Listening Beyond the Echoes

Nick Couldry is Reader in Media, Communications and Culture at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author or editor of five books including Media Rituals: A Critical Approach (Routledge 2003), The Place of Media Power (Routledge 2000) and (coedited with James Curran) Contesting Media Power (Rowman and Littlefield 2003).

“Couldry’s background in philosophy and law is brought to bear here to excellent effect. …Cutting through a wealth of theory and interpretive analysis in cultural studies, political theory, ideology, and anthropology, he holds that the most basic moral obligation of the media is to create spaces for individuals and groups to articulate their needs and interests unmolested by interests of entrenched social and political power. Much of this book is devoted to the complex ways in which this is both difficult and necessary. More importantly, as this book so admirably demonstrates, this project has always been, and should continue to be, at the core of what cultural scholars spend their time doing.” —Popular Communication, 2008

• Chapter 1 Introduction: Listening Out for Connections; Part 1 Media, Social “Order,” Agency; Chapter 2 Decentering Media Research: Social “Order,” Knowledge, and Agency; Chapter 3 Theorizing Media as Practice; Part 2 Culture, Agency, Democracy; Chapter 4 The Promise of Cultural Studies; Chapter 5 In The Place of a Common Culture, What?; Part 3 Ethics and Media; Chapter 6 Beyond the Televised Endgame?: Reflections After 9/11; Chapter 7 Toward a Global Media Ethics; Chapter 8 Postscript;