Here is a widescreen approach to the study of media organisations in society. It combines a survey of current research with original case studies, providing an in-depth understanding of media industries and the processes of cultural production. It studies the media as an industry, through critical studies of the Internet, the global standardisation of the mega musical, the deregulation of television, and alternative media. It views the media as battlefield, by looking at Amnesty's inspired international campaign against the killing of street children in Brazil, a successful opposition to privatisation, and the rise of Marxism Today. It investigates the media as a cultural product by assessing the processes which determine which books are reviewed and by whom, the elite male tastes which privilege the development of certain forms of popular music, and the way in which public responses to the media are affected by a 'culture of belief'.