Media technologies now provide facts and 'knowledge' directly to people. Search engines, apps and virtual assistants increasingly articulate their own answers rather than directing people to lists of other sources.

Semantic Media is about this emerging era of meaning-making technologies (metadata, web schemas, ontologies, knowledge graphs) and how companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft organize information in new media products that seek to intuitively grasp what people want to know and the actions they want to take. It describes some of the insidious technological ways that organizations achieve this, addresses the changing contexts of internet searches, and examines the social and political consequences of what happens when large companies become primary sources of information.

Written in an accessible style, Semantic Media will be of interest to students and scholars in media, science and technology, communication, information, and internet studies, as well as professionals who want to learn more about the changing dynamics of contemporary information.