[This text] offers a personal and global journey through the media landscape. As a textbook for an introductory mass media course, it provides ... tools for navigating the cultural terrain. It invites students to evaluate the mass media and shape their direction.... [The book] asks each of us to become critical consumers of the media and engaged citizens in the society that the media help shape. [The book] offers directions for surveying the cultural landscape and tools for critiquing the media's influences on democratic life and consumer culture. In probing historical events and contemporary trends in mass communication, the book asks students to become cultural activists - to investigate and challenge the power of the mass media in daily life. [The text] introduces students to four stages of the critical thinking and writing process: description, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation. The text uses these stages to examine the historical context and current processes that shape the mass media as part of American culture. [Topics covered include] media technology and convergence ... a cultural perspective ... values and ethics ... [and] media economics and democracy. -Pref.