Abstract
This textbook targeted at upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars is part of the Short Introductions series. It provides ‘the roadmap’ to what the authors claim is a vibrant area of study whose origins as a subfield of media studies are fairly new. Daniel Herbert, Amanda D. Lotz and Aswin Punathambekar acknowledge that according to some accounts media industries studies emerged as a subfield in 2009 and grew significantly in the next decade or so. Their book ‘explores the formation of media industry studies, as it has been tenuously cohered as a subfield in the last decade by teasing apart its long and diverse intellectual past’ (p. 3). It explores the connections among research questions, topics and methodologies by including examples from film, television, journalism, music and games. The authors explain that it ‘does not encompass all types of media industry studies, but explores the questions and methods of those that do so with a particular interest in understanding and examining media industries due to their role in the production and circulation of culture’ (p. 3). The book is split into Introduction, six substantive chapters and Conclusion. Chapter 1, ‘The Origins of Media Industries Studies’, offers a chronological account of the key scholarship drawing upon critical theory and political economy of communication. The next five chapters focus on the different levels of analyses – individuals and roles (Chapter 2), ‘production’ cultures (chapter 3), organisations (chapter 4), industries and practices (chapter 5), and the macro view (chapter 6). Each of the chapters presents key studies on these topics by focusing on the questions asked and the methods used. All in all, the book will indeed be a useful introductory text for media industries students and scholars.