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Stuart Hall’s influence on studies of the media continue to have ripple effects through a variety of disciplines. The history of media studies ranges from the “hypodermic needle” model assuming direct effects on consumers to choice in shaping one’s own media consumption to the use of media as education and more. Because of the preponderance of media in various facets of our lives, studies of the media have long been interdisciplinary. This conclusion considers how a range of disciplines have examined issues such as racial bias in media, media advocates who attempt to persuade decision-makers in the media world, and how identity and positionality shape various media effects. The relevance of tackling such issues are particularly salient in today’s climate of “fake news” and rampant distrust of media gatekeeping and media content.

The recent 2016 presidential campaign season and subsequent presidency has created a context in which the general public is looking deeper into the “behind the scenes” influences on the media. Of particular interest has been “fake news” and the biases of various news media outlets. These “behind the scenes” actions occur at production (the encoded ideological meanings and narratives, the material structures, the people involved, and global political economy of media), distribution (marketing strategies, gatekeeping practices, laws and policies, and media-industry customs), and consumption (reception and interpretation by media audiences). In this introduction to our special issue, we outline the relevance of examining these extra-representational processes of racialized media, particularly in today’s climate.

In this chapter, the authors, first, outline the need to understand race and media (and their intersection); second, advocate for both media and racial “literacy”; and third, justify this book’s use of—and inspiration from—the pioneering work of the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies in general and the specific contributions toward understanding race and media from the sociologist and media studies scholar Stuart Hall. The authors then conclude with an overview of the book’s content and a summation on why scholarship on race and media continues to matter in our contemporary moment.