Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : critical engagements with mediated power -- Media policy : communications and the economic inefficiencies of market liberalisation -- Media production : discursive practices, news production, and the mobilisation of bias in public discourse -- Media management and public relations : public media, inter-elite conflict, and power -- Culture, discourse and power : the rediscovery of elite culture and power in media studies -- Mediated politics : the mediation of parliamentary politics -- New and alternative media : the internet and the parliamentary public sphere -- Interest groups and mediated mobilisation : communications in the make poverty history campaign (by Nick Sireau and Aeron Davis) -- Media audiences and effects : the question of the rational audience in the London Stock Exchange.