Beginning with the new millennium, reality television exploded both in number of shows and in popularity. The scholarship on reality TV is beginning to catch up, but one of the most enduring questions about the genre--Is it ethical?--has yet to be addressed in any systematic and comprehensive way. Through investigating issues ranging from deception and privacy breeches to community building and democratization of TV, The Ethics of Reality TV explores the ways in which reality TV may create both benefits and harms to society. The edited collection features the work of leading scholars in the field of media ethics and provides a comprehensive assessment of the ethical effects of the genre.

This book extrapolates many of the concepts that are well defined for discrete-time deterministic sliding-mode control for use with discrete-time stochastic systems. It details sliding-function designs for various categories of linear time-invariant systems and its application for control. The resulting sliding-mode control addresses robustness issues and the functional-observer approach reduces the observer order substantially. Sliding-mode control (SMC) is designed for discrete-time stochastic systems, extended so that states lie within a specified band, and able to deal with incomplete information. Functional-observer-based SMC is designed for various clauses of stochastic systems: discrete-time; discrete-time with delay; state time-delayed; and those with parametric uncertainty. Stability considerations arising because of parametric uncertainty are taken into account and, where necessary, the effects of unmatched uncertainties mitigated. A simulation example is used to explain the use of the functional-observer approach to SMC design. Discrete-Time Stochastic Sliding-Mode Control Using Functional Observation will interest all researchers working in sliding-mode control and will be of particular assistance to graduate students in understanding the changes in design philosophy that arise when changing from continuous- to discrete-time systems. It helps to pave the way for further progress in applications of discrete-time SMC.

The contents of A History of Pre-Cinema Volume 1 (and its companion volumes 2 and 3) cover the optical devices used for entertainment and instruction that proliferated before the introduction of cinema. To view pre-cinema devices merely as steps towards the cinema, however, would be a very narrow perspective. They were - and in some cases still are - self-contained media with their own peculiarities, differences, potential and limitations. This volume concentrates on items published before the spread of the cinema and later references to devices of that period. Having easy access to original texts in facsimile is a useful resource for researchers. Volume 1 is divided into the following sections: The camera obscura; Photography; Stereoscopy; Moving photographs; Chronophotography; Optical, philosophical toys.

One of the first attempts ever to present in a systematic way a non-western semiotic system. This book looks at Japanese esoteric Buddhism and is based around original texts, informed by explicit and rigorous semiotic categories. It is a unique introduction to important aspects of the thought and rituals of the Japanese Shingon tradition. Semiotic concerns are deeply ingrained in the Buddhist intellectual and religious discourse, beginning with the idea that the world is not what it appears to be, which calls for a more accurate understanding of the self and reality. This in turn results in sustained discussions on the status of language and representations, and on the possibility and methods to know reality beyond delusion; such peculiar knowledge is explicitly defined as enlightenment. Thus, for Buddhism, semiotics is directly relevant to salvation; this is a key point that is often ignored even by Buddhologists. This book discusses in depth the main elements of Buddhist semiotics as based primarily on original Japanese pre-modern sources. It is a crucial publication in the fields of semiotics and religious studies.

Once referred to as hermaphrodites, intersex persons are born with a sexual anatomy or physiology inconsistent with social expectations of what constitutes a normal male or female. Of course, this definition of intersexuality, like all definitions, is rhetorically charged. In other words, intersexuality does not have meaning in and of itself that can be separated from the culture in which it resides. It is a product not just of scientific fact but also of a myriad of cultural forces that have changed through time, and with it our perceptions of what is normal, of who should be corrected if they are not deemed normal, of when and how this treatment should take place, and of who has authority to speak on such things. Until the last two decades, and in fact not uniformly until the last few years, those born with intersex conditions were made to conform, often surgically, usually in the first 18 months of life, long before they had enough knowledge and maturity to agree or dissent to treatment. But a rise in intersex activism has led to remarkable changes in the previous medical paradigm that once governed the treatment of literally thousands of intersex children. A great deal of important literature has been dedicated to the origins of this intersex activism as well as the history of the treatment that necessitated it. But to date little attention has been paid to the role virtual intersex communities have played in contributing to intersex activism. Online intersex communities are important resources for intersex persons, their families, and advocates. They enable their participants to learn about who they are and that they are not alone, to tell their stories and have them heard by thosethat may be helped by them or may be able to offer help, to find a medical practitioner that is recommended by other intersex persons, and to advocate for change to established discourse, not as a single voice, but as part of an organized group of others. Brian Still's rhetorical analysis of a select number of key intersex web sites, supplemented with interviews of leading intersex activists and scholars, allows us to take a previously unexplored critical approach to comprehending the medicalization of intersexuality as well as the online communities that have, in the ongoing production of themselves, shaped productive resistance to it. Drawing on the ideas of Arjun Appadurai, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and also Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay, Still points out that because society values (perhaps now more than before) the words of "wounded storytellers," or those who do not treat but have been treated (and in many cases traumatized), then intersex activists can speak with a measure of newfound authority, taking advantage of a media capable of disseminating the meanings they create so that they are more accessible and, consequently, more influential in re-shaping what it means to be normal. Still's examination shows that what virtual intersex communities represent, from personal blogs to email lists, is the opportunity for those isolated by the nature of their treatment and the geographic distance that often stands between them, and others like them, to feel a sense of belonging, to exchange information, and, in the process, to generate productive noise. This book would be of interest to all Internet, cultural, and gender studies collections, and it would also be of value to thosecollections housing books on the rhetorical analysis of new media.

In the past, choosing a breast surgeon and having the tumor removed were the very first steps in the treatment of breast cancer. Today, however, there are many steps that should occur prior to having a breast cancer removed-steps that .decrease the chance that the tumor comes back, .improve the chance that the right treatment is given, .decrease the complications from surgery, .more accurately determines if chemotherapy is needed.In addition, finding the right breast surgeon can improve one's chance of survival by as much as 35 percent, a benefit frequently larger than either radiation therapy or chemotherapy. Before Breast Cancer Surgery is a focused easy-to-read book written in a question/answer format to rapidly arm the reader with all the information she needs to ensure that she receives the best possible care.

The Family Firm presents the first major historical analysis of the transformation of the royal household's public relations strategy in the period 1932-1953. Beginning with King George V's first Christmas broadcast, Buckingham Palace worked with the Church of England and the media to initiate a new phase in the House of Windsor's approach to publicity. This book also focuses on audience reception by exploring how British readers, listeners, and viewers made sense of royalty's new media image. It argues that the monarchy's deliberate elevation of a more informal and vulnerable family-centred image strengthened the emotional connections that members of the public forged with the royals, and that the tightening of these bonds had a unifying effect on national life in the unstable years during and either side of the Second World War. Crucially, The Family Firm also contends that the royal household's media strategy after 1936 helped to restore public confidence in a Crown that was severely shaken by the abdication of King Edward VIII.

Fascination with what makes the Germans tick has produced a vast range of texts that explore German postwar politics, culture, and society. Yet within this considerable body of work, there is a paucity of academic analysis that acknowledges the role of media discourse in the representation and construction of German identity. This book makes an important contribution to the study of German national identity by offering a detailed and large-scale academic analysis of how German media discourse between 1998 and 2005 represents German national identity. It brings together a variety of case studies: European integration, citizenship and immigration, sports and consumption. It makes the case for the role of popular culture in the discursive formation of national identity and demonstrates that the nation is constructed against political and non-political subjects. By looking at a variety of topic contexts, this book identifies a master narrative of the German nation. It tells the story of a nation that has its roots firmly in the memory of National Socialism and constructs ethnocentric nationalism as taboo. Yet at the same time it cannot escape the past as it harbors racist images of "self" and "other." This is an important book for collections in European studies and media studies, as well as scholars engaged in studying the impact of media on culture. This book demonstrates that reports of the death of the nation-state are without any doubt exaggerated. The particular complex of discourses analysed here was and is only present in Germany. It could not be found in Germany's German-speaking neighbours such as Austria or Switzerland, or indeed anywhere else. While the influence of globalisation is undeniable, the nation-state and its media remain a key location for the negotiation of national identity and much more. This wide-ranging and engagingly written book offers us an exceptional insight into that process." - Professor Hugh O'Donnell, Glasgow Caledonian University

This proceedings book presents state-of-the-art developments in theory, methodology, and applications of network analysis across sociology, computational science, education research, literature studies, political science, international relations, social media research, and urban studies. The papers comprising this collection were presented at the Fifth 'Networks in the Global World' conference organized by the Centre for German and European Studies of St. Petersburg University and Bielefeld University and held on July 7-9, 2020. This biannual conference series revolves around key interdisciplinary issues in the focus of network analysts, such as the multidimensional approach to social reality, translation of theories and methods across disciplines, and mixing of data and methods. The distinctive features of this book are the emphasis on in-depth linkages between theory, method, and applications, the blend of qualitative and quantitative methods, and the joint consideration of different network levels, types, and contexts. The topics covered by the papers include interrelation of social and cultural structures, constellations of power, and patterns of interaction in areas ranging from various types of communities (local, international, educational, political, and so on) to social media and literature. The book is useful for practicing researchers, graduate and postgraduate students, and educators interested in network analysis of social relations, politics, economy, and culture. Features that set the book apart from others in the field: * The book offers a unique cross-disciplinary blend of computational and ethnographic network analyses applied to a diverse spectrum of spheres, from literature and education to urban planning and policymaking. * Embracing conceptual, methodological, and empirical works, the book is among the few in network analysis to emphasize connections between theory, method, and applications. * The book brings together authors and empirical contexts from all over the globe, with a particular emphasis on European societies.

As timely as the latest tweet, this book tracks the digital revolution as a paradigm shift that is transforming popular culture in as yet unforeseen ways. Bloggerati, Twitterati: How Blogs and Twitter Are Transforming Popular Culture explores the ongoing digital revolution and examines the way it is changing-and will change-the way people live and communicate. Starting from the proposition that the Internet is now the center of popular culture, the book offers descriptions of blogs and Twitter and the online behavior they foster. It looks at the demographics of users and the impact of the Internet on knowledge, thinking, writing, politics, and journalism. A primary focus is on the way blogs and tweets are opening up communication to the people, free from gatekeepers and sanctioned rhetoric. The other side of the coin is the online hijacking of the news and its potential for spreading misinformation and fomenting polarization, topics that are analyzed even as the situation continues to evolve. Finally, the book gathers predictions from cultural critics about the future of digital popular culture and makes a few predictions of its own. Sidebars featuring original and exclusive interviews with media personalities Tina Brown, Arianna Huffington, Martha Stewart, and others A timeline showing the history of the Internet, blogs, Twitter, and social media Cartoons depicting humorous aspects of Internet culture Snapshot views of blogs A bibliography and listings of selected blogsites

This open access book promotes the idea that all media types are multimodal and that comparing media types, through an intermedial lens, necessarily involves analysing these multimodal traits. The collection includes a series of interconnected articles that illustrate and clarify how the concepts developed in Ellestroem's influential article The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding Intermedial Relations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) can be used for methodical investigation and interpretation of media traits and media interrelations. The authors work with a wide range of old and new media types that are traditionally investigated through limited, media-specific concepts. The publication is a significant contribution to interdisciplinary research, advancing the frontiers of conceptual as well as practical understanding of media interrelations. This is the second of two volumes. It contains a concluding article by Ellestroem and seven contributions concentrated on the issue of media transformations: how media characteristics are transferred and transfigured among various media products and media types.

This book shows how information theory, probability, statistics, mathematics and personal computers can be applied to the exploration of numbers and proportions in music. It brings the methods of scientific and quantitative thinking to questions like: What are the ways of encoding a message in music and how can we be sure of the correct decoding? How do claims of names hidden in the notes of a score stand up to scientific analysis? How many ways are there of obtaining proportions and are they due to chance? After thoroughly exploring the ways of encoding information in music, the ambiguities of numerical alphabets and the words to be found "hidden" in a score, the book presents a novel way of exploring the proportions in a composition with a purpose-built computer program and gives example results from the application of the techniques. These include information theory, combinatorics, probability, hypothesis testing, Monte Carlo simulation and Bayesian networks, presented in an easily understandable form including their development from ancient history through the life and times of J. S. Bach, making connections between science, philosophy, art, architecture, particle physics, calculating machines and artificial intelligence. For the practitioner the book points out the pitfalls of various psychological fallacies and biases and includes succinct points of guidance for anyone involved in this type of research. This book will be useful to anyone who intends to use a scientific approach to the humanities, particularly music, and will appeal to anyone who is interested in the intersection between the arts and science.With a foreword by Ruth Tatlow (Uppsala University), award winning author of Bach's Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significance and Bach and the Riddle of the Number Alphabet."With this study Alan Shepherd opens a much-needed examination of the wide range of mathematical claims that have been made about J. S. Bach's music, offering both tools and methodological cautions with the potential to help clarify old problems." Daniel R. Melamed, Professor of Music in Musicology, Indiana University

Along the Gulf Coast, history is often referenced as pre-Katrina or post-Katrina. However, the natural disaster that appalled the world in 2005 has been joined by another catastrophe, this one man-made--the greatest environmental and maritime accident of all time, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. In less than five years, the Gulf Coast has experienced two colossal disasters, very different, yet very similar. And these two equally complex crises have resulted in a steep learning curve for all, but especially the journalists covering these enduring stories.

In "Oil and Water," the authors explore the media-fed experiences, the visuals and narratives associated with both disasters. Katrina journalists have reluctantly had to transform into oil spill journalists. The authors look at this process of growth from the viewpoints not only of the journalists, but also of the public and of the scientific community. Through a detailed analysis of the journalists' content, the authors tackle significant questions. This book assesses the quality of journalism and the effects that quality may have on the public. The authors argue that regardless of the type of journalism involved or the immensity of the events covered, successful reportage still depends on the fundamentals of journalism and the importance of following these tenets consistently in a crisis atmosphere, especially when confronted with enduring crises that are just years apart.

Learning Communities in Educational Partnerships shows how theory and practice come into lived interplay in social spaces where theory informs practice and practice turns into theory. Drawing on their own experiences of becoming a learning community, the authors introduce the ideas underpinning self-study action research. Through a series of first-hand practitioner accounts, the chapters describe and explain how to engage in processes of inquiry and establish learning communities, how to make space for professional conversations and how to develop living theories from within daily practice. The book shows how meaningful change can take place, both in educational improvements and also in more transformative professional learning, when educators are encouraged to draw on their own personal educational values and share their idea

This book explores the ways in which Eastern and Western medical knowledge inform each other in the treatment of people in Asia across a wide range of health issues. To do so, it brings together health communication scholars from diverse disciplines both in Hong Kong and worldwide and combines their observations and expertise with those of clinicians working in healthcare in Asia to provide a topical portrait of the expanding horizons of healthcare in Asia. Social scientists and clinicians discuss their research and clinical practice respectively using a range of analytic approaches that include traditional qualitative and quantitative methodologies, as well as cutting-edge computer diagnostics that digitally visualize health interactions across time. The book presents an innovative and interdisciplinary investigation of Eastern and Western perspectives on healthcare in Asia. It covers topics concerned with a range of mental and physical problems that are currently confronting Asia. Importantly, the views and experiences of front line clinicians delivering patient care in Asia are also included. Accordingly, the book offers varied and innovative perspectives on health communication issues in China, Singapore, Bangladesh and Australia.

This volume constitutes the refereed and revised post-conference proceedings of the 5th IFIP WG 5.15 International Conference on Information Technology in Disaster Risk Reduction, ITDRR 2020, in Sofia, Bulgaria, in December 2020.* The 18 full papers and 6 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 52 submissions. The papers focus on various aspects and challenges of coping with disaster risk reduction. The main topics include areas such as natural disasters, remote sensing, big data, cloud computing, Internet of Things, mobile computing, emergency management, disaster information processing, disaster risk assessment and management. *The conference was held virtually.

Social platforms such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter have rekindled the initial excitement of cyberspace. Text based computer-mediated communication has been enriched with face-to-face communication such as Skype, as users move from desk tops to laptops with integrated cameras and related hardware. Age, gender and culture barriers seem to have crumbled and disappeared as the user base widens dramatically. Other than simple statistics relating to e-mail usage, chatrooms and blog subscriptions, we know surprisingly little about the rapid changes taking place. This book assembles leading researchers on non-verbal communication, emotion, cognition and computer science to summarize what we know about the processes relevant to face-to-face communication as it pertains to telecommunication, including video-conferencing. The authors take stock of what has been learned regarding how people communicate, in person or over distance, and set the foundations for solid research helping to understand the issues, implications and possibilities that lie ahead.

This open access edited volume provides theoretical, practical, and historical perspectives on art and education in a post-digital, post-internet era. Recently, these terms have been attached to artworks, artists, exhibitions, and educational practices that deal with the relationships between online and offline, digital and physical, and material and immaterial. By taking the current socio-technological conditions of the post-digital and the post-internet seriously, contributors challenge fixed narratives and field-specific ownership of these terms, as well as explore their potential and possible shortcomings when discussing art and education. Chapters also recognize historical forebears of digital art and education while critically assessing art, media, and other realms of engagement. This book encourages readers to explore what kind of educational futures might a post-digital, post-internet era engender.

In this book, Monika Bednarek addresses the need for a systemic analysis of television discourse and characterization within linguistics and media studies. She presents both corpus stylistics and manual analysis of linguistic and multimodal features of fictional television. The first part focuses on communicative context, multimodality, genre, audience and scripted television dialogue while the second part focuses on televisual characterization, introducing and illustrating the novel concept of expressive character identity. Aside from the study of television dialogue, which informs it throughout, this book is a contribution to studying characterization, to narrative analysis and to corpus stylistics. With its combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, the book represents a wealth of exploratory, innovative and challenging perspectives, and is a key contribution to the analysis of television dialogue and character identity. The volume will be of interest to researchers and students in linguistics, stylistics and media/television studies, as well as to corpus linguists and communication theorists. The book will be a useful resource for lecturers teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in media discourse and related areas.

Cyber security has become a topic of concern over the past decade. As many individual and organizational activities continue to evolve digitally, it is important to examine the psychological and behavioral aspects of cyber security. Psychological and Behavioral Examinations in Cyber Security is a critical scholarly resource that examines the relationship between human behavior and interaction and cyber security. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics, such as behavioral analysis, cyberpsychology, and online privacy, this book is geared towards IT specialists, administrators, business managers, researchers, and students interested in online decision making in cybersecurity.

How do we identify the "queer auteur" and their queer imaginings? Is it possible to account for such a figure when the very terms "queer" and "auteur" invoke aesthetic surprises and disorientations, disconcerting ironies and paradoxes, and biographical deceits and ambiguities? In eighteen eloquent chapters, David A. Gerstner traces a history of ideas that spotlight an ever-shifting terrain associated with auteur theory and, in particular, queer-auteur theory. Engaging with the likes of Oscar Wilde, Walter Benjamin, James Baldwin, Jean Louis Baudry, Linda Nochlin, Jane Gallop, Cael Keegan, Luce Irigaray, and other prominent critical thinkers, Gerstner contemplates how the queer auteur in film theory might open us to the work of desire. Queer Imaginings argues for a queer-auteur in which critical theory is reenabled to reconceptualize the auteur in relation to race, gender, sexuality, and desire. Gerstner succinctly defines the contours of a history and the ongoing discussions that situate queer and auteur theories in film studies. Ultimately, Queer Imaginings is a journey in shared pleasures in which writing for and about cinema makes way for unanticipated cinematic friendships.

Designed to provide researchers clear and informative insight into techniques of meta-analysis, the Third Edition of Methods of Meta-Analysis: Correcting Error and Bias in Research Findings is the most comprehensive text on meta-analysis available today. It is the only book that presents a full and usable treatment of the role of study artifacts in distorting study results, as well as methods for correcting results for such biases and errors. Meta-analysis is arguably the most important methodological innovation in the last thirty-five years, due to its immense impact on the development of cumulative knowledge and professional practice. This text, now in its updated Third Edition, has been revised to cover the newest developments in meta-analysis methods, evaluation, correction, and more. This reader-friendly book is the definitive resource on meta-analysis.

For business people looking to get results and up their income, this book divulges no-nonsense strategies that can turn anyone into a powerful speaker who can overcome challenges and influence the right listeners. In today's high-tech world, there are more ways than ever before to communicate: email, text messaging, voicemails, blogs, tweets, video conference calls, and remote meetings. But one thing is still exactly the same as in the old days: there are effective and ineffective ways to express yourself. All business professionals need to know how to communicate clearly, concisely, and passionately if they want their intended message to impact others. Shut Up and Say Something shows readers how to convincingly communicate their expertise in any business situation. This book demonstrates how to condense complicated concepts, minimize communication mistakes, avoid misinterpretation, convey vision, and quickly influence decision makers. Strategies for expressing yourself succinctly and clearly, dodging "loaded" questions, thinking fast on your feet, humanizing inscrutable information, and using humor to engage an audience are examples of the topics covered. The importance of prioritizing outcomes is emphasized throughout the book. Provides hands-on, easy-to-use tools to help anyone improve their business communication skills Contains original heartwarming stories, examples, and lessons learned from the author's 20-year career in television news, a run for political office, and advising some of the nation's biggest companies Every chapter contains topical session examples, stories, "Coaching Notes," "Quick Fixes," and subject-related quotes The index helps readers easily locate specific topics and references to key terms

An examination of the connections between modernist writers and editorial activities, Making Canada New draws links among new and old media, collaborative labour, emergent scholars and scholarships, and digital modernisms. In doing so, the collection reveals that renovating modernisms does not need to depend on the fabrication of completely new modes of scholarship. Rather, it is the repurposing of already existing practices and combining them with others - whether old or new, print or digital - that instigates a process of continuous renewal. Critical to this process of renewal is the intermingling of print and digital research methods and the coordination of more popular modes of literary scholarship with less frequented ones, such as bibliography, textual studies, and editing. Making Canada New tracks the editorial renovation of modernism as a digital phenomenon while speaking to the continued production of print editions.