In the last decade our mobile phones have been infiltrated by angry birds, our computers by leagues of legends and our social networks by pleas for help down on the farm. As digital games have become networked, mobile and casual they have become a pervasive cultural form. Based on original empirical work, including interviews with workers, virtual ethnographies in online games and analysis of industry related documents, Global Games provides a political, economic and sociological analysis of the growth and restructuring of the digital games industry over the past decade. Situating the games industry as both cultural and creative and examining the relative growth of console, PC, online and mobile, Aphra Kerr analyses the core production logics in the industry, and the expansion of circulation processes as game services have developed. In an industry dominated by North American and Japanese companies, Kerr explores the recent success of companies from China and Europe, and the emergent spatial politics as countries, cities, companies and communities compete to reshape digital games in the networked age.

This remarkably clearly written and timely critical evaluation of core issues in the study and application of interactive digital narrative (IDN) untangles the range of theories and arguments that have developed around IDN over the past three decades. Looking back over the past thirty years of theorizing around interactivity, storytelling, and the digital across the fields of game design/game studies, media studies, and narratology, but also at interactive documentary and other emerging forms, this text offers important and insightful correctives to common misunderstandings that pervade the field. This book also changes the perspective on IDN by introducing a comprehensive conceptual framework influenced by cybernetics and cognitive narratology, addressing limitations of perspectives originally developed for legacy media forms. Applying its framework, the book analyzes successful works and lays out concrete design advice, providing instructors, students and practitioners with a more precise and specific understanding of IDN. This will be essential reading for courses in interactive narrative, interactive storytelling and game writing as well as digital media more generally.

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.

For consultants, facilitators or OD specialists, a house's familiar image will help their clients see, think and feel their ways solving their business issues. No need for dry and hard-to-remember management schemas. The striking visual and active methods shown here deeply engage clients - they get it right away. The House and its 'Rooms' make sense to them, and they willingly start working with you. The Our House model has many of these 'Rooms' where complex business issues are sorted into one area at a time. The focus, the mood and the process vary with each Room, and the author reveals an entirely original consulting process each time. Disciplined creativity begins: loosening the grip of the past in the Attic; testing business foundations in the Cellar; preparing a meal the customer would love in the Kitchen; suppliers, maintenance and low-hanging fruit in the Garden; the team's dirty washing in the Laundry; elimination and waste goes into the Toilet; frank talk and vision alignment take place at the Dining Table; big systems perspectives can be seen from the Balcony; analysis in the Study; conversation and connection in the Living Room. The simplicity of the images of a House and its Rooms belies their frugality and their strength. In each Room, your clients are put through something demanding yet liberating. They see things differently and they see different things. Our House shows you how to succeed with simple action methods that are enlightening and strong.

For all professionals and students who want to improve their prospects in business, this book prepares and positions them to build dream careers, giving them the education and guidance required to develop vital soft skills, and work remotely and independently. After establishing a foundation for solid professional communications on a personal level, it quickly opens doors to business insights and opportunities that are exciting, inspiring, and highly sustainable. Immersing readers into the key realms of business success and exploring the full spectrum of essential communications practices, they gain knowledge and trade skills of immense value, including: * The basics of positive, proactive, strategic communications for individuals and organizations * What it means to be a PR expert in the creative industry and to do great work * An introduction to essential business imperatives, with high-level instruction on creativity, strategy, leadership, management, marketing, and much more * Customer service and all it entails * Extensive exploration of the PR toolset and its application in real-world marketing scenarios This book brings home all instruction with sophisticated questions and challenges, ensuring readers have every opportunity to comprehend and grow, step by step.

This book investigates an important source of the European Union's recent legitimacy problems. It shows how European integration is debated in mass media, and how this affects democratic inclusiveness. Advancing integration implies a shift in power between governments, parliaments, and civil society. Behind debates over Europe's 'democratic deficit' is a deeper concern: whether democratic politics can perform effectively under conditions of Europeanization and globalization. This study is based on a wealth of unique data from seven European countries, combining newspaper content analyses, an innovative study of Internet communication structures, and hundreds of interviews with leading political and media representatives across Europe. It is by far the most far-reaching and empirically grounded study on the Europeanization of media discourse and political contention to date, and a must-read for anyone interested in how European integration changes democratic politics and why European integration has become increasingly contested.

From its emergence as a modest newspaper to becoming the largest communication group in Argentina, and one of the main communications groups in Latin America, this book examines the media conglomerate Grupo Clarin. Guillermo Mastrini, Martin Becerra and Ana Bizberge analyze the group's corporate structure and the aspects that have contributed to its expansion throughout its history, mapping its stages of growth to the regulatory policies, cultural politics, economics and political history of Argentina over the last few decades. This book offers a compelling analysis of one of the key players in the Latin American communication and information market, highlighting how the conglomerate has continued to grow under various different governments - by achieving legal reforms and influencing policies - and continues to have great capacity to influence the policy and regulation of the system, the market structure and cultural consumption in the region. This book is ideal for students, scholars and researchers of global media, political economy, and media and communication, especially those with an interest in Latin America.

-Comprehensive textbook for introductory classes in technical and professional communication -Distinguished by its design-centric approach to topics ranging from document development, problem solving, writing for the web, and writing in collaborative teams -Accompanied by an innovative website providing immersive, interactive simulations in which students take on the role of technical communicators to respond to real-world professional challenges -Online resources for instructors also include video downloads, sample assignments, and other resources

This book offers a comprehensive overview of Canadian cultural policy and research, at a time of transition and redefinition, to establish a dialogue between conventional and emerging foundations. Taking a historical view, the book informs insights on current trends in policy and explores global debates underpinning cultural policy studies within a local context. The book first acknowledges what Canadian cultural policy research conventionally recognizes and refers to in terms of institutions, values, and debates, before moving on to take stock of the transformations that are continuing to reshape Canadian cultural policy in terms of values, orientations, actors, and institutions. With a focus on all levels of government-- federal, provincial, and local -- the book also centers on Indigenous arts policies and practices. This systematic and inclusive volume will appeal to academic researchers, graduate students, managers of arts and culture programs and institutions, and in the areas of cultural policy, public administration, political science, cultural studies, film and media studies, theatre and performance, and museum studies.

Social media platforms have captured the attention and imagination of many millions of people, enabling their users to develop and display their creativity, to empathize with others, and to find connection, communication and communion. But they are also surveillance systems through which those users become complicit in their own commercial exploitation. In this accessible book, Graham Meikle explores the tensions between these two aspects of social media. From Facebook and Twitter to Reddit and YouTube, Meikle examines social media as industries and as central sites for understanding the cultural politics of everyday life. Building on the new forms of communication and citizenship brought about by these platforms, he analyzes the meanings of sharing and privacy, internet memes, remix cultures and citizen journalism. Throughout, Social Media engages with questions of visibility, performance, platforms and users, and demonstrates how networked digital media are adopted and adapted in an environment built around the convergence of personal and public communication.

"Belgian solutions is first of all a title, that became a way of speaking: 'Look, a Belgian solution.' It all started with me stopping to take pictures of situations that I later began publishing on Facebook under this title. After some time people were sending me more and more photos, not only from Belgium of course, but from all over the globe, pictures that in very different and individual ways always kept saying: 'Look, a Belgian solution.' or simply: 'Look, a solution.'" - David Helbich. Not every solution is an answer to a problem. The Brussels-based artist David Helbich started collecting 'Belgian Solutions' in 2006. Once he started to share his photos online on Facebook in 2008 (the Belgian Solutions page has over 23,000 fans), the project gathered speed, with contributions by Belgian Solutions spotters all over the world. Luster is publishing the third, updated and improved edition of the original publication.

Extremist Propaganda in Social Media: A Threat to Homeland Security presents both an analysis of the impact of propaganda in social media and the rise of extremism in mass society from technological and social perspectives. The book identifies the current phenomenon, what shall be dubbed for purposes of this book "Blisstopian Societies"-characterized in the abiding "ignorance is bliss" principle-whereby a population is complacent and has unquestioning acceptance of a social doctrine without challenge and introspection. In these subcultures, the malleable population self-select social media content, "news," and propaganda delivery mechanisms. By doing so, they expose themselves only to content that motivates, reinforces, and contributes to their isolation, alienation, and self-regulation of the social groups and individuals. In doing this, objective news is dismissed, fake-or news otherwise intended to misinform-reinforces their stereotyped beliefs about society and the world around them. This phenomenon is, unfortunately, not "fake news," but a real threat to which counterterror, intelligence, Homeland Security, law enforcement, the military, and global organizations must be hyper-vigilant of, now and into the foreseeable future. Chapters cite numerous examples from the 2016 political election, the Russia investigation into the Trump Campaign, ISIS, domestic US terrorists, among many other examples of extremist and radicalizing rhetoric. The book illustrates throughout that this contrived and manufactured bliss has fueled the rise and perpetuation of hate crimes, radicalism, and violence in such groups as ISIS, Boko Haram, Neo-Nazis, white separatists, and white supremacists in the United States-in addition to perpetuating ethnic cleansing actions around the world. This dynamic has led to increased political polarization in the United States and abroad, while furthering an unwillingness and inability to both compromise or see others' perspectives-further fomenting insular populations increasing willing to harm others and do violence. Extremist Propaganda in Social Media relates current Blisstopian practices to real-world hate speech and violence, connecting how such information is consumed by groups and translated into violent action. The book is an invaluable resources for those professionals that require an awareness of social media radicalization including: social media strategists, law enforcement, Homeland Security professionals, military planners and operatives-anyone tasked with countering combat such violent factions and fringes in conflict situations.

Posthuman Capitalism critically reviews the manifestation of capitalist agenda online by examining the phenomenon of the 'posthuman' in the data economy. The chapters examine our posthuman condition, where we are constantly asked to partake in platforms which perform to capitalist agenda while socializing us into new platforms of living, consuming and interacting online. Labelling these modes of our experiential extractions, transactions and re-making of our mortal lives as posthuman capitalism, the book reviews the human entanglements from sociality, friendship, desire, memory, transgressions of privacy and co-production of value through the data economy. Offering innovative and interdisciplinary conceptualisations and vantage points on our contemporary data society, this book will be a key text for scholars and students in the areas of digital media, communication studies, sociology, philosophy and social psychology.

This book identifies and analyses the main socio-economic trends that characterize Vivendi, the French mass media conglomerate, and explores how they have oriented its development and evolution. Philippe Bouquillion explores the industrial, financial, globalization and public policy issues in the various sectors in which Vivendi is involved, paying particular attention to recorded music, pay television, publishing, video games, advertising and telecommunications. He examines Vivendi's role as a key global player in the entertainment and cultural industries as a result of its established position as world number one in recorded music via Universal Music Group. He also highlights Vivendi's involvement in various national markets, including their notable strategies in African markets and their significance in the telecommunications and television markets in Italy. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and researchers of global media, media and cultural industries, and political economy.

Public service media (PSM) have been the mainstay of Western European broadcasting for a number of decades. Yet despite a general political consensus in favour of PSM, recent technological, economic and political changes have led to a questioning of their value. This new collection of essays explores the history of PSM in selected European countries, from their early establishment as the main media in many countries to charting their transformation and evolution in recent years. The contributions consider the political, economic and market-integration issues that impact PSM, while also highlighting the importance of the ideology that originally accompanied PSM in its initial years, to see how relevant they are in the contemporary world. The book consists of two complementary parts: Part I: Theoretical Aspects and Global Influences on Public Service Media in Europe Part II: A Comparative Analysis of Public Service Media across Europe With contributions from leading experts, the first part offers a thorough examination of the current concepts and conditions that influence PSM in Europe. The second offers a comparative study of PSM in several European countries including France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden. Offering the most comprehensive study of the field to date, Public Service Media in Europe will be useful for students and researchers in public media, political communication, international and comparative media.

This edited collection examines the gig economy in the age of convergence from a critical political economic perspective. Contributions explore how media, technology, and labor are converging to create new modes of production, as well as new modes of resistance. From rideshare drivers in Los Angeles to domestic workers in Delhi, from sex work to podcasting, this book draws together research that examines the gig economy's exploitation of workers and their resistance. Employing critical theoretical perspectives and methodologies in a variety of national contexts, contributors consider the roles that media, policy, culture, and history, as well as gender, race, and ethnicity play in forging working conditions in the 'gig economy'. Contributors examine the complex and historical relationships between media and gig work integral to capitalism with the aim of exposing and, ultimately, ending exploitation. This book will appeal to students and scholars examining questions of technology, media, and labor across media and communication studies, information studies, and labor studies as well as activists, journalists, and policymakers.

In this comprehensive volume, leading scholars of media and communication examine the nexus of globalization, digital media, and popular culture in the early 21st century. The book begins by interrogating globalization as a critical and intensely contested concept, and proceeds to explore how digital media have influenced a complex set of globalization processes in broad international and comparative contexts. Contributors address a number of key political, economic, cultural, and technological issues relative to globalization, such as free trade agreements, cultural imperialism, heterogeneity, the increasing dominance of American digital media in global cultural markets, the powers of the nation-state, and global corporate media ownership. By extension, readers are introduced to core theoretical concepts and practical ideas, which they can apply to a broad range of contemporary media policies, practices, movements, and technologies in different geographic regions of the world-North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. Scholars of global media, international communication, media industries, globalization, and popular culture will find this to be a singular resource for understanding the interconnected relationship between digital media and globalization.

This edited collection examines the gig economy in the age of convergence from a critical political economic perspective. Contributions explore how media, technology, and labor are converging to create new modes of production, as well as new modes of resistance. From rideshare drivers in Los Angeles to domestic workers in Delhi, from sex work to podcasting, this book draws together research that examines the gig economy's exploitation of workers and their resistance. Employing critical theoretical perspectives and methodologies in a variety of national contexts, contributors consider the roles that media, policy, culture, and history, as well as gender, race, and ethnicity play in forging working conditions in the 'gig economy'. Contributors examine the complex and historical relationships between media and gig work integral to capitalism with the aim of exposing and, ultimately, ending exploitation. This book will appeal to students and scholars examining questions of technology, media, and labor across media and communication studies, information studies, and labor studies as well as activists, journalists, and policymakers.

Do we remember only the stories we can live with?

The ones that make us look good in the rearview mirror? In "The Night of the Gun," David Carr redefines memoir with the revelatory story of his years as an addict and chronicles his journey from crack-house regular to regular columnist for "The New York Times." Built on sixty videotaped interviews, legal and medical records, and three years of reporting, "The Night of the Gun" is a ferocious tale that uses the tools of journalism to fact-check the past. Carr's investigation of his own history reveals that his odyssey through addiction, recovery, cancer, and life as a single parent was far more harrowing -- and, in the end, more miraculous -- than he allowed himself to remember. Over the course of the book, he digs his way through a past that continues to evolve as he reports it.

That long-ago night he was so out of his mind that his best friend had to pull a gun on him to make him go away? A visit to the friend twenty years later reveals that Carr was pointing the gun.

His lucrative side business as a cocaine dealer? Not all that lucrative, as it turned out, and filled with peril.

His belief that after his twins were born, he quickly sobered up to become a parent? Nice story, if he could prove it.

The notion that he was an easy choice as a custodial parent once he finally was sober? His lawyer pulls out the old file and gently explains it was a little more complicated than that.

In one sense, the story of "The Night of the Gun" is a common one -- a white-boy misdemeanant lands in a ditch and is restored to sanity through the love of his family, a God of his understanding, and a support group that will go unnamed. But when the whole truth is told, it does not end there. After fourteen years -- or was it thirteen? -- Carr tried an experiment in social drinking. Double jeopardy turned out to be a game he did not play well. As a reporter and columnist at the nation's best newspaper, he prospered, but gained no more adeptness at mood-altering substances. He set out to become a nice suburban alcoholic and succeeded all too well, including two more arrests, one that included a night in jail wearing a tuxedo.

Ferocious and eloquent, courageous and bitingly funny, "The Night of the Gun" unravels the ways memory helps us not only create our lives, but survive them.

This edited collection brings together original empirical and theoretical insights into the complex set of relations which exist between age, gender, sexualities and the media in Europe. This book investigates how engagements with media reflect people's constructions and understandings of gender in society, as well as articulations of age in relation to gender and sexuality; the ways in which negotiations of gender and sexuality inform people's practices with media, and not least how mediated representations may reinforce or challenge social hierarchies based in differences of gender, sexual orientation and age. In doing so, it showcases new and innovative research at the forefront of media and communication practice and theory. Including contributions from both established and early career scholars across Europe, it engages with a wide range of hotly debated topics within the context of gender, sexuality and the media, informing academic, public and policy agendas. This collection will be of interest to students and researchers in gender studies, media studies, film and television, cultural studies, sexuality, ageing, sociology and education.

This edited collection brings together original empirical and theoretical insights into the complex set of relations which exist between age, gender, sexualities and the media in Europe. This book investigates how engagements with media reflect people's constructions and understandings of gender in society, as well as articulations of age in relation to gender and sexuality; the ways in which negotiations of gender and sexuality inform people's practices with media, and not least how mediated representations may reinforce or challenge social hierarchies based in differences of gender, sexual orientation and age. In doing so, it showcases new and innovative research at the forefront of media and communication practice and theory. Including contributions from both established and early career scholars across Europe, it engages with a wide range of hotly debated topics within the context of gender, sexuality and the media, informing academic, public and policy agendas. This collection will be of interest to students and researchers in gender studies, media studies, film and television, cultural studies, sexuality, ageing, sociology and education.

"Blisteringly witty." Kirkus "An essential guide." Publisher's Weekly "Timely." Booklist When Nina Jankowicz's first book on online disinformation was profiled in The New Yorker, she expected attention but not an avalanche of abuse and harassment, predominantly from men, online. All women in politics, journalism and academia now face untold levels of harassment and abuse in online spaces. Together with the world's leading extremism researchers, Jankowicz wrote one of the definitive reports on this troubling phenomenon. Drawing on rigorous research into the treatment of Kamala Harris - the first woman vice-president - and other political and public figures, Nina also uses her own experiences to provide a step-by-step plan for dealing with harassment, abuse, doxing and disinformation in online spaces. The result is a must-read for researchers, journalists and all women with a profile in the online space.

This volume presents a pragmatic approach to understanding and capitalizing on contemporary m-commerce trend. It comprehensively encapsulates the evolution, emergent trends, hindrances and challenges, and customer perceptions about various facets of how physical and online retail channels are merging, blurring, and influencing each other in new ways. The rapid rise of m-commerce (or mobile commerce) has led to the emergence of new paradigms in the marketplace. The difference between physical and digital retail is diminishing, and a new "phygital retail" phenomenon is on the rise. Marketers need to understand this emerging paradigm and consider the new opportunities and challenges involved. This volume, M-Commerce: Experiencing the Phygital Retail, provides a comprehensive discussion of the contemporary m-commerce concepts along with the emerging paradigms in a pragmatic way. It presents empirical analyses and reviews on the myriad aspects of m-commerce, including both contemporary academic and business research.

A guide to the contemporary London stage as well as an argument about its future, the book walks readers through the city's performance spaces following the Brexit vote. Austerity-era London theatre is suffused with the belief that private ownership defines full citizenship, its perspective narrowing to what an affluent audience might find relatable. From pub theatres to the National, Michael Meeuwis reveals how what gets put on in London interacts with the daily life of the neighbourhoods in which they are set. This study addresses global theatregoers, as well as students and scholars across theatre and performance studies-particularly those interested in UK culture after Brexit, urban geography, class, and theatrical economics.

Difficult Women on Television Drama analyses select case studies from international TV dramas to examine the unresolved feminist issues they raise or address: equal labor force participation, the demand for sexual pleasure and freedom, opposition to sexual and domestic violence, and the need for intersectional approaches. Drawing on examples from The Killing, Orange is the New Black, Big Little Lies, Wentworth, Outlander, Westworld, Being Mary Jane, Queen Sugar, Vida, and other television dramas with a focus on complex female characters, this book illustrates how female creative control in key production roles (direct authorship) together with industrial imperatives and a conducive cultural context (indirect authorship) are necessary to produce feminist texts. Placed within the larger context of a rise in feminist activism and political participation by women; the growing embrace of a feminist identity; and the ascendance of post-feminism, this book reconsiders the unfinished nature of feminist struggle(s) and suggests the need for a broader sweep of economic change. This book is a must-read for scholars of media and communication studies; television and film studies; cultural studies; American studies; sociology of gender and sexualities; women and gender studies; and international film, media and cinema studies.