Theorising Media

John Corner is Visiting Professor in the Institute of Communication Studies at the University of Leeds and an Emeritus Professor of Liverpool University.

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionPART I1. Power2. Form3. SubjectivityPART IISection One: Terms of analysis4. Mediated Politics, Promotional Culture and the Idea of Propaganda5. Ideology: A Note on Conceptual Salvage6. Public Knowledge and Popular CultureSection Two: Visuality and documentation7. Documentary Expression and the Physicality of the Referent8. Documenting the Political9. Critical Social Optics and the New Audio-Visual Culture

Over the past thirty years or so, John Corner has had a persistent regard for the value of conceptual terms in media research…Theorising Media is consistent with this abiding concern and…in many ways this new book marks its culmination ... Corner has provided us with an important intervention in media studies. It is measured in tone, precise in observation, and characterised overall by enthusiasm for what it deals with, engagement with what it considers, and even-handedness in how weighs and assesses the key concepts and critical work around which it is built.Michael Pickering , Media Culture and SocietyA systematic attempt to think through what the practice of 'theorising media' is or could be. The book has an admirably clear and tidy structure. The more advanced reader can appreciate the penetrating nature of Corner’s understanding of the debates that have centred around these key words … while the advanced undergraduate would be able to understand what was going on with them, such is the clarity, concision and unpretentiousness of Corner’s prose. The conjunction of deep scholarship lightly worn, together with a straightforward writing style that can reach out to non-specialists while more advanced readers are kept engaged, is a very welcome thing indeed.David Inglis, European Journal of Communication