Abstract
In the early 1980s, Shearon Lowery and Melvin DeFleur wrote Milestones in Mass Communication Research, dealing with key concepts, methods and paradigms in the study of the effects of mass communication. Ran Wei’s edited collection is a sort of contemporary rerun of that earlier survey, though with a wider purview. The intention is to return to earlier ‘milestone’ theories of media and communications and explore how they may be applied in new ways. Obviously much has changed in the configuration of media landscapes over the past 40 years or so, raising questions about the relevance and applicability of earlier theories to new communications technologies and their evolving uses. The essays in this volume are largely positive in reaffirming such relevance and applicability, showing various ways in which established theories may be extended and adapted, so remaining useful in understanding the implications of, inter alia, digital media and social networking sites. So, for example, in the opening piece, Elihu Katz reflects on the effects of political communication in light of recent media developments and argues that these may foster and enhance the proceedings of deliberative democracy. Further chapters include George Gerbner on cultivation analysis, Thomas Ruggiero on uses and gratifications theory and Dietram Scheufele on agenda setting and framing, while Steven Chaffee and Miriam Metzger look into the question of the end of mass communication in its 20th-century meanings. All of the essays have appeared at one time or another since 1998 in the journal Mass Communication and Society, but it is handy to have them brought together between two covers, especially for student library use.