Communications experts address major issues at the heart of modern public communication in this volume, which highlights the current transformation of media systems, and explores the impact upon them of new ownership and regulatory structures, policies and technologies. The authors probe the nature of media power and the changing relationships of the symbolic, political and economic orders: the withering of public-interest, policy objectives, the growth of official information management, the unequal distribution of communication resources, and the implications of all these trends for the democratic process. The more conceptual and methodological issues they confront include a critique of the limitations of media-centric interpretations, the neglected significance of journalistic sources and a reappraisal of culturalist perspectives. Other chapters compare European and American research traditions, explore electronic media redefinitions of time and space, and present the case for an ethnographic approach to the television audience.