This book examines China's identity transformations with a focus on self-perceptions and their representations and communication in the mass media. By considering the internal dynamics of change, it explores the emerging multifaceted 'China brand'. With its growing economic clout, China has taken a proactive stance in shaping global economic and strategic order through ambitious programmes such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the 'Belt and Road' initiative. However, as a developing country, China is at pains to manage its own transformations while trying to carve out an international identity. Arguably, China's unique sense of history and identities may lead to a 'contested modernity' or 'multiple modernities'; radically different from the prevalent classical theories of modernisation and convergence of industrial societies. To understand China's trajectory of future development has been a major issue in international affairs. This book is concerned with how China's hybridised identities are articulated, and intertwined with situational, institutional, and societal dynamics - and how they are interwoven with China's international outlook which converges with or diverges from China's historical assumptions and beliefs. This book will be of interest to those studying China's identity in the media; situated at the juncture of past, present, and future, and between China and the wider world. The chapters in this book were originally published in Critical Arts.

How to choose cellular service wisely and become an adept cellular user

Keeping in touch via cellular is increasingly vital in today’s fast—paced world. The technology now boasts over 50 million subscribers, and that figure is expected to double in the next five years. Whether you are a regular user or an industry professional, The Cellular Connection, Fourth Edition helps you keep current in the field. Written in a nontechnical language by an industry insider, this new edition of a highly successful book (over a quarter million copies sold!) demystifies both service and technology, explains the shift from mobiles to portables, and updates all information on cellular phone equipment. Numerous illustrations, photographs, and a special Cellular Buyer’s Checklist accompany this unique guide. The Cellular Connection, Fourth Edition answers all your cellular telephony questions, including:

• How the cellular system works
• The purposes and advantages of various features
• How to choose, install, and operate your phone
• How to make sense of your phone bill
• What to do when traveling outside your home area
• How to tell when you’re roaming
• What’s in the future, including digital cellular and PCS

This new book offers an insightful guide into the complex tapestry of global entertainment media markets. It features analyses and case studies from leading international media scholars, who explore the causes and effects of globalization upon this ever-evolving industry. There are still opposing and restraining forces to globalization processes taking place in media, and the global mediascape comprises international, regional and local markets, and global and local players, which in recent years have evolved at an uneven pace. By analyzing similarities and differences in a landscape where driving forces of globalization meet locally situated audiences and institutions, this volume unveils a complex, contested space comprising global and local players, whose success is determined by both their national and international dimensions. It guides its readers to the geographical and intellectual exploration of the international media landscape, analyzing the global and local media players and their modus operandi. Editor Paolo Sigismondi's insightful, engaging collection presents a compelling and novel approach to the analysis of global entertainment media. World Entertainment Media: Global, Regional and Local Perspectives is an ideal starting point for students and practitioners alike looking to build a solid understanding of the global mediascape, and a great resource for instructors and scholars in global media entertainment.

Creativity is at the vanguard of contemporary capitalism, valorised as a form of capital in its own right. It is the centrepiece of the vaunted 'creative economy', the creative industries, and is increasingly a focus of public policy. But what is economic about creativity? How can creative labour become the basis for a distinctive global industry? And how has the solitary artist, a figment of the romantic thought, become the creative entrepreneur of twenty-first century economic imagining? This book offers a fresh approach to this topic within the creative industries through a focus on intellectual property. It follows IP and its associated rights (IPR) through the creative economy, showing how it shapes creative products and configures the economic agency of creative producers. IP helps to manage risk, settle what is valuable, extract revenues, and protect future profits. It is the central mechanism in organising the market for creative goods. Most importantly, it shows that IP/IPR is crucial in the dialectic between symbolic and economic value on which the creative industries depend; IP/IPR hold the creative industries together. This book is based on a detailed empirical study of creative producers in the UK, extending the sociological studies of markets to an analysis of the UK's creative industries. In doing so, it makes an important, empirically grounded contribution to debates around creativity, entrepreneurship, and uncertainty in creative industries, and will be of interest to scholars and policymakers alike.

A short, informal account of our ever-increasing dependence on a complex multiplicity of messages, records, documents, and data. We live in an information society, or so we are often told. But what does that mean? This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a concise, informal account of the ways in which information and society are related and of our ever-increasing dependence on a complex multiplicity of messages, records, documents, and data. Using information in its everyday, nonspecialized sense, Michael Buckland explores the influence of information on what we know, the role of communication and recorded information in our daily lives, and the difficulty (or ease) of finding information. He shows that all this involves human perception, social behavior, changing technologies, and issues of trust. Buckland argues that every society is an "information society"; a "non-information society" would be a contradiction in terms. But the shift from oral and gestural communication to documents, and the wider use of documents facilitated by new technologies, have made our society particularly information intensive. Buckland describes the rising flood of data, documents, and records, outlines the dramatic long-term growth of documents, and traces the rise of techniques to cope with them. He examines the physical manifestation of information as documents, the emergence of data sets, and how documents and data are discovered and used. He explores what individuals and societies do with information; offers a basic summary of how collected documents are arranged and described; considers the nature of naming; explains the uses of metadata; and evaluates selection methods, considering relevance, recall, and precision.

The automatic exchange of data and structured documents, and the implications of 'paperless trade' is a key issue for business in the Europe of the 21st century. EDI in Europe is part of a Europe wide effort to provide business with the best tools and practices in this vital area. At the beginning of this decade, the Commission of the European Communities launched the TEDIS Programme (Trade EDI Systems) in order to promote the use of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in the European Community and to increase the competitiveness of European business. SISnet, a research consortium which includes academics from major European business schools and universities, was commissioned to study the use of EDI in Europe within the framework of the TEDIS programme. Specifically this was to take an audit of the adoption and implementation and then to assess its effects on the firms and industries using it. EDI is a recent phenomenon and since it can only really be studied in context, case studies have been used which will encourage understanding of the dynamics within individual settings. Cases spanning a wide range of industries come from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland. EDI in Europe brings all the research together. The team's work is set to continue as the issues are analysed - it is ongoing and will affect business at all levels. EDI in Europe will help make everyone aware of EDI in practice and further its diffusion into, and acceptance by, the entire European business community.

Creating a Freelance Career covers everything anyone needs to know about becoming a freelance writer, graphic designer, copy editor, artist, musician or any other creative occupation. It includes chapters on how to get started with your career and where to look for work, how to write pitch or query letters, how to work with contract employers, and how to build and sustain your business. Lingo necessary for successfully navigating the freelance world is defined throughout. Author Jill L. Ferguson, an experienced freelance professional and educator, guides you through finding success in the gig economy, discussing how to pursue freelancing with an entrepreneurial spirit. Creating a Freelance Career includes examples of what to do, and what not to do, when pursuing freelance projects, and includes perspectives from additional real-life professionals who have found success in their fields.

In network design, the gap between theory and practice is woefully broad. This book narrows it, comprehensively and critically examining current network design models and methods. You will learn where mathematical modeling and algorithmic optimization have been under-utilized. At the opposite extreme, you will learn where they tend to fail to contribute to the twin goals of network efficiency and cost-savings. Most of all, you will learn precisely how to tailor theoretical models to make them as useful as possible in practice.
Throughout, the authors focus on the traffic demands encountered in the real world of network design. Their generic approach, however, allows problem formulations and solutions to be applied across the board to virtually any type of backbone communication or computer network. For beginners, this book is an excellent introduction. For seasoned professionals, it provides immediate solutions and a strong foundation for further advances in the use of mathematical modeling for network design.
. Written by leading researchers with a combined 40 years of industrial and academic network design experience.
Features
. Considers the development of design models for different technologies, including TCP/IP, IDN, MPLS, ATM, SONET/SDH, and WDM
. Discusses recent topics such as shortest path routing and fair bandwidth assignment in IP/MPLS networks
. Addresses proper multi-layer modeling across network layers using different technologies for example, IP over ATM over SONET, IP over WDM, and IDN over SONET.
. Covers restoration-oriented design methods that allow recovery from failures of large-capacity transport links and transit nodes.
. Presents, at the end of each chapter, exercises useful to both students and practitioners."

Bringing together in-depth analysis and critical insights into the potential benefits of improved technology in Africa's development, this work illustrates the central role information and communication technologies can play in the delivery of efficient and effective services by governments and agencies. The potential political rewards of better digital technology are discussed, as is the important role digital networks could play in establishing increased communication and profits among businesses. In exploring these topics, considerations such as financial accountability, private and corporate responsibility, and social considerations are also brought to light.

Whether members of the family are headed to school or work, smartphones accompany family members throughout the day. The growing sophistication of mobile communication has unleashed a proliferation of apps, channels, and platforms that link parents to their children and the key institutions in their lives. While parents may feel empowered by their ability to provide their children assistance with a click on their smartphone, they may also feel pressured and overwhelmed by this need to always be on call for their children. This book focuses on the phenomenon of transcendent parenting, where parents actively use technology to go beyond traditional, physical practices of parenting. In drawing on the experiences of intensely digitally-connected families in Singapore to tell a global story, Sun Sun Lim argues how transcendent parenting can embody and convey, intentionally or not, the parenting priorities in these households. Chapters outline how parents exploit mobile connectivity to transcend the physical distance between themselves and their children, the online and offline social interaction environments, and the timelessness of seemingly ceaseless parenting. Transcendent Parenting further explores how mobile communication allows parents to be more involved than ever in their children's lives, leaving readers to question whether or not parents have become too involved as a result. With its clear discussions of the effects of transcendent parenting on parents' wellbeing and children's personal development, Transcendent Parenting will appeal to a broad audience of readers, from scholars, educators and policy makers to parents and young people across the globe.

This volume brings together leading scholars to provide an account of recent developments and the challenges that the future brings for women in American Politics. The book examines women's participation in the electoral arena and the emerging scholarship on the relationship between the media and women in politics, the participation of women of colour, and women's activism outside the electoral arena.

Women and American Politics brings together leading scholars in the field of women and politics to provide an account of recent developments and the challenges that the future brings for the study of gender and American Politics. The book examines women's participation in the electoral arena and the emerging scholarship on the relationship between the media and women in politics, the participation of women of colour, and women's activism outside the electoral arena. This volume demonstrates both the wealth of knowledge about women and American politics by the current generation of scholars and the vast number and range of important research questions, which pose a challenge for the next generation.

In this updated edition of the industry staple, veteran media executive Jeff Ulin relates business theory and practice across key global market segments-film, television, and online/digital-providing you with an insider's perspective that can't be found anywhere else. Learn how an idea moves from concept to profit and how distribution dominates the bottom line: Hollywood stars may make the headlines, but marketing and distribution are the behind-the-scenes drivers converting content into cash. The third edition: Includes perspectives from key industry executives at studios, networks, agencies and online leaders, including Fox, Paramount, Lucasfilm, Endeavor, Tencent, MPAA, YouTube, Amazon, and many more; Explores the explosive growth of the Chinese market, including box office trends, participation in financing Hollywood feature films, and the surge in online usage; Illustrates how online streaming leaders like Netflix, Amazon, Apple, YouTube, Hulu and Facebook are changing the way TV content is distributed and consumed, and in cases how these services are moving into theatrical markets; Analyzes online influences and disruption throughout the distribution chain, and explains the risks and impact stemming from changing access points (e.g., stand-alone apps), delivery methods (over-the-top) and consumption patterns (e.g., binge watching); Breaks down historical film windows, the economic drivers behind them, and how online and digital delivery applications are changing the landscape. Ulin provides the virtual apprenticeship you need to demystify and manage the complicated media markets, understand how digital distribution has impacted the ecosystem, and glimpse into the future of how film and television content will be financed, distributed and watched. An online eResource contains further discussion on topics presented in the book.

This book proposes contemporary decolonization as an approach to developing cultural economies in the Global South. It presents the account of the transformation of television in Jamaica and Ghana to audiovisual subsectors; from cultural institutions to cultural industries and then subsectors of emerging cultural economies as representative case studies. 'Glocal' changes are presented within five organizing phenomena: philosophical, ideological, and economic change, and their impact on governance and the operational transformation of the television sectors of Jamaica and Ghana. This book represents the first critical examination and comparison of cultural and creative industries (CCI) and economy concepts in the Caribbean and Africa. It is an original contribution to the development of strategies that influence processes, structures, and policies related to the cultural economy concept and those required to improve television industries. This process of describing culturally specific characteristics of CCI is designed to be applicable to the CCI of developing countries including those in Africa and the Caribbean, where interpretations and implementation suited for advanced industrial nations have been insufficiently questioned and challenged.

We live in a world in which Google's search algorithms determine how we access information, Facebook's News Feed algorithms shape how we socialize, and Netflix collaborative filtering algorithms choose the media products we consume. As such, we live algorithmic lives. Life, however, is not blindly controlled or determined by algorithms. Nor are we simply victims of an ever-expanding artificial intelligence. Rather than looking at how technologies shape or are shaped by political institutions, this book is concerned with the ways in which informational infrastructure may be considered political in its capacity to shape social and cultural life. It looks specifically at the conditions of algorithmic life - how algorithms work, both materially and discursively, to create the conditions for sociality and connectivity. The book argues that the most important aspect of algorithms is not what they are in terms of their specific technical details but rather how they become part of social practices and how different people enlist them as powerful brokers of information, communication and society. If we truly want to engage with the promises of automation and predictive analytics entailed by the promises of "big data", we also need to understand the contours of algorithmic life that condition such practices. Setting out to explore both the specific uses of algorithms and the cultural forms they generate, this book offers a novel understanding of the power and politics of algorithmic life as grounded in case studies that explore the material-discursive dimensions of software.

In the first (systematic) section the flysheet as a medium is defined and set off against other media. Information is given on the conditions governing production, distribution and reception, and typical linguistic and formal features are discussed. Part Two offers a brief history of flysheets from the 15th century to 1848, focussing especially on the early Reformation and the Peasants' War but with constant reference to the other media of the respective epoch throughout.

Cultural policy is changing. Traditionally, cultural policies have been concerned with providing financial support for the arts, for cultural heritage and for institutions such as museums and galleries. In recent years, around the world, interest has grown in the creative industries as a source of innovation and economic dynamism. This book argues that an understanding of the nature of both the economic and the cultural value created by the cultural sector is essential to good policy-making. The book is the first comprehensive account of the application of economic theory and analysis to the broad field of cultural policy. It deals with general principles of policy-making in the cultural arena as seen from an economic point of view, and goes on to examine a range of specific cultural policy areas, including the arts, heritage, the cultural industries, urban development, tourism, education, trade, cultural diversity, economic development, intellectual property and cultural statistics.

Cultural policy is changing. Traditionally, cultural policies have been concerned with providing financial support for the arts, for cultural heritage and for institutions such as museums and galleries. In recent years, around the world, interest has grown in the creative industries as a source of innovation and economic dynamism. This book argues that an understanding of the nature of both the economic and the cultural value created by the cultural sector is essential to good policy-making. The book is the first comprehensive account of the application of economic theory and analysis to the broad field of cultural policy. It deals with general principles of policy-making in the cultural arena as seen from an economic point of view, and goes on to examine a range of specific cultural policy areas, including the arts, heritage, the cultural industries, urban development, tourism, education, trade, cultural diversity, economic development, intellectual property and cultural statistics.

Challenging the popular myth of a present-day 'information revolution', Media Technology and Society is essential reading for anyone interested in the social impact of technological change. Winston argues that the development of new media forms, from the telegraph and the telephone to computers, satellite and virtual reality, is the product of a constant play-off between social necessity and suppression: the unwritten law by which new technologies are introduced into society only insofar as their disruptive potential is limited.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203024370

Societies around the world have experienced a flood of information from diverse channels originating beyond local communities and even national borders, transmitted through the rapid expansion of cosmopolitan communications. For more than half a century, conventional interpretations, Norris and Inglehart argue, have commonly exaggerated the potential threats arising from this process. A series of fire-walls protect national cultures. This book develops a new theoretical framework for understanding cosmopolitan communications and uses it to identify the conditions under which global communications are most likely to endanger cultural diversity. The authors analyze empirical evidence from both the societal level and the individual level, examining the outlook and beliefs of people in a wide range of societies. The study draws on evidence from the World Values Survey, covering 90 societies in all major regions worldwide from 1981 to 2007. The conclusion considers the implications of their findings for cultural policies.

This book explores and critiques different aspects of arts leadership within contemporary contexts. While this is an exploration of ways arts leadership is understood, interpreted and practiced, it is also an acknowledgement of a changing cultural and economic paradigm. Understanding the broader environment for the arts is therefore part of the leadership imperative. This book examines aspects such as individual versus collective leadership, gender, creativity and the influences of stakeholders and culture. While the book provides a theoretical and critical understanding of arts leadership, it also gives examples of arts leadership in practice.

In the first volume of Clive James's autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs, we said farewell to our hero as he set sail from Sydney Harbour, bound for London, fame and fortune. Finding the first of these proved relatively simple; the second two less so. Undaunted, Clive moved into a bed and breakfast in a Swiss Cottage where he practised the Twist, anticipated poetical masterpieces and worried about his wardrobe . . . Falling Towards England is the entertaining and erudite second part in Clive James' life story, which he continues in May Week Was in June, North Face of Soho and The Blaze of Obscurity.