Mediated messages flood our daily lives, through virtually endless choices of media channels, genres, and content. However, selectivity determines what media messages we attend to and focus on. The present book examines the factors that influence this selectivity. Seminal books on selective media exposure were published in 1960 by Klapper and in 1985 by Zillmann and Bryant. But an integrated update on this research field is much needed, as rigorous selective exposure research has flourished in the new millennium. In the contexts of political communication, health communication, Internet use, entertainment consumption, and electronic games, the crucial question of how individuals choose what content they consume has garnered much attention. The present book integrates theories and empirical evidence from these domains and discusses the related research methodologies. In light of the ever-increasing abundance of media channels and messages, selective exposure has become more important than ever for media impacts. This monograph provides a comprehensive review of the research on selective exposure to media messages, which is at the heart of communication science and media effects. It is required reading for media scholars and researchers, and promises to influence and inspire future research.

Media, Materiality and Memory: Grounding the Groove examines the entwinement of material music objects, technology and memory in relation to a range of independent record labels, including Sarah Records, Ghost Box and Finders Keepers. Moving from Edison's phonograph to digital music files, from record collections to online archives, Roy argues that materiality plays a crucial role in constructing and understanding the territory of recorded sound. How do musical objects 'write' cultural narratives? How can we unearth and reactivate past histories by looking at yesterday's media formats? What is the nature, and fate, of the physical archive in an increasingly dematerialized world? In what ways do physical and digital musical objects coexist and intersect? With its innovative theoretical approach, the book explores the implications of materialization in the fashioning of a musical world and its cultural transmission. A substantial contribution to the field of music and material culture studies, Media, Materiality and Memory also provides a nuanced and timely reflection on nostalgia and forgetting in the digital age.

A Wall Street Guidebook for Journalism and Strategic Communication provides media professionals with the savvy they need to navigate the world of finance and money. Intimidated by the numbers and math involved in the corporate world? This book is for you. Author Alecia Swasy, a former reporter at the Wall Street Journal, leads readers through case studies that provide real-world insight into how Wall Street operates and how to best approach the world of money and finance. Swasy breaks down essential skills like how to read key financial statements, find and interpret key data on companies and employ that research in crafting compelling stories and messages for both readers and clients. The book also covers topics like the scorekeepers and watchdogs of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission, how to avoid illegal activity in reporting and research, understanding mergers and acquisitions, and the history and current state of Wall Street. This book is for students and professionals alike - whether in corporate communication, public relations or journalism - who want to gain the financial literacy necessary to succeed in today's competitive marketplace. An online guide for professors includes discussion questions, assignments and time-tested pedagogical and classroom management tips: please visit www.routledge.com/9780367348069.

A Wall Street Guidebook for Journalism and Strategic Communication provides media professionals with the savvy they need to navigate the world of finance and money. Intimidated by the numbers and math involved in the corporate world? This book is for you. Author Alecia Swasy, a former reporter at the Wall Street Journal, leads readers through case studies that provide real-world insight into how Wall Street operates and how to best approach the world of money and finance. Swasy breaks down essential skills like how to read key financial statements, find and interpret key data on companies and employ that research in crafting compelling stories and messages for both readers and clients. The book also covers topics like the scorekeepers and watchdogs of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission, how to avoid illegal activity in reporting and research, understanding mergers and acquisitions, and the history and current state of Wall Street. This book is for students and professionals alike - whether in corporate communication, public relations or journalism - who want to gain the financial literacy necessary to succeed in today's competitive marketplace. An online guide for professors includes discussion questions, assignments and time-tested pedagogical and classroom management tips: please visit www.routledge.com/9780367348069.

Cultural forces govern a synergistic relationship among information institutions that shapes their roles collectively and individually. Cultural synergy is the combination of perception- and behavior-shaping knowledge within, between, and among groups. Our hyperlinked era makes information-sharing among institutions critically important for scholarship as well as for the advancement of humankind. Information institutions are those that have, or share in, the mission to preserve, conserve, and disseminate information objects and their informative content. A central idea is the notion of social epistemology that information institutions arise culturally from social forces of the cultures they inhabit, and that their purpose is to disseminate that culture. All information institutions are alike in critical ways. Intersecting lines of cultural mission are trajectories for synergy for allowing us to perceive the universe of information institutions as interconnected and evolving and moving forward in distinct ways for the improvement of the condition of humankind through the building up of its knowledge base and of its information-sharing processes. This book is an exploration of the cultural synergy that can be realized by seeing commonalities among information institutions (sometimes also called cultural heritage institutions): museums, libraries, and archives. The hyperlinked era of the Semantic Web makes information sharing among institutions critically important for scholarship as well as the advancement of mankind. The book addresses the origins of cultural information institutions, the history of the professions that run them, and the social imperative of information organization as a catalyst for semantic synergy.

"I can be a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister and a woman without having periods." This book explores two of the oldest and most important symbols of all time: menstruation and secondary amenorrhea. Women of menstruating age commonly experience secondary amenorrhea - a cessation of periods - but most people have never heard of the term, nor do they realise what it represents. Danielle Redland's curiosity as to why this is posits that menstrual conditions need to be decoded, not just simply treated. Surveying menstruation and Secondary Amenorrhea (SA) principally from a psychoanalytic perspective, with sociocultural, historical, political and religious angles also examined, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women, Menstruation and Secondary Amenorrhea draws secondary amenorrhea out of the shadows of its menstruating counterpart, and explores how narratives of womanhood and statehood dominate. Chapters on blood ideology and war amenorrhea, on Freud's treatment of Emma Eckstein and on the psycho-mythology of Pygmalion, present the reader with visions beyond patriarchy towards more thoughtful ideas on the feminine, challenging assumptions about gender, identity and what is deemed "good" for women. Rich in clinical examples, the book locates menses and their cessation at the heart of personal experience and examines psychosomatic phenomena, the link between psyche and body and the value of interpretation. From the author's own analysis to a variety of cases linked to hysteria, anorexia, stress, trauma, abuse, helplessness and hopelessness, individual stories and narratives are sensitively recovered and carefully revealed. This refreshing example of multi-layered research and psychoanalytic enquiry by a new, female writer will be of great interest to psychologists, psychotherapists, healthcare and social work professionals and readers of gender studies, history, politics and literature.

The Dark Theatre is an indispensable text for activist communities wondering what theatre might have to do with their futures, students and scholars across Theatre and Performance Studies, Urban Studies, Cultural Studies, Political Economy and Social Ecology. The Dark Theatre returns to the bankrupted warehouse in Hope (Sufferance) Wharf in London's Docklands where Alan Read worked through the 1980s to identify a four-decade interregnum of 'cultural cruelty' wreaked by financialisation, austerity and communicative capitalism. Between the OPEC Oil Embargo and the first screening of The Family in 1974, to the United Nations report on UK poverty and the fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017, this volume becomes a book about loss. In the harsh light of such loss is there an alternative to the market that profits from peddling 'well-being' and pushes prescriptions for 'self-help', any role for the arts that is not an apologia for injustice? What if culture were not the solution but the problem when it comes to the mitigation of grief? Creativity not the remedy but the symptom of a structural malaise called inequality? Read suggests performance is no longer a political panacea for the precarious subject but a loss adjustor measuring damages suffered, compensations due, wrongs that demand to be put right. These field notes from a fire sale are a call for angry arts of advocacy representing those abandoned as the detritus of cultural authority, second-order victims whose crime is to have appealed for help from those looking on, audiences of sorts.

This book has grown from a belief that the psychoanalytic exploration of literature and performances leads to a richer and fuller understanding of each individual's internal reality. It includes an exploration of narcissistic fantasies from various protagonists of film and novels and focuses on the fantasy of the omnipotence of the self, which is a predominantly narcissistic desire to be a "Master of the Universe", a deity, an omnipotent, immortal figure. Psychoanalysis and art interact in exploring the individual's refusal to give up grandiose fantasies about the self, or his inability to modulate and integrate them within his personality, which are at the origin of his wish to transcend the human condition. These narcissistic fantasies are often expressed through aggressive and self-destructive behaviour, including flirtation with death and destruction. The emotional truth that great artists convey through symbols which often resonates in the audience is examined in this book through studies and comparisons of narcissistic characters in opera, film and contemporary fiction. Identifying with these figures, who place themselves above the law, may give us the illusion of omnipotence and immortality, which corresponds to a primary narcissistic fantasy, the traces of which exist in various degrees in all of us. Part of the popular International Psychoanalytical Association Psychoanalytic Ideas and Applications Series, this book is unique in its focus on the narcissistic fantasy of the omnipotence of the self by means of an analysis of a variety of protagonists from the worlds of the performing arts and literature, and on the exploration of their impact on the audience. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, therapists, and those with an interest in the intersection of psychoanalytic theory with film and literature.

This book engages with the place of law and legality within Australia's distinctive contribution to global televisual culture. Australian popular culture has created a lasting legacy - for good or bad - of representations of law, lawyers and justice 'down under'. Within films and television of striking landscapes, peopled with heroes, antiheroes, survivors and jokers, there is a fixation on law, conflicts between legal orders, brutal violence and survival. Deeply compromised by the ongoing violence against the lives and laws of First Nation Australians, Australian film and television has sharply illuminated what it means to live with a 'rule of law' that rules with a legacy, and a reality, of deep injustice. This book is the first to bring together scholars to reflect on, and critically engage with, the representations and global implications of law, lawyers and justice captured through the lenses of Australian film, television and social media. Exploring how distinctively Australian lenses capture uniquely Australian images and narratives, the book nevertheless engages these in order to provide broader insights into the contemporary translations and transmogrifications of law and justice.

In recent years the widely held misconception of the media as an 'ephemeral' industry has been challenged by research on the industry's significant material footprint. Despite this material turn, no systematic study of this sector has been conducted in ways that considers the role of the media industries as consumers and users of a range of natural resources. Filling this gap, Environmental Management of the Media discusses the environmental management of the media industries in the UK and the Nordic countries. These Nordic countries, both as a set of small nations and as a regional constellation, are frequently perceived as some of the 'greenest' in the world, yet, not only is the footprint of the media industries practically ignored in academic research, but the very real stakes of the industries' global impact are not comprehensively understood. Here, the author focuses on four key areas for investigating the material impact of Nordic media: (1) resources used for production and dissemination; (2) regulation of the media; (3) organizational management; and (4) labour practices. By adopting an interdisciplinary perspective that combines ecocritical analysis with interrogation of the political economy of the creative industries, Kaapa argues that taking the industries to task on their environmental footprint is a multilevel resource and organizational management issue that must be addressed more effectively in contemporary media studies. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of media, communication and environmental studies.

The Paradox of Transgression in Games looks at transgressive games as an aesthetic experience, tackling how players respond to game content that shocks, disturbs, and distresses, and how contemporary video games can evoke intense emotional reactions. The book delves into the commercial success of many controversial videogames: although such games may appear shocking for the observing bystander, playing them is experienced as deeply rewarding for the player. Drawing on qualitative player studies and approaches from media aesthetics theory, the book challenges the perception of games as innocent entertainment, and examines the range of emotional, moral, and intellectual experiences of players. As they explore what players consider transgressive, the authors ask whether there is something about the gameplay situation that works to mitigate the sense of transgression, stressing gameplay as an aesthetic experience. Anchoring the aesthetic game experience both in play studies as well as in aesthetic theory, this book will be an essential resource for scholars and students of game studies, aesthetics, media studies, philosophy of art, and emotions.

The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) has reoriented research into social forms, structuration and processes of meaning construction and reality formation; doing so by linking social constructivist and pragmatist approaches with post-structuralist thinking in order to study discourses and create epistemological space for analysing processes of world-making in culturally diverse environments. SKAD is anchored in interpretive traditions of inquiry and allows for broadening - and possibly overcoming - of the epistemological biases and restrictions still common in theories and approaches of Western- and Northern-centric social sciences. An innovative volume, this book is exactly attentive to these empirically based, globally diverse further developments of approach, with a clear focus on the methodology and its implementation. Thus, The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse presents itself as a research program and locates the approach within the context of interpretive social sciences, followed by eleven chapters on different cases from around the world that highlight certain theoretical questions and methodological challenges. Presenting outstanding applications of the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse across a wide variety of substantive projects and regional contexts, this text will appeal to postgraduate students and researchers interested in fields such as Discourse Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies and Qualitative Methodology and Methods.

Originally published in 1985. Detailed exploration of the dynamics of language within social psychology forms a social psychology of language which is distinct from other approaches. This volume presents some of the growing body of research in this area, with many theoretical models and ideas - chapters consider the relationship between language and social situations, looking at cognitive structures in how communication between individuals develops in childhood and beyond, how it defines social situations, influences others, expresses feelings and values, evokes social categorizations and how it can break down.

This collection interrogates and stimulates deep, cross-disciplinary engagement with the various understandings and interplays of 'radio modernisms' from the early decades of the twentieth century through to the 1950s. Academics from a range of different disciplines explore their common interests in the richness and heterogeneity of BBC Radio's imaginative programming - in terms of sound; as cultural events from specific moments in time; as team creations; as something experienced live in the domestic context; and as cultural works that, in many cases, attracted a certain canonical pedigree. Radio modernisms are, as these chapters demonstrate, a combination of the particular, the contingent, and the contextual. More than a decade after the publication of the first scholarly works to yoke together 'modernism' and 'radio', this collection emphasises the plurality of 'modernisms' as a defining aspect of contemporary BBC historiography. The authors bring multiple lenses to bear - including race, gender, and transnationalism - in order to (re)locate twentieth-century radio programming in broad, expansive contexts. They also underline the dynamic entanglements of radio - and radiogenic feature programmes, in particular - with other kinds of media and cultural forms and formats, reframing radio as a site of and vehicle for remediation and intermediality. In examining the myriad ways in which radio gave shape to new modernities, and both evolved and constituted new forms of modernism, this collection offers fresh perspectives on the interconnected significance of 'radio modernisms' within the socio-cultural, literary, and political landscapes of twentieth-century Britain. This book was originally published as a special issue of Media History.

The Promise of Nostalgia analyses a range of texts - including The Virgin Suicides, both the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides' and Sofia Coppola's screen adaptation, photography of Detroit's 'abandoned spaces', and blogger Tavi Gevinson's media output - to explore nostalgia as a prominent affect in contemporary American cultural production. Counter to the prevalent caricature of nostalgia as anti-future, the book proposes a more nuanced reading of its stakes and meanings. Instead of understanding it as evidence of the absence of utopia it contends that there is a masked utopian impulse in this nostalgia 'mode' and critical potential in what has typically been dismissed as ideological. This book will be of interest to scholars, graduate students and upper-level undergraduate students interested in contemporary culture, cultural theory, media studies, the Frankfurt School, utopian studies and American literature and culture.

Age, Gender and Sexuality through the Life Course argues that the gendered structure of temporality (defined in the dual sense of everyday time as well as age and stage of life) is a key factor underpinning the stalling of the gender revolution. Taking as its central focus the idealised young woman who serves as the mascot of contemporary success, this book demonstrates how the celebration of the Girl is (i) representative of social mobility, educational and professional achievement; (ii) possesses diligence, docility and emotional intelligence, and (iii) displays a reassuring sexuality and youthfulness - but is constructed from the outset to have a fleetingly short life span. Pickard undertakes a theoretical and empirical exploration of the contemporary female experience of education, work, motherhood, sexuality, the challenge of having-it-all. Furthermore, through additional analysis of the transitional 'reproductive regime' from youth into mid-life and beyond, this insightful monograph aims to demonstrate how age and time set very clear limits to what is possible and desirable for the female self; yet how the latter factors also, if used reflexively, can provide the key means of resisting and challenging patriarchy. This book is aimed at a broad interdisciplinary audience located in gender studies, age studies, culture studies, sociology and psychology; accessible for advanced undergraduates and beyond.

Decades of research on affect and emotion have brought out the paramount importance of affective processes for human lives. Affect in Relation brings together perspectives from social science and cultural studies to analyze the formative, subject constituting potentials of affect and emotion. Relational affect is understood not as individual mental states, but as social-relational processes that are both formative and transformative of human subjects. This volume explores relational affect through a combination of interdisciplinary case studies within four key contexts: Part I: "Affective Families" deals with the affective dynamics in transnational families who are scattered across several regions and nations. Part II: "Affect and Place" brings together work on affective place-making in the contexts of migration and in political movements. Part III: "Affect at Work" analyzes the affective dimension of contemporary white-collar workplaces. Part IV: "Affect and Media" focuses on the role of media in the formation and mobilization of relational affect. In its transdisciplinary spirit, analytical rigor and focus on timely and salient global matters, Affect in Relation consolidates the field of affect studies and opens up new avenues for scholarly and practical co-operation. It will appeal to both students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, media studies and human development.

Heritage tourism is a global multi-million-dollar phenomenon, influencing national, regional and local cultural identities. Hong Kong finds itself at the confluence of several post-colonial economic, political and social developments and with this comes a greater awareness of the need for more meaningful cultural and heritage tourism products, especially in the form of revitalised heritage attractions. Taking a qualitative approach and using semi-structured in-depth interviews with practitioners and stakeholders in the field, this study explores the role of interpretation in heritage revitalisation projects for tourism in Hong Kong. It seeks to examine why the interpretive element of these projects so often gets diminished during the course of implementation and outlines five propositions that may inform it going forward. Ultimately, the findings of this study suggest that, as issues of local identity become ever more important in Hong Kong, the role of interpretation in the development of its heritage tourism products needs to be holistic, integrated and consistent across public, private and non-governmental sectors. Developing a framework of understanding to identify the contextual issues of interpretation and commodification, this book will be useful to students and scholars of tourism, heritage studies and Asian studies more generally.

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the role Nordic countries have played as exporters and importers of gender equality policies, and of how Europeanisation has framed the development and harmonisation of legislation and politics between the countries, with global consequences. The diverse range of contributors present the argument that the European Union increasingly exerts influence on Nordic equality policy, without undermining the recent significance of the Nordic countries' gender policy as models for countries all over the world . It demonstrates that differentiation and variation at national and regional levels in the Nordic countries, as well as in Europe in general, matter as much as integrational processes and inner adaptation to EU legislation and international laws. This book explores the limitations of the Europeanisation process and the political diversity of national and regional policies, together with the crucial ways practices in the family life and the labour market concerning gender equality depend on cultural and religious norms and group interests. Nordic Gender Equality Policy in a Europeanisation Perspective is a key text for students and researchers seeking to understand the interrelations of Nordic and European Union gender policies.

In his third book on the semiotics of title sequences, Title Sequences as Paratexts, theorist Michael Betancourt offers an analysis of the relationship between the title sequence and its primary text-the narrative whose production the titles credit. Using a wealth of examples drawn from across film history-ranging from White Zombie (1931), Citizen Kane (1940) and Bullitt (1968) to Prince of Darkness (1987), Mission: Impossible (1996), Sucker Punch (2011) and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)-Betancourt develops an understanding of how the audience interprets title sequences as instances of paranarrative, simultaneously engaging them as both narrative exposition and as credits for the production. This theory of cinematic paratexts, while focused on the title sequence, has application to trailers, commercials, and other media as well.

Communication, like the atmosphere itself, is ubiquitous and essential for humans and with the development of new technologies, such as wireless internet, 3D printing and virtual reality, it has become almost impossible to live without it. In addition, means of communication have changed immeasurably. This book proposes a new research paradigm that incorporates new features and factors of communication and a new theoretical framework named "immersive communication". Pointing out that communication today has moved beyond the bi-directional, mass communication of "the second media age" to ubiquitous, immersive communication in "the third media age", the author discusses the definition, characteristics, information structure, and models of immersive communication using various examples including Fitbit, Apple, 4G and other technologies, while envisioning future applications of the immersive communication model. Scholars and students of communication studies, especially those interested in the manifestations of the new media age, will all benefit from this book. It will also appeal to readers interested in new media and communication theories.

This book re-examines the role of the sublime across a range of disparate cultural texts, from architecture and art, to literature, digital technology, and film, detailing a worrying trend towards nostalgia and arguing that, although the sublime has the potential to be the most powerful uniting aesthetic force, it currently spreads fear, violence, and retrospection. In exploring contemporary culture, this book touches on the role of architecture to provoke feelings of sublimity, the role of art in the aftermath of destructive events, literature's establishment of the historical moment as a point of sublime transformation and change, and the place of nostalgia and the returning of past practices in digital culture from gaming to popular cinema.

This book analyzes constructions of injustice, group identification and participation in news and social media in anti-austerity protests within the European Union (EU). Since 2008, EU member-states have witnessed waves of protests and demonstrations against the adoption of austerity measures and alignment of domestic economies with the prevailing global neoliberal order. Understanding how the media represents dissent and how it influences public deliberation is of critical importance. It is accordingly necessary to explore the strategies deployed and role played by news and social media in representing and perhaps acting upon anti-austerity protests in the Eurozone crisis. This volume undertakes such a critical exploration.

Early Motherhood in Digital Societies offers a nuanced understanding of what the digital turn has meant for new mothers in an intense and critical period before and after they have a baby, often called the 'perinatal' period. The book looks at an array of digital communication and content by drawing on an extensive research project involving in-depth qualitative data from interviews with new mothers in the United Kingdom and online case studies. These stories are analysed to investigate the complexity of emotions around birth, the diversity of birth experiences and the myriad ways in which television, the press and social media impede and empower women giving birth. The book asks: what does the use of technology mean in the perinatal context and what implications might it have for maternal well-being? It argues for a balanced and context-sensitive approach to the digital for maternal well-being in the critical perinatal period. By doing this, the book fills a gap in media studies, addressing itself to gaps within audience analysis, health communication and parenting. It will be essential reading for research and teaching modules in media studies, cultural studies, sociology, health communication and sociology of medicine and health.

This book explores the circulation and reception of popular discourses of achieving girlhood, and the ways in which girls themselves participate in such circulation. It examines the figure of the achieving girl within wider discourses of neoliberal self-management and post-feminist possibility, considering the tensions involved in being both successful and successfully feminine and the strategies and negotiations girls undertake to manage these tensions. The work is grounded in an understanding of media, educational, and peer contexts for the production of the successful girl. It traces narratives across school, television and online in texts produced for and by girls, drawing on interviews with girls in schools, online forum participation (within the purpose-built site www.smartgirls.tv), and girls' discussions of a range of teen dramas.