Media and Society: Power, Platforms, and Participation

by Nicholas Carah, Sungyong Ahn, Amy Dobson

Overview

Media and Society offers a critical exploration of how digital platforms and participatory and algorithmic cultures shape power and identity today. This third edition delves into key issues such as the interplay between user generated content and algorithmic processing, the rise of creator cultures, and the dynamic role automation plays in media industries and cultures.

In this new edition you will find:

• A deep dive into the ongoing development of digital platforms, exploring platform capitalisms beyond Silicon Valley;
• A detailed exploration of how social media and their promotional and creator cultures work and represent the social world;
• Insights into how media are a critical site where identities are constructed, negotiated and resisted;

• Updated case studies on topics ranging across livestreamers, shadowbanning, automated advertising, beauty filters and more.

For media and communications students to those seeking critical media literacy, this book is essential reading.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529669848
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	01/19/2026
Edition description:	Third Edition
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.53(h) x (d)

About the Author

Nicholas Carah is Director of the Centre for Digital Cultures & Societies and Professor in the School of Communication and Arts at The University of Queensland. He is also an Associate Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society and leads the UQ node of the Australian Internet Observatory.

Nicholas is a UQ Teaching Fellow (2018–2019) and has been awarded the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Award for Teaching Excellence (2019) and The University of Queensland Award for Teaching Excellence (2020).

Nicholas’ research has been published in Media, Culture & Society, Cultural Studies, Social Media & Society, New Media & Society, Television & New Media, Convergence, Consumption, Markets & Culture and Mobile Media & Communication. He is the author of Brand Machines, Sensory Media and Calculative Culture (2016), Media and Society: Production, Content and Participation (2015) and Pop Brands: Branding, Popular Music and Young People (2010). He is the co-editor of Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media (2018) and Conflict in my Outlook (2022).

Sungyong Ahn is a Lecturer in Digital Media and Cultures in the School of Communication and Arts at The University of Queensland. Sungyong’s research investigates smart technologies and ontological issues their users encounter in the worlds where humans are less smart than machines. He has published in Big Data and Society, Journal of Cultural Economy, Technology in Society, International Journal of Communication, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Postmodern Culture, and other journals on media and technologies. He is the author of Internet-ontologies-Things: Smart Objects, Hidden Problems, and their Symmetries (2023).

Amy Shields Dobson convenes the Digital and Social Media program at Curtin University and is Associate Professor in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry. Amy also leads the Digital Intimacies research stream in Curtin’s Centre for Culture and Technology (CCAT). They are an expert across gender and feminism, gendered subjectivities, youth, and social media. Amy has published widely on youth sexting, gendered representations in contemporary popular media and digital cultures, and contemporary feminine subjectivities. They are the author of Postfeminist Digital Cultures (2015), and editor of Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media with Nicholas Carah and Brady Robards (2018). Amy’s recent research projects include work on young people’s responses to #Me Too and gender violence awareness; facial image editing apps, body image, and selfies in youth cultures; and below-the-line youth-targeted alcohol and nightlife marketing on social media.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Media, Meaning and Power
Chapter 2: The Industrial Production of Meaning Making
Chapter 3: Platform Media
Chapter 4: Social Media, Short Video Streaming and Logistics
Chapter 5: Making and Managing Audiences
Chapter 6: Participatory and Algorithmic Culture
Chapter 7: Algorithmic Imaginaries
Chapter 8: Representation
Chapter 9: Digital Identities and Intimacies
Chapter 10: Creator Cultures
Chapter 11: Advertising and Promotional Cultures
Chapter 12: News and Strategic Communication
Chapter 13: Media Workers
Chapter 14: Automation, Representation and Power

Editorial Reviews

As our lives become ever more entangled with media of all kinds, and as digital media platforms grow in power, it is more important than ever to understand the fundamental role of media forms, technologies, and industries in society at large, as well as in the most intimate settings of everyday life. In this rich and thoughtfully compiled book, Carah has provided both a comprehensive account of traditional media studies approaches and a supremely useful guide to the contemporary digital phenomena that are propelling the field forward.

Jean Burgess

Nicholas Carah has provided a crucial and brilliantly written text for our time: a clear-eyed and comprehensive approach to the operation of media power in the era of digital capitalism. Finally, we have a rich resource that does justice to the profound transformations wrought by the media that permeate our social world.

Mark Andrejevic

As our lives become ever more entangled with media of all kinds, and as digital media platforms grow in power, it is more important than ever to understand the fundamental role of media forms, technologies, and industries in society at large, as well as in the most intimate settings of everyday life. In this rich and thoughtfully compiled book, Carah has provided both a comprehensive account of traditional media studies approaches and a supremely useful guide to the contemporary digital phenomena that are propelling the field forward.--Jean Burgess

Nicholas Carah has provided a crucial and brilliantly written text for our time: a clear-eyed and comprehensive approach to the operation of media power in the era of digital capitalism. Finally, we have a rich resource that does justice to the profound transformations wrought by the media that permeate our social world.--Mark Andrejevic

From the Publisher