SAGE Benchmarks in Communication – serie

The relationship between the media and viewers, readers and listeners is complex and consequently ′audiences′ have become a key area in media and communications research in the social sciences and humanities. This major reference collection brings together a range of theoretical, methodological and thematically diverse articles and chapters that comprehensively map the most important kinds of work and ideas in international audience studies. Volume I overviews the history of audience research and the ways that audiences have been conceptualised. It includes papers that consider how debates and discussions about audiences have changed in the context of different media developments. Volume II deals with different ways that audiences and their responses/uses of media have been measured. This volume pays particular attention to the way that audience studies have responded to the challenges of different media. Volume III focusses on specific genres of entertainment, specific media, or on specific media groups. Finally, Volume IV looks specifically at audience research that has tested the way that the media influence society, attitudes and behaviours. The papers reflect a range of the different topics that have been tested and also to give a sense of different methodologies used to test these.

International communication plays a multifaceted role in the social, political, economic and cultural constellations of power. Research abounds in this dynamic field ranging from areas like international informational and cultural flows and the geopolitics of information to communication and development and the role of media and propaganda in conflict and international military interventions. This four-volume set brings together classic publications with less-accessible articles to trace the foundations and development of international communication as a field of inquiry. It reflects the growing internationalization of the field - with clearly defined volumes covering key aspects of international communication - from historical literature to regional perspectives and cultural and political writings on communication from across the globe.

Volume One: International Communication in Context

Volume Two: Theoretical Pluralism and International Communication

Volume Three: The Political Economy of International Communication

Volume Four: Cultures of International Communication

Denis McQuail′s Major Work in Mass Communication is another essential part of the SAGE Benchmark series. Drawing on both classic and contemporaneous sources, McQuail guides us through the central defining papers that anchor this field. Taken together, the four volumes will provide access to the key debates within the field and all the main lines of research that have emerged.Denis McQuail′s credentials as editor are impeccable - McQuail′s Mass Communication is a central text now into its 5th edition, translated, used and respected globally.

In the past 20 years, ′new media′ has emerged as one of the most dynamic research fronts in media and communication, addressing the diversity and proliferation of new information and communication technologies and their social contexts. This growing field is both international and transdisciplinary. The editors have mined a rich collection of published material covering the historical, economic, social and behavioural issues at stake to trace the development and implications of new media.Vol 1. Visions & HistoriesThe first volume offers an historical overview, as well as the ′visions′ of a society influenced by new media put forward by such influential scholars as McLuhan, Innis and Debord. Vol. 2 Technology: Artefacts, Systems, DesignThe second evolume introduces new media as comprised of artifacts (technologies, hardware, systems themselves & how they′re designed and madeVol. 3 Social Institutions, Structures, ArrangementsThe third volume covers the social ′arrangements′ behind new media: institutions, social structures, and culture broadly conceived)Vol. 4 Practices: Interaction, Identity, Organizing, CultureThe fourth volume focuses on practices, or what people do, covering human interaction, organizing, identity and cultural practices

This collection provides an overview of the broad landscape of political communication, with material suited for the theorist and the more practically inclined. The main criterion for organizing this collection was diversity -- presenting a range of authors and ideas. The contributions cover a span of almost eighty years, beginning with an article from 1927 and culminating with work from the first decade of the 21st century. Some of the authors are famous scholars and some are little known, but each article is like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle and fits into an appropriate place. A compelling case can be made that political change throughout the world is being driven, directly and indirectly, by political communication. That should provide great incentive to the researchers whose yet-to-be-written articles will be the descendants of the works collected in these volumes.Part One: Theories and PrinciplesPart Two: Watching Government, Affecting PolicyPart Three: Affecting the Political ProcessPart Four: Public opinion, the public′s agenda, and the pressPart Five: Campaigns and ElectionsPart Six: Global ConversationPart Seven: The Rise of New Media

The roots of strategic communication lie in public relations, which has been a well-established concept in countries around the globe for more than 100 years.  In the United States, for instance, this concept has been associated with publicity, promotion, and public policy battles. At times, especially in the early years of the 20th Century, it was seen as inseparable from propaganda and a means for promoting and protecting democracy. The field has developed immeasurably in the past few decades, but strategic communication is still a topic with strong, influential links to a variety of different disciplines, and increasingly relevant in both a professional and academic capacity. This Major Work captures the definitions, key developments and future of the field through a carefully-selected collection of seminal papers on the topic.Volume One: Defining Strategic Communication: Groundings, Forewarnings, and Calls to ActionVolume Two: Public Arena: Input, Power, Converging/Diverging Voices, and TensionsVolume Three: Discursive and Dialogic Organizations and the Stakeholder View: Social Constructions and Functionalist PerspectivesVolume Four: The Future of Strategic Communication: Organizational and Societal Well-being, Influences, Measures, and New Directions

Environmental communication is a rapidly expanding field of study, encompassing a wide range of topics such as social-discursive constructions of "nature," journalism and media coverage of the environment, climate change communication, analyses of environmental rhetoric, public participation in environmental decisions and environmental risk communication to name but a few.  This Major Work draws on a wide and varied range of sources to construct a comprehensive overview of the key issues in this fast-developing and highly topical area of research.  Volume One: Origins, Approaches and PrinciplesVolume Two: Media and Environmental JournalismVolume Three: Environmental Risk and Climate Change CommunicationVolume Four: Environmental Publics: Citizens, Corporations and Non-Governmental Organizations

Health communication inquiry has developed over the last thirty years as a rapidly growing, active, and important interdisciplinary area of study concerned with the powerful roles performed by human and mediated communication in health care delivery and health promotion. Health communication is an exciting applied behavioral science area of communication inquiry that examines the ways communication influences health, health care delivery, and health promotion. Research concerning health communication is often problem-focused, designed to identify, examine, and solve serious health care and health promotion problems.Volume One: Health Communication in the Delivery of Health Care focuses on amongst other things consumer-provider health communication, interprofessional relations and team work in health care services and the role of communication in both leading to and reducing disparities in health outcomes.Volume Two: Health Communication and Health Promotion focuses on topics such as the role of communication in public health promotion campaigns, social marketing strategies and the role of media in health promotion.Volume Three: Health Risk Communication focuses on theory and research on health risk awareness, health risk prevention and health risk reduction.Volume Four: Health Communication and New Information Technologies (eHealth) focuses on the use of technology in the dissemination of relevant health information and the advent of empowered e-patients, and ehealth policy and regulation.Volume Five: Health Communication and the Health Care System