The place of media power : pilgrims and witnesses of the media age

The Place of Media Power focuses on an area neglected in previous studies of the media: the meetings between ordinary people and the media.

Couldry's fascinating study explores what happens when people who normally consume the media witness media processes in action, or even become the object of media attention themselves.

Such encounters, Couldry argues, tell us a great deal about our attitudes towards the media world.

They also offer a new way of thinking about the media's impact on contemporary social life, the basis of their social authority, and the possibliity of challenging it.

Couldry draws on perspectives from anthropology, discourse analysis, sociology and geography as well as media studies to develop a wide-ranging theory of how the media's special status - as storytellers and presenters of facts - is maintained.

He goes on to explore the implications of this theory in two detailed case studies, of visitors to the Granada Studios Tour, Manchester, home of the outdoor set.