Media, Society, Culture, and You

edited and adapted by

Katie Wheeler, MA Communication and Jessica Mehring, MA Communication

This edition of Media, Society, Culture, and You was updated by the PPSC Communication Department at Pikes Peak State College in 2026. COM 1300 Media, Society, Culture, and You by PPSC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

This reading was originally adopted and adapted from Media, Society, Culture and You by Mark Poepsel licensed under CC BY 40., and Understanding Media and Culture by University of Minnesota licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, and has been remixed with supplementary material and adapted for Pikes Peak State College. 

• New chapter on narrative.
• New material added to chapters to more fully cover the four theories in COM 1300: rhetorical theory, narrative theory, gender theory, and critical race theory.
• Key class concepts and definitions added to OER from Ouellette & Gray book, so Ouellette & Gray (PDFs can be removed from COM 1300 shell)
• Textbook copyedited and standardized to APA style formatting throughout.
• Sources and citations checked, updated, added, or corrected as needed.
• Images updated throughout.
• Some sections and chapters rearranged for improved flow.
• Design elements (e.g., sidebars and textboxes) added to bring attention to and clarify key concepts.
• Some section headers renamed for clarity.
• Concepts added to glossary.

Cover image “Old Compton Street by Mark Hayward on Unsplash.