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Media and Society
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Media and Society
Power, Platforms, and Participation

Third Edition
November 2025 | 392 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
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Media and Society offers a critical exploration of how digital platforms and participatory and algorithmic cultures shape power and identity today. This third edition delves into key issues such as the interplay between user generated content and algorithmic processing, the rise of creator cultures, and the dynamic role automation plays in media industries and cultures.

In this new edition you will find:

  • A deep dive into the ongoing development of digital platforms, exploring platform capitalisms beyond Silicon Valley;
  • A detailed exploration of how social media and their promotional and creator cultures work and represent the social world;
  • Insights into how media are a critical site where identities are constructed, negotiated and resisted;
  •          Updated case studies on topics ranging across livestreamers, shadowbanning, automated advertising, beauty filters and more.

For media and communications students to those seeking critical media literacy, this book is essential reading.

 
Chapter 1: Media, Meaning and Power
 
Chapter 2: The Industrial Production of Meaning Making
 
Chapter 3: Platform Media
 
Chapter 4: Social Media, Short Video Streaming and Logistics
 
Chapter 5: Making and Managing Audiences
 
Chapter 6: Participatory and Algorithmic Culture
 
Chapter 7: Algorithmic Imaginaries
 
Chapter 8: Representation
 
Chapter 9: Digital Identities and Intimacies
 
Chapter 10: Creator Cultures
 
Chapter 11: Advertising and Promotional Cultures
 
Chapter 12: News and Strategic Communication
 
Chapter 13: Media Workers
 
Chapter 14: Automation, Representation and Power

Nicholas Carah

Nicholas Carah is Director of the Centre for Digital Cultures & Societies and  Professor in the School of Communication and Arts at The University of Queensland. He is also an Associate Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society and leads the UQ node of the Australian Internet Observatory. Nicholas is a UQ Teaching Fellow (2018–2019) and has been awarded the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Award for Teaching Excellence (2019) and The University of Queensland Award for Teaching Excellence (2020). Nicholas’ research has been published in Media, Culture & Society, Cultural... More About Author

Sungyong Ahn

Sungyong Ahn is a Lecturer in Digital Media and Cultures in the School of Communication and Arts at The University of Queensland. Sungyong’s research investigates smart technologies and ontological issues their users encounter in the worlds where humans are less smart than machines. He has published in Big Data and Society, Journal of Cultural Economy, Technology in Society, International Journal of Communication, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Postmodern Culture, and other journals on media and technologies. He is the author of Internet-ontologies-Things: Smart Objects, Hidden Problems, and their Symmetries (2023). More About Author

Amy Dobson

Amy Shields Dobson convenes the Digital and Social Media program at Curtin University and is Associate Professor in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry. Amy also leads the Digital Intimacies research stream in Curtin’s Centre for Culture and Technology (CCAT). They are an expert across gender and feminism, gendered subjectivities, youth, and social media.  Amy has published widely on youth sexting, gendered representations in contemporary popular media and digital cultures, and contemporary feminine subjectivities. They are the author of Postfeminist Digital Cultures (2015), and editor of Digital Intimate Publics and... More About Author

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