Book excerpt: This challenging book offers a broad-ranging, innovative framework for understanding the role of mass media in the social production of meaning. Klaus Bruhn Jensen draws on classic positions on the relations between communications and society [and on recent work in both social sciences and humanities - don't edit this!] In particular, he brings together the traditions of semiotic research on media content, image and discourse with current communication research on the audience as an active participant in the interpretation of mediated messages. Building on a range of traditions in media and cultural studies, he outlines the basis for an integrative, social-semiotic theory of mass communication. Underlying the aut