Media Analysis Techniques

In this updated Fourth Edition of Media Analysis Techniques, author Arthur Asa Berger provides students with a clear, practical guide to media analysis techniques. Written in an accessible style with the author’s own creative illustrations, the book walks readers through the four most important methods of analyzing and interpreting our mass mediated culture: semiotic theory, Marxist theory, psychoanalytic theory, and sociological theory. The text coaches students on how to support their media interpretation if they want to convince others that their opinions are worth considering. These methodologies, once learned, will stay with students and have an impact on the way they live.

Arthur Asa Berger is professor emeritus of Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts at San Francisco State University, where he taught between 1965 and 2003. He has published more than 100 articles, numerous book reviews, and more than 60 books. Among his latest books are Media Analysis Techniques, Fourth Edition (2012), The Academic Writer’s Toolkit: A User’s Manual (2008), What Objects Mean: An Introduction to Material Culture (2009), Bali Tourism (2013), Tourism in Japan: An Ethno-Semiotic Analysis (2010), The Culture Theorist’s Book of Quotations (2010), and The Objects of Our Affection: Semiotics and Consumer Culture (2010). He has also written a number of academic mysteries such as Durkheim is Dead: Sherlock Holmes is Introduced to Sociological Theory (2003) and Mistake in Identity: A Cultural Studies Murder Mystery (2005). His books have been translated into nine languages.