Reading Media
How to Do Textual Analysis
Will be published approx. on 3. February 2026
Book
Hardback
400 pages
978-1-4798-3029-9 (ISBN)
Description
Innovative methods in textual analysis to decode today's ever-expanding media landscape
Reading Media: How to do Textual Analysis reinvigorates one of media and cultural studies' most foundational methods at a moment when it is most needed, showing its continuing vitality by adapting it to new media environments, cultural objects, and scholarly questions.
The volume insists that the close study of meaning, form, and representation remains central to understanding media's power. With contributions from leading and emerging scholars, the book offers a diverse toolkit: from narratological and semiotic analysis of film and TV, to historical poetic accounts of TikTok, multimodal analysis of Afrobeats music videos, and postcolonial criticism of games. Essays extend the scope of textual analysis to unexpected objects - such as plastic waste, memes, and refugee-authored media - while others demonstrate how texts operate across platforms, genres, and transmedia franchises. Beyond offering new and improved approaches to textual analysis, each chapter illustrates its approach using a specific case study, functioning both as a step-by-step how-to guide and as an example of textual analysis in action.
Reading Media advances a vision of textual analysis that is rigorous yet flexible, attuned to both aesthetics and politics, and responsive to today's media environment. Essential for students and scholars in media, communication, and cultural studies, Reading Media both reaffirms and renews textual analysis as an indispensable way of engaging with the mediated worlds that shape contemporary life.
Reading Media: How to do Textual Analysis reinvigorates one of media and cultural studies' most foundational methods at a moment when it is most needed, showing its continuing vitality by adapting it to new media environments, cultural objects, and scholarly questions.
The volume insists that the close study of meaning, form, and representation remains central to understanding media's power. With contributions from leading and emerging scholars, the book offers a diverse toolkit: from narratological and semiotic analysis of film and TV, to historical poetic accounts of TikTok, multimodal analysis of Afrobeats music videos, and postcolonial criticism of games. Essays extend the scope of textual analysis to unexpected objects - such as plastic waste, memes, and refugee-authored media - while others demonstrate how texts operate across platforms, genres, and transmedia franchises. Beyond offering new and improved approaches to textual analysis, each chapter illustrates its approach using a specific case study, functioning both as a step-by-step how-to guide and as an example of textual analysis in action.
Reading Media advances a vision of textual analysis that is rigorous yet flexible, attuned to both aesthetics and politics, and responsive to today's media environment. Essential for students and scholars in media, communication, and cultural studies, Reading Media both reaffirms and renews textual analysis as an indispensable way of engaging with the mediated worlds that shape contemporary life.
Reviews / Votes
"Reading Media brilliantly demonstrates the continued relevance of textual analysis as tool for understanding a vast array of contemporary cultural forms from film franchises and digital games to posters and TikTok. At once a guide to methods and a compelling set of critical essays, this book offers essential frameworks for media studies." - Lynn B Spigel, Northwestern UniversityMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
Trade binding
Illustrations
26 b/w images
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-4798-3029-9 (9781479830299)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
02/2026
New York University Press
€34.00
Available immediately
Persons
Jonathan Gray is Hamel Family Distinguished Chair in Communication Arts, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and author and editor of numerous books, including Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (2010), Fandom, Second Edition (2017), Keywords for Media Studies (2017), and Satire TV (2009), as well as Television Studies (with Amanda D. Lotz), and A Companion to Media Authorship (with Derek Johnson).
Daphne Gershon is a PhD candidate in the Media and Cultural Studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has been published in Feminist Media Studies and the International Journal of Cultural Studies.
Daphne Gershon is a PhD candidate in the Media and Cultural Studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has been published in Feminist Media Studies and the International Journal of Cultural Studies.