This study begins by explaining the concept of the sign and the ideological roles of media in contemporary culture. The book then scrutinises advertisements, glossy magazines, daily newspapers, TV programmes, recent films and interactive media, with each chapter containing close analyses of particular examples. Key strands in critical theory which are allied to semiotics, such as ideology and psychoanalytic theory are explored. Media semiotics moves on to discuss the challenges to establish semiotic methods posed by audience studies and postmodernism, and considers 'new media', including computer games, the Internet and the World Wide Web.