Mediating the message in the 21st century (third edition)

Abstract

Sixteen years have passed since the second edition of Shoemaker and Reese’s Mediating the message was released in 1996. As the reviewers on the back cover aptly puts it, this is an ‘eagerly awaited’ edition. Back in early to mid-1990s, we were still living in an age when tra-ditional media – major TV networks, elite newspapers and national media systems – dominate the whole landscape. But ever since then, ‘little of the subject matter in the 1996 edition has escaped the transformation at work in the media and larger society’ (p. xiii), which presents a great challenge for the third edition to reflect ‘the changing media world and the rich scho-larly world’ (p. xiii).