The contemporary media landscape is no longer defined simply by information flows, but by the struggle over how reality itself is perceived and contested. In an era often described as "post-truth", media systems do not just inform publics - they shape the conditions under which truth is recognised, trusted or rejected. This new edition of Media Theories and Approaches offers a comprehensive and critical guide to understanding media in a platform-dominated, algorithmically curated world. Moving beyond earlier models of mass communication, the book provides a political economy of digital media that examines how power operates through infrastructures, attention economies, global platform ecosystems and the structuring of perception itself

Bringing together updated theory and empirical case studies, the text explores how media intervene across local, national and global contexts from political communication and public debate to identity, culture and everyday life. It equips readers to understand not only how media messages are produced, but how they are amplified, distorted and experienced within increasingly complex information environments. New material addresses key contemporary challenges including disinformation/misinformation, platform governance, the erosion of shared public knowledge and the shifting relationship between media, democracy and authority. To understand media today is to understand how reality itself is made.

Mark Balnaves has worked in professorial roles in communication and media and is an expert on audience research. He is currently an adjunct research fellow with University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, Western Australia.

Daniel Baldino is Discipline Head of the Politics and International Relations program and an Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, Western Australia. He specialises in violence, radicalisation and extremist studies, as well as misinformation and epistemic inquiry. He has held visiting scholar positions in Washington DC, Hawaii and Ottawa, and is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism.