In this book, author Nick Couldry, media and cultural theorist from the London School of Economics, asks, "What are the priorities for media and cultural research today - at a time of the intensified mediation of all fields of social life, threats to democratic legitimacy, and serious instability on the global political stage?" The book calls for a 'decentered' media research that rejects easy assumptions about media's role in holding societies together and instead looks more critically at the difference media make on the ground to the material conditions of our lives. In what detailed ways do media transform knowledge and agency in daily life? How do media contribute to the culture of democratic politics?And how can we live, ethically, with and through media?

Couldry draws on media sociology, media theory, and cultural theory, as in his previous books, as well as on political theory and ethics. According to his book, media and cultural research must now reorient itself if it is to remain relevant and critical, at a time when, according to the author, living well together, while acknowledging profound differences of value and worldview, are challenged.

Contents include:

• Listening out for Connections
• Decentering Media Research
• Theorising Media as Practice
• The Promise of Cultural Studies
• In the Place of a Common Culture, What?
• Beyond the Televised Endgame: Reflections after 9/11
• Towards a Global Media Ethics

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