Welcome to the Companion Website

This site is intended to enhance your use of Media Literacy, Eighth edition, by W. James Potter.  Please note that all the materials on this site are especially geared toward maximizing your understanding of the material. 

In this media-saturated world, we must learn how to navigate through the overwhelming flood of information so that we can avoid the risks and maximize its potential to help us. Media Literacy shows you how. Drawing from thousands of media research studies, author W. James Potter explores the key components to understanding the fascinating world of mass media. In this thoroughly updated and revised Eighth Edition, Potter presents numerous examples and facts to help you understand how the media operate, how they attract your attention, and how they influence you. The new edition includes a fully revised chapter on news, updated and expanded coverage of digital media and social media, reflecting the rapid changes in the field. Each chapter concludes with a set of exercises to help you apply the chapter material to everyday life and engage in a step-by-step process to increase your own media literacy.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge W. James Potter for writing an excellent text and for reviewing the assets on this site. Special thanks are also due to Jean Giovanetti of University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Jenna Grzeslo of Pennsylvania State University, and Sorin Nastasia of Southern Illinois University for creating the ancillaries on this site.