Handbook of Media Studies

The SAGE Handbook of Media Studies

Society, Culture, and Media: Thinking

Comparatively

Contributors: Annabelle Sreberny

Edited by: John D. H. Downing, Denis McQuail, Philip Schlesinger & Ellen Wartella

Book Title: The SAGE Handbook of Media Studies

Chapter Title: "Society, Culture, and Media: Thinking Comparatively"

Pub. Date: 2004

Access Date: August 23, 2016

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.

City: Thousand Oaks

Print ISBN: 9780761921691

Online ISBN: 9781412976077

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412976077.n5

Print pages: 83-104

©2004 SAGE Publications, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of

the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

SAGE

Copyright © 2004 by Sage Publications, Inc.

SAGE Reference

Society, Culture, and Media: Thinking Comparatively

Introduction: Why a Comparative Frame?

Culture, Raymond Williams once wrote (1985, p. 87), is one of the most complex words in the

English language. In addition, society and media are hardly simple terms. In the 21st century,

it is clear not only that these are complex words but also, and more important, that the

analysis of the relations between the three terms encounters some of the most contentious

and complicated dynamics in the contemporary world.

Author's Note: I'd like to thank JD for his patience, support, and very helpful editing and

Gholam Khiabany for help with Iranian materials.

I propose to take a comparative frame to explore these issues, using Britain, the United

States, and Iran as the three national contexts of analysis. First of all, comparison allows us to

see most readily that relationships between phenomena in one context are differently

structured in another. Comparative method rapidly denaturalizes social relations and helps us

understand that they are historically constructed, culturally inflected, and mutable. The choice

of comparison here, as of...