Encyclopedias Online: Communication/Mass Media

This encyclopedia is a two-volume set that, in more than 300 entries, offers current descriptions of the theories that explain numerous aspects of communication and present the background issues and concepts that comprise these theories.

Broad areas of coverage include advertising; advocacy groups; computers and electronic media; gender and sexuality; movies, music, and television; public policy; and violence and aggression, among others.

Provides students and researchers with a comprehensive overview of contemporary communication theory. More than 300 entries address topics related not only to paradigms, traditions, and schools, but also metatheory, methodology, inquiry, and applications and contexts.

This encyclopedia surveys the state of journalism at the end of the twenty-first century's first decade. The focus of the entries is on the gathering, editing, reporting, and distribution of news. As will be evident, the emphasis is on American media and practice, with some reference to other nations.

This encyclopedia considers political communication from that broad interdisciplinary perspective, encompassing the many different roles that communication plays in political processes in the United States and around the world.

Entries address such topics as advertising, focus groups, gatekeepers, infomercials, coalition building, propaganda, press kits, sandbagging, and zones of meaning.

Users of this volume will include undergraduate and graduate students in journalism (including those in specialized courses in science journalism and environmental journalism) who have been assigned a story or other project on a science-related topic; communication, mass communication, and media studies students at any level who are writing a term paper or designing a research project and are interested in finding out more about this interdisciplinary field.

Alphabetically, from "Activist Cinema in the 1970s (France)" to "Zionist Movement Media, Pre-1948," this encyclopedia provides a global look at media forms and activities utilized by social movements (defined very broadly).

The SAGE Guide to Key Issues in Mass Media Ethics and Law is an authoritative and rigorous two-volume, issues-based reference set that surveys varied views on many of the most contentious issues involving mass media ethics and the law.

In 26 extended articles, Downing, his co-editors and international cast of contributors provide critical analyses and describe their research in a variety of aspects of mass media, including its technology, uses, theories, and cultural issues.