"At the end of the twentieth century the media have come to exert an overwhelming influence on the formation of social identity in America. Through the production and consumption of images we are created, exhausted and remade. The media, American culture, and political power are bound together in a gamble, the stakes of which increase daily." Cover notes.

"In contemporary culture the media have become central to the constitution of social identity. It is not just that media messages have become important forms of influence on individuals. We also identify and construct ourselves as social beings through the mediation of images. This is not simply a case of people being dominated by images, but of people seeking and obtaining pleasure through the experience of the consumption of these images"

"The power of representations in the formation of social identity occurs within the broader political economy of culture and society as a whole The media have increasingly become just another sphere of business such that their uniqueness and centrality as cultural forms are submerged beneath their treatment as commodities like any other." Introduction p2