In this engaging collection scholars from across disciplines and across the world examine the contradictory nature of the media, revealing it to be democracy’s greatest asset and its greatest threat. This volume explores a range of issues related to the topic of mass communication’s impact on our increasingly globalized world—from the nature of communication, to the role of the media industry, to the way that new digital platforms have facilitated social movements in many countries.

By adopting an approach that both revisits the works of Karl Marx and other early theorists of communication studies, and offers a highly original perspective grounded in today’s changing world this collection represents the cutting edge of contemporary communication research.

Contributors are: Arthur Asa Berger, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Savas Çoban, John Bellamy Foster, Christian Fuchs, Douglas Kellner, Robert W. McChesney, David Miller, Marisol Sandoval, Nick Stevenson, Gerald Sussman, Mandy Tröger, and Michael Wayne