The aim of this module is to provide students with a broad summary of key thinkers on media and communication. The module will critically analyse the development and use of modern media (from the advent of the newspaper press, television and film through to digital and multi-media screen technologies) and the role such media play in the production and regulation of social relations and processes. The module will make sustained use of Paddy Scannell's (2010) intellectual history of media and communication studies in North America and Europe. To this end students will need to buy a copy of Couldry's book. Classes will be primarily discussion-oriented as we examine questions regarding how to conceptualise the relation between society and media technology, economic and social organization, ethics and regulation. Special emphasis will be to socially purposeful media genres and institutions, and to the roles they play in nurturing and strengthening the democratic polity, by representing a diversity of social experiences, opinions and power-relations.