1st Edition

The Routledge Companion to British Media History

Edited By Martin Conboy, John Steel Copyright 2015
    628 Pages
    by Routledge

    628 Pages
    by Routledge

    The Routledge Companion to British Media History provides a comprehensive exploration of how different media have evolved within social, regional and national contexts.

    The 50 chapters in this volume, written by an outstanding team of internationally respected scholars, bring together current debates and issues within media history in this era of rapid change, and also provide students and researchers with an essential collection of comparable media histories.

    The first two parts of the Companion comprise a series of thematic chapters reflecting broadly on historiography, providing historical context for discussions of the power of the media and their social importance, arranged in the following sections:

    • Media history debates
    • Media and society

    The subsequent parts are made up of in-depth sections on different media formats, exploring various approaches to historicizing media futures, divided as follows:

    • Newspapers
    • Magazines
    • Radio
    • Film
    • Television
    • Digital media

    The Routledge Companion to British Media History provides an essential guide to key ideas, issues, concepts and debates in the field.

    Chapter 40 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at www.tandfebooks.com/openaccess. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license.

    Introduction Part I - Media History Debates 1. The Devaluation of History in Media Studies Mike Pickering 2. Media as historical artefacts Adrian Bingham 3. Doing Media History: The Mass Media, Historical Analysis and the 1930s Kevin Williams 4. Media Studies in Question: The Making of a Contested Formation Graham Murdock and Peter Golding 5. Media archaeology: From Turing to Abbey Road, Kentish Radar Stations to Bletchley Park Jussi Parikka Part II - Media and Society 6. The political economy of media Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb 7. Media effects Theresa Cronin 8. Citizen or Consumer? Representations of class in post-war media Mick Temple 9. Inscriptions and depictions of ‘Race’ Amir Saeed and Dan Kilvington 10. Home Comforts? Media and the Family Kaitlynn Mendes and Jilly Boyce Kay 11. Sex and sexuality in British Media Clarissa Smith 12. This Sporting ‘life-world’: Mediating Sport in Britain John Steel 13. Social Conflict and the Media: Contesting definitional power Jonathan Cable 14. The media and armed conflict Phil Hammond Part III – Newspapers 15. Ballads and the Development of the English Newsbook Marcus Nevitt 16. Eighteenth century newspapers and public opinion Victoria Gardner 17. The nineteenth century and the emergence of a mass circulation press Joel Wiener 18. Tabloid Culture: The Political Economy of a Newspaper Style Martin Conboy 19. The Regulation of the Press Tom O'Malley 20. The Provincial Press in England: An Overview Rachel Matthews 21. Online and on Death Row: Historicizing newspapers in crisis Tim Luckhurst Part IV – Magazines 22. The role of the literary and cultural periodical David Finkelstein 23. Specialist magazines as communities of taste Tim Holmes and Jane Bentley 24. Contexts and developments in women’s magazines Deborah Chambers 25. Mapping the male in magazines Bill Osgerby 26. Magazine Pioneers: form and content in 1960s and 1970s radicalism Andrew Calcutt Part V – Radio 27. The Reithian legacy and contemporary public service ethos Sian Nicholas 28. Pirates, popularity and the rise of the DJ Richard Rudin 29. The long and winding road: histories and practices of women´s radio Caroline Mitchell 30. Radio drama Hugh Chignell 31. Radio Sports News: The Longevity and Influence of Sports Report Richard Haynes 32. Radio’s Audiences Guy Starkey Part VI – Film 33. The British Cinema: Eras of film Tom Ryall 34. British Cinema and History James Chapman 35. The Horror! Matt Hills 36. The Documentary Tradition Peter Lee-Wright 37. The Censor’s Tools Julian Petley Part VII – Television 38. The Television Sitcom Brett Mills 39. Drama on the Box Lez Cooke 40. The Origins and Practice of Science on British Television Timothy Boon and Jean-Baptiste Gouyon 41. History on television Ann Gray 42. Reality TV Su Holmes 43. Journalism and Current Affairs Stephen Cushion Part VIII - Digital Media 44. Technology’s false dawns: the past of media futures Lily Canter 45. Change and continuity: Historicizing the emergence of online media Scott Eldridge II 46. Personal Listening Pleasures Tim Wall and Nick Webber 47. Futures of television John Corner 48. Video games and gaming – the audience fights back Tristan Donovan 49. From letters to tweeters: media communities of opinion Karin Wahl-Jorgensen 50. Digital memories and media of the future Joanne Garde-Hansen

    Biography

    Martin Conboy is Professor of Journalism History in the Department of Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield and co-director of the Centre for the Study of Journalism and History. He is the author of seven single-authored books on the language and history of journalism. He is on the editorial boards of Journalism Studies: Media History; Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism; and Memory Studies.

    John Steel teaches in the Department of Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Journalism and Free Speech (Routledge, 2012) and co-editor, with Marcel Broersma, of Redefining Journalism in the Era of the Mass Press 1880-1920 (Routledge, 2016). With over thirty publications, his teaching and research span the areas of political communication, media history and journalism studies.

    "This will be the first port of call for students and lecturers around the world wanting to understand British media history. It covers a wide spectrum, summarises existing research, and breaks new ground. It is a landmark book."

    - James Curran, Professor of Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

    "This impressively comprehensive compilation of essays on British media history comprises 50 essays by a wide range of scholars from universities throughout the UK.  More than a typical historical analysis, the book problematizes (in Karen Weekes's definition) media history in considering whether media are a cause or a symptom of a larger cultural phenomenon.  This cultural contextualization and interdisciplinary approach to media history offers an invaluable contrast to the more economically induced pressures of time and space created by the diverse digital media market environment.  Another strength of the book is that the editors... planned it to reach “the widest possible range of readers”; at that, the book is a brilliant success... This volume is an invaluable resource for the study of British media history... Summing Up: Highly recommended."

    - M. R. Grant, emerita, Wheaton College, USA, in CHOICE