature

Andrew Gamble, Politics

Lynn Hunt, History

Tim Ingold, Anthropology

Neville Morley, Classics

Alexander B. Murphy, Geography

Geoffrey K. Pullum, Linguistics

Graham Ward, Theology and Religion

The right of Nick Couldry to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2020 by Polity Press

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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1518-9

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Couldry, Nick, author.
Title: Media : why it matters / Nick Couldry.
Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity, 2019. | Series: Why it matters | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “The media plays a massive role in shaping the world as we see it. Couldry explains the significance of five core dimensions of media, and shows that understanding these dynamics is a vital skill that every person needs in the digital age, when the fate of our political worlds and social environment may rest on how we communicate with each other”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019020466 (print) | LCCN 2019981525 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509515141 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509515158 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509515189 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Mass media.
Classification: LCC P90 .C689 2019 (print) | LCC P90 (ebook) | DDC 302.23--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019020466
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019981525

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Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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Acknowledgements

This book was written between June 2018 and June 2019, in a period of considerable turbulence and rising controversy in media, politics and society in Brazil, Hungary, India, the UK, the USA, Venezuela, and many other places. Rather than bracket out that context, I have tried to reflect it.

Thanks to Pascal Porcheron of Polity for his invitation in 2016 to write a book in Polity’s Why It Matters series, his patience with a slower schedule than originally planned, and his perceptive editorial input. Thanks to Ellen MacDonald-Kramer for her support too and to Justin Dyer for a sharp and sensitive copy-edit of the manuscript.

I also want to thank various institutions and people without whom the book, once committed, could never have been written or completed. In terms of institutions, thanks to the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, which granted the sabbatical during which this book was written; and thanks to the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and MIT’s Comparative Media Studies programme for being congenial homes in autumn 2018. Turning to people, particular thanks to my niece Isobel Edwards for carefully reading an earlier draft and reassuring me that I had made at least some progress in shedding the jargon and unnecessary detail that often gets in the way of academic writing. And thanks to Yongchan Kim for advice about media in Korean history; to Kim Schrøder for alerting me to the original version of the Stuart Hall research paper discussed in Chapter 2; and to Sonia Livingstone and Rafał Zaborowski for conversations over a number of years about the ‘media deprivation’ exercise as performed in their Media Audiences course at the LSE. Many thanks also to João Vieira-Magalhães for research assistance and, as ever, excellent help on many matters of detail. Thanks to three anonymous reviewers for Polity for helpful and constructive comments that helped me to produce a better version. And heartfelt thanks to Louise Edwards not just for commenting on the manuscript, but even more importantly for tolerating my frequent distractions and absences during much of this book’s writing and for her clarity, as always, in grasping what really matters. The faults that remain are my responsibility.

I dedicate this book to Chris Powell, Imogen Crarer, and Will Crarer. In their world, media will surely matter even more than in mine – whether for good or ill, we must wait and see.

Nick Couldry
Islip, near Oxford
June 2019