by Mike Gange
Media/Impact: an Introduction to Mass Media (8)
By Shirley Biagi
Thompson Publishers, 396 pages, 2007
Shirley Biagi’s book on media education is one of the most appealing of all the text books I have reviewed on this blog. Biagi is prof at California State University, Sacremento.
I like the strengths of her book: lots of colours, lots of pertinent examples of the mass media that students should find interesting. Although I have been a teacher of media studies for nearly 20 years, I too learned a few things from reading Biagi’s book.
It is actually ideal for a semester type course. It contains 16 chapters, allowing a 17 week semester to include an intro and a concluding exam, and cover much of the content, which ranges from books, newspapers, magazines, to radio, TV, advertising and ethics.
But what the book is lacking is depth. Because it does cover so many items in the media menu, it misses out on some key observations. Barely a mention is made of Sesame Street, the ground breaking TV show that changed school entrance expectations for kindergarten children. While the section on magazines hits on a large number of publications, it makes no mention of Playboy, which altered the publishing landscape and changed the legal definition of pornography. There is barely a mention too of Oprah Winfrey, who changed television with her tender-hearted and often-tear-inducing programming.
Clearly, one cannot learn to swim in a gym. And Biagi is missing out on possibilities that would teach students to become more media literate, if they were to take her content and accomplish activities that could synthesize their learning.
My rating: a good book, but no where near great.
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Posted by Britany Ridep | February 2, 2012, 6:19 pm