First published in 1990, this title presents a rich account of how television intersects with family life in American and other world cultures. From an analysis of the political and cultural significance of China's most important television series to detailed descriptions of how families in the United States interpret and use television at home, James Lull's ethnographic work marks an important stage in the study of the role of the mass media in contemporary culture. This title will be of interest not only to those in media and communications, but also to those in the broader fields of cultural anthropology and sociology.

Telecommunications, copyright, media, evidence, file sharing

Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, Wessendorf explores life in a super-diverse urban neighbourhood. The book presents a vivid account of the daily doings and social relations among the residents and how they pragmatically negotiate difference in their everyday lives.

This study, written in the context of its first publication in 1970, discusses and documents the invasion of privacy by the corporation and the social institution in the search for efficiency in information processing. Discussing areas such as the impact of the computer on administration, privacy and the storage on information, the authors assess the technical and social feasibility of constructing integrated data banks to cover the details of populations. The book was hugely influential both in terms of scholarship and legislation, and the years following saw the Data Protection Act of 1984, which was then consolidated by the Act of 1998. The topics under discussion remain of great concern to the public in our increasingly web-based world, ensuring the continued relevance of this title to academics and students with an interest in data protection and public privacy.

The Digitization of Cinematic Visual Effects: Hollywood s Coming of Age, by Rama Venkatasawmy, analyzes how the Hollywood cinema industry s visual effects applications have not only motivated the expansion of filmmaking praxis, they have also influenced the evolution of viewing pleasures and spectatorship experiences. Following the digitization of their associated technologies, VFX have been responsible for multiplying the strategies of representation and storytelling, as well as extending the range of stories that can potentially be told onscreen. By the same token, the visual standards of the Hollywood film s production and exhibition have been growing in sophistication. On the basis of displaying groundbreaking VFX immaculately realized through the application of cutting-edge technologies and craftsmanship and of projecting such a significant degree of visual innovation and originality, certain Hollywood movies have established techno-visual trends and industrial standards for subsequent filmmaking practice. Hollywood cinema s entry into the digital realm is intertwined with the intensification of conglomeratic practices within the movie business, the domain of techno-scientific R&D in filmmaking, and the unification of corporate media, information technology, and entertainment. Hence, the standardization of, and convergence toward, the digital medium is emblematic of Hollywood cinema s techno-industrial evolution in the late twentieth century. Accordingly, this volume identifies various synergies and partnerships between VFX providers, movie studios, graphic designers, and more that have emerged from a progressive growth of awareness in Hollywood of the digital medium s potential."

Gossip is one of the most common, and most condemned, forms of discourse in which we engage - even as it is often absorbing and socially significant, it is also widely denigrated. This volume examines fascinating moments in the history of gossip in America, from witchcraft trials to People magazine, helping us to see the subject with new eyes.

This volume examines the concept of performance in ethnographic studies, with a special focus on the issues surrounding the performances of race, and cultural and environmental identities. A special partial section honours the contributions of David R. Maines to the field of communication studies. The concluding section considers new theoretical developments in interaction theory, including a re-examination of the spectatorial gaze in film and literary approaches to the imagined past.

Organization Structures: Theory and Design, Analysis and Prescription describes how to organize people to achieve a desired outcome. This is accomplished by establishing sets of rules from "real world" organization contexts. Moreover, the development of these rules within "real world" contexts means that the rules must be true, general, operational, technically sound, and easy to use. With an understanding of rules and the processes of their use, organization structures can be identified, which in turn form the basis of a theoretical framework. This book discusses, examines, and demonstrates the interrelationship of the design rules, their theoretical use within these organization structures, along with their practical implications. Throughout the book, an extended example of the Masters Brewing Corporation (MBC) is used to illustrate the conceptual material and to make the implications of the organizational analysis explicitly concrete.

This handbook combines the perspectives of communication studies, economics and management, and psychology in order to provide a comprehensive economic view on personal and mass communication. It is divided into six parts that comprise: 1. an overarching introduction that defines the field and provides a brief overview of its history (1 chapter) 2. the most commonly used theoretic frameworks for the analysis of communication economics and management (4 chapters) 3. the peculiarities of the quantitative and qualitative methods and data used in the field (3 chapters) 4. key issues of the field such as the economics of language, labor in creative industries, media concentration, branding etc. (10 chapters) 5. descriptions of the development, trends and peculiarities of the field in different parts of the world, written by scholars from the respective region (10 chapters) 6. reflections on future directions for the field, both from a managerial and from an economics perspective (1 chapter). The authors of the individual chapters represent different academic disciplines, research traditions, and geographic backgrounds. The reader will thus gain multifaceted insights into the management and economics of communication.

Friendship, patron-client relationships, and social networks played a fundamental role in Scandinavian society from the Viking Age through to the Industrial Era. Personal ties were essential to Viking chieftains for building their power base, and such ties were equally crucial for early modern merchants, who used their personal bonds to create trade networks. Furthermore, social networks connected medieval men and women to the saints and to God. The articles in this book emphasize the strong correlation between political developments such as the emergence of the state and the evolution of friendships and social networks. They also highlight radical changes in the importance and contexts of friendship that occurred between the Viking Age and the late eighteenth century. During this period, friendships became far more than community-based social relationships, but rather tools for the elite in social positioning and wealth acquisition. This volume highlights the major significance of friendships and patron-client relationships to political and cultural life in medieval, early modern, and modern society. It covers social networks in Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, each of which are characterized by different societal features, ranging from the free-state republic of early medieval Iceland to the early modern kingdom of Denmark.

A comprehensive study of domestic buildings in London from about 1200 to the Great Fire in 1666. John Schofield describes houses and such related buildings as almshouses, taverns, inns, shops and livery company halls, drawing on evidence from surviving buildings, archaeological excavations, documents, panoramas, drawn surveys and plans, contemporary descriptions, and later engravings and photographs. Schofield presents an overview of the topography of the medieval city, reconstructing its streets, defences, many religious houses and fine civic buildings. He then provides details about the mediaeval and Tudor London house: its plan, individual rooms and spaces and their functions, the roofs, floors and windows, the materials of construction and decoration, and the internal fittings and furniture. Throughout the text he discusses what this evidence tells us about the special restrictions or pleasures of living in the capital; how certain innovations of plan and construction first occurred in London before spreading to other towns; and how notions of privacy developed.

This volume emphasizes interpretive interactionist work on race, media, culture and identity. Experimental, autoethnographic performance texts are privileged, as are recent theoretical developments in symbolic interaction theory involving critical humanism, pragmatic theories of power and the layered bureaucracy. It also presents essays on the New Iowa School, the work of Gideon. S. Joberg, cultural studies and symbolic interactionism, including the work of Norman Denzin.

This 16th volume in the series discusses a variety of topics in the field of symbolic interaction; these topics include extending interaction theory and new empirical and theoretical inquiries.

"This is the first comprehensive text on social psychological approaches to communication, providing an excellent introduction to theoretical perspectives, special topics, and applied areas and practice in communication. Bringing together scholars of international reputation, this book provides a unique contribution to the field"--

Many books covering the introduction to mass communications lean towards the descriptive and social scientific aspects of the media. In contrast, "MediavisionS" provides a critical analysis and evaluation of both the aesthetics and the agencies of mass communications. The book is organized chronologically to facilitate analysis of developments in the art and industry of mass communications within the context of concurrent social, political, economic, and technological changes. Each of the book's five chapters has subheadings to highlight specific subject matter.

The author of the widely praised Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how cultish groups from Jonestown and Scientology to SoulCycle and social media gurus use language as the ultimate form of power. What makes "cults" so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we're looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join-and more importantly, stay in-extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell's argument is that, on some level, it already has . . . Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of "brainwashing." But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear-and are influenced by-every single day. Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities "cultish," revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven's Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of "cultish" everywhere.

From "AdBusters" to viral marketing, this brief dictionary of ideas and concepts contains over 100 extended, illuminating entries to bring the novice up to speed on the advertising/marketing world and the ideas that underlie it. For the neophyte professional, it describes the various players and strategies of the industry. For the student, it summarizes the key ideas of the most important cultural theorists introduced in advertising and marketing courses. For everyone, it helps explain the cultural, economic, and psychological role that advertising concepts play in society. A handy introduction for students and a quick reference for young professionals.

Focusing on two of the most fraught and intractable public debates of the present time: human-induced climate change and the human rights of refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants and the stateless, this book raises critical questions about the role and relationship of public relations in weakening democratic political systems. It shows a clear, but often indirect, link between PR and a neoliberal agenda that has been vastly underestimated and oversimplified as "spin." This comes at a great cost for society. Public Relations and Neoliberalism provides a panoramic view of public relations from the post-war period, when a powerful communication template propelled by the PR industry served the neoliberal agenda to create political diversion, division, and hegemony at the same time. But today, public relations is not just a tool of industry or government. Rather, it has become the default mode and style of being and relating in the world, that seeps into and affects all areas of life: professional, corporate, domestic, political, activist, and technological. And the metastasis of neoliberal meaning into so many realms has important ramifications for society and individuals. Looking at the confluences and contradictions within the logic of public relations both as a practice and in terms of how it has been theorized and understood, this book provides an important contribution to critical work in the communicative field.

This study, written in the context of its first publication in 1970, discusses and documents the invasion of privacy by the corporation and the social institution in the search for efficiency in information processing. Discussing areas such as the impact of the computer on administration, privacy and the storage on information, the authors assess the technical and social feasibility of constructing integrated data banks to cover the details of populations. The book was hugely influential both in terms of scholarship and legislation, and the years following saw the introduction of the Data Protection Act of 1984, which was then consolidated by the Act of 1998. The topics under discussion remain of great concern to the public in our increasingly web-based world, ensuring the continued relevance of this title to academics and students with an interest in data protection and public privacy.

The contributions in this book bring together a representative array of conceptual and methodological approaches in the study of communication, gender, and sex roles. They map out the possible range and terrain of the theme communication, gender, and sex roles in interpersonal, organizational, cultural, and applied interaction contexts.

Working Regions focuses on policy aimed at building sustainable and resilient regional economies in the wake of the global recession. Using examples of four "working regions " regions where research and design functions and manufacturing still coexist in the same cities the book argues for a new approach to regional economic development. It does this by highlighting policies that foster innovation and manufacturing in small firms, focus research centers on pushing innovation down the supply chain, and support dynamic, design-driven firm networks.

This book traces several key themes underlying the core proposition that for a region to work, it has to link research and manufacturing activities namely, innovation and production in the same place. Among the topics discussed in this volume are the issues of how the location of research and development infrastructure produces a clear role of the state in innovation and production systems, and how policy emphasis on pre-production processes in the 1990s has obscured the financialization of intellectual property. Throughout the book, the author draws on examples from diverse industries, including the medical devices industry and the US photonics industry, in order to illustrate the different themes of working regions and the various institutional models operating in various countries and regions.

Very little has been written to address the emerging trends in social software and technology. With these technologies and applications being relatively new and evolving rapidly, research is wide open in these fields. Social Software and Web 2.0 Technology Trends fills this critical research need, providing an overview of the current state of Web 2.0 technologies and their impact on organizations and educational institutions. Written for academicians and practicing managers, this estimable book presents business applications as well as implementations for institutions of higher education with numerous examples of how these technologies are currently being used. Delivering authoritative insights to a rapidly evolving domain of technology application, this book is an invaluable resource for both academic libraries and for classroom instruction.

At a time when sustainability is on everyone's lips, this volume is one of the first to offer an overview of sustainability and communication issues - including community mobilization, information technologies, gender and social norms, mass media, interpersonal communication and integrated communication approaches - from a development and social change perspective. Drawing on contemporary theories of communication as well as real-world examples from development projects around the world, the contributors in this collection showcase the increasing richness and versatility of communication research and practice. Together, they make a case for adopting a more comprehensive perspective on communication in the areas of development and social change.