these media are indeed fundamentally important institutions to our society and that no holistic or thorough understanding of contemporary American society is possible without an understanding of the structures and roles of the mass media. They summarize this point early on, while also enumerating the elements essential to an accurate analysis of the mass media:
[A] sociological framework helps us identify questions we should ask when we study the media. In this case, those questions concern the multidirectional relations between components of our model: the social world, the media industry, media products, audiences, and technology. Examining the relationships between these key elements is the first step toward developing a nuanced understanding of the role of mass media in our society (p. 30).
A substantial part of the book is dedicated to examining something that affects most of us a great deal but that we tend to think about very little, in large measure because it is inaccessible to even the curious รป the economic and business structures of mass media outlets as well as the political forces that help shape them.
One of the most important elements of any mass medium is where it gets its money. This is hardly surprising of course, since this is one of the most important elements of any major institution operating within a capitalist society. Mass media get their money from advertising dollars. This is something that most Americans are probably aware of at some level since we have all had our favorite television shows interrupted at a key point to hear about the wonders of laundry soap or been barely able to read our e-mail because of advertising banners floating by or had to dig to find the jump to a newspaper story that could not finish on one page because of the stack of ads for furniture stores.
And yet most Americans are also probably oblivious
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