This text introduces students to key concepts in media studies. It covers the major narrative theorists including Todorov, Propp, Levi Strauss, Barthes and applies their ideas via case examples ranging from "The X Files" to newspaper reporting. It then moves on to offer an extensive analysis of the basic schema and conventions of genre, drawing on the film noir, the TV cop genre and science fiction for examples, and showing how the repertoire of elements of each ranges across setting, character, narrative, iconography, style and stars.