Cultural Meanings of News
A Text-Reader
- Daniel A. Berkowitz - University of Iowa, USA
Similar in format and purpose to editor Dan Berkowitz's award-winning Social Meanings of News, this new volume represents a conceptual update, a continuation of the discourse about the nature of news and how it comes to be, moving ideas ahead from the earlier tradition of sociological approaches to the more pervasive cultural perspectives that inform understandings about news.
Cultural Meanings of News provides a carefully selected set of readings, organized into thematic areas that each probe a dimension of the literature: from sociological roots to cultural perspectives; news as narrative and cultural text; newswork as cultural ritual; news as cultural myth; news and its interpretive communities; news as a source and reflection of collective memory; toward the future of news research.
This text-reader provides students and scholars with first-hand exposure to cultural approaches to the study of news, while also providing an organizing framework for understanding the commonalties and differences between threads in the research. The goals are to engage readers through guided immersion in the material.
Excellent work on the cultural interpretation and dynamic of news reporting and consumption
This is a very good book that offers an overarching picture of global perspectives in journalism. Recommended for undergraduates as well as postgraduate students of international journalism.
The person who has to make the decision with me would not approve the book. I am looking for a supplemental text.
Good text, and a useful selection of readings, good for students researching assignments
The book is interesting and provides a lot of insights in the cultural aspects of news and newsrooms. But it is not really relevant for the course for which it was a good candidate. I will consider it for a future course with more relevant content.
It is a very sharp and very useful selection of texts regarding the cultural approach to journalism studies. Together with the previous text-reader prepared by Dan Berkowitz ("Social Meaning of News"), it gives the students a rich and comprehensive set of perspectives on this field.
A great selection of key texts needed when wanting to understand how and why culture and news is interlinked. It is great now to have a book which puts all these texts together, and relates them to each other. This book will be essential reading for my class in Journalism & Society.
I am going to add this as recommended reading to both a second year Journalism course but also guide dissertation students specialising in this area because it's such a good way in to ground students in the thinking and evolution of the research done in this field - the thematic divisions are very balanced.
An effective guide on how to place news in a cultural context.
