This is the first volume in the four-part textbook series, Media Studies. This up-to-date, comprehensive, user-friendly and accessible series has been written by key thinkers in Media Studies locally and from abroad. Media Studies encompasses the systematic, critical and analytical study of the media, in all its forms, and sees the media as one of the most important generators and disseminators of meaning in contemporary society. Media Studies investigates who owns the media, who produces the media, media content and the users of the media. It investigates the power relationships between the media and politics, culture, economy, society, and above all, the relationship between the media and democracy.