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Media Performance
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Media Performance
Mass Communication and the Public Interest



May 1992 | 368 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
This major text by the author of Mass Communication Theory offers a comprehensive analysis of the growing field of assessment and evaluation of the performance of mass media. Across different societies, with varying media systems, there is evidence of increasing concern with the nature and quality of media output as well as about the independence and diversity of media systems. In this broad-ranging overview, Denis McQuail outlines the varying means of media performance assessment which have been attempted. He analyzes the central questions of what the `public interest' means in this context, which criteria are relevant for assessing media performance, how such values are established and how they can be reconciled with the economic, industrial and audience market contexts.

Both encapsulating a major area of recent debate and research, and advancing it to a new level, this book will be essential reading for students of media and communication studies and for those actively involved with media policy and practice.

 
PART ONE: MASS COMMUNICATION AND SOCIETY
 
Public Communication and Public Interest
Contested Territory

 
 
Media Performance
Traditions of Enquiry

 
 
The `Public Interest' in Communication
 
PART TWO: MEDIA PERFORMANCE NORMS
 
Performance Norms in Media Policy Discourse
The Newspaper Press

 
 
Performance Norms in Media Policy Discourse
Broadcasting

 
 
A Framework of Principle for Media Assessment
 
PART THREE: RESEARCH MODELS AND METHODS
 
Media Organizational Performance
Models and Research Options

 
 
PART FOUR: MEDIA FREEDOM
 
Concepts and Models of Media Freedom
 
Media Freedom
From Structure to Performance

 
 
Media Freedom
The Organizational Environment

 
 
PART FIVE: DIVERSITY
 
Varieties and Processes of Diversity
 
Taking the Measure of Diversity
Media Reflection

 
 
Media Access and Audience Choice
 
PART SIX: OBJECTIVITY
 
Concepts of Objectivity
 
A Framework for Objectivity Research
 
Measuring Objectivity
News as Information

 
 
Measuring Objectivity
The Evaluative Dimension of News

 
 
PART SEVEN: MASS MEDIA, ORDER AND SOCIAL CONTROL
 
Media and the Maintenance of Public Order
 
Policing the Symbolic Environment
 
Solidarity and Social Identity
 
PART EIGHT: MEDIA AND CULTURE
 
Questions of Culture and Mass Communication
 
Cultural Identity and Autonomy
Whose Media Culture?

 
 
PART NINE: IN CONCLUSION
 
Changing Media, Changing Mores
Implications for Assessment

 

`McQuail's book offers a review of the field of the assessment and evaluation of media performance...the author discusses the issue of `public interest' and attempts to relate it to the measurement of media performance. The relationship between these is the main contribution of this book. Many studies focused on these concepts but McQuail provides a first thorough attempt to relate them within a framework of communication theory and research' - International Journal of Public Opinion Research

`Denis McQuail's latest book, Media Performance, provides an important and much needed addition to the communications literature. This comprehensive and critically astute text details how print and electronic media policy and performance impact on individuals, groups and the very structure of democratic societies' - Majorie Ferguson, University of Maryland at College Park

`This far-reaching and important study from a long-time critical observer of the media scene takes in developments in many countries and suggests new frameworks for assessing media in the 1990s.... Important and recommended for good communications collections - this will be widely used and widely cited' - Choice

`When a short list of the most important books on communication media in the last half of the twentieth century is drawn up at some future date, I would not be surprised to see Denis McQuail's Media Performance at the top. While others use bloated language and fanciful impressions to talk about `media performance', McQuail, one of the world's leading media sociologists and all-around scholars, provides a powerful and integrative analysis. There is something orchestral about Media Performance in the way that it draws the best soundings from our literature, presents a cohesive and coherent theory, and offers a rich agenda for research.... the most intellectually satisfying book about the media in decades.' - Everette E Dennis, Columbia University

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ISBN: 9780803982956
£62.99