Understanding Media Industries

Understanding Media Industries is the only book that examines the interaction between commercial industry realities and media using a critical media studies approach in a concise, topic driven format that is accessible and engaging for undergraduate students. Designed for Media Industry, Media & Society, and Introduction to Media Studies courses, Understanding Media Industries also works well for courses on media criticism, media literacy, orintroductory mass communication.

This is the best book available for teaching media industries studies. Additionally, it has many of the specific details and examples that are difficult to remember off the top of your head in a lecture." - Ethan Tussey, Georgia State University, Understanding Media Industries is a comprehensive, readable, accessible text for teaching students how to thoughtfully and productively analyze the operations of media industries, and how those operations shape media content. It is rich with examples, full of usefully explained vocabulary, and full of great teaching materials. Moreover, Havens & Lotz's approach to analyzing these industries is simple and clear enough for introductory students, but sophisticated enough to manage the complexity of the media industries." - Erin Copple Smith, Austin College, I would highly recommend using Understanding Media Industries in your course because that book shows the historical, cultural, and economic factors that influence the intricate process of producing texts in the media industries. It has great a great framework and vocabulary to help students write about the production of texts, excellent questions in the back of chapters you can pose to them, and addresses the production side of the industry enough to keep the vast number of students from the major engaged that want to make their own films." - Max Hohner, Arizona State University, This is a substantial, authoritative, and eminently readable/teachable text which generally does a good job of identifying critical issues in media practices, and their origins in history, economics, and technology." - Stuart Moulthrop, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Timothy Havens is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies and in the Program in African American Studies at the University of Iowa.Amanda D. Lotz is an associate professor of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan.