Inspired by Walter Benjamin's classical Arcades Project, this book is a pioneering exploration of the interface between communication, shopping and everyday life. Based on a six-year study by over a dozen scholars on a specific site, it analyzes the links between power, media and consumption in contemporary urban culture. Illustrated with rich ethnographic detail, Consuming Media scrutinizes four main media circuits--print media, media images, sound and motion, and hardware machines--to assess how media texts and technologies are selected, purchased and used. Exploring the relations between different media, the nature of cultural citizenship and the power relations of public space, it presents an ethnography of globalization and develops a new approach to understanding media consumption.