Milestones in Mass Communication Research (3rd Edition) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Students of the theoretical side of mass communications, and who are looking for a historical angle, will find this textbook quite informative. A strong opening chapter outlines the traditions and techniques of communications research, and then the book goes into a collection of influential studies. Some are quite famous, like the case study of the War of the Worlds panic or various government-sanctioned studies on the effects of TV on children. The authors do a good job of introducing each study and explaining its influences on communication theory, and that goes double for some studies that didn't even start out in the communications paradigm but had an unexpected influence, such as the study on diffusion of innovations among Iowa farmers. But those strong points can't quite hold up the entire book, as the writing style tends toward hyperbolic statements of importance, and the individual studies are so painstakingly explained that the book starts to appear extraneous, as one could just read the individual studies themselves and gain almost the same amount of knowledge. And finally, this book is docked one star due to the monstrously excessive retail price. This is a function of forced scarcity in the college textbook market. Paying that much for a paperback book with about 400 pages is beyond obscene. Buy a used copy, so at least you're giving a percentage back to some poor sap who already got soaked by the publisher. [~doomsdayer520~]

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