Advances in digital technology over the past two decades have created a wide array of new media platforms, channels, and delivery mechanisms. Through these, people can receive staggering amounts of content. As a result, both consumers and producers of media have exciting new options in creating and acquiring content. An Introduction to Visual Theory and Practice in the Digital Age is designed to prepare students for becoming producers of sophisticated digital media. It combines elements of visual theory and design with the practice of creating interactive media content. A framework for working in the digital world is also provided: students are asked to consider the legal, ethical, and historical aspects of visual theory and design and then combine those concepts with visual design principles and proper composition of still images, video, and sound. Real-world examples are provided, with a section where media professionals explain how theory and practice are brought together. Designed as an introduction to the field, this book is suitable for undergraduate courses including those in multimedia journalism, visual communication, and mass communication practices.

Advances in digital technology over the past two decades have created a wide array of new media platforms, channels, and delivery mechanisms. Through these, people can receive staggering amounts of content. As a result, both consumers and producers of media have exciting new options in creating and acquiring content. An Introduction to Visual Theory and Practice in the Digital Age is designed to prepare students for becoming producers of sophisticated digital media. It combines elements of visual theory and design with the practice of creating interactive media content. A framework for working in the digital world is also provided: students are asked to consider the legal, ethical, and historical aspects of visual theory and design and then combine those concepts with visual design principles and proper composition of still images, video, and sound. Real-world examples are provided, with a section where media professionals explain how theory and practice are brought together. Designed as an introduction to the field, this book is suitable for undergraduate courses including those in multimedia journalism, visual communication, and mass communication practices.

In the age of the spectacle, democracy has never looked so bleak. Our world, saturated with media and marketing, endlessly confronts us with spectacles vying for our attention: from Apple and 9/11 to Facebook and the global financial crisis. Democratic politics, by comparison, remain far from engaging. A society obsessed with spectacles results in a complete misfiring of the democratic system. This book uses critical democratic theory to outline the effects of consumer culture on citizenship. It highlights the importance that public space plays in creating the critical culture necessary for a healthy democracy, and outlines how contemporary 'public' spaces - shopping centres, the Internet, social networking sites and suburban communities - contribute to this culture. Terrorism, ecological destruction and the financial crisis are also outlined as symptoms of the politics of the spectacle. The book concludes with some basic principles and novel suggestions which could be employed to avoid the pitfalls inherent in our spectacular existence.

This book questions how to monitor the contribution of mass media to democracy, and focuses on the initiatives, achievements and flaws of media monitoring. Moving beyond previous studies which have tended to discuss the legal issues related to media freedom alone, On Media Monitoring takes a broader approach, examining media structure, ownership, policy, economics, company conduct, law and regulation - all important indicators of how well the mass media serve contemporary democracies. Throughout, the book strikes a balance between monitoring initiatives with an academic, governmental, and non-governmental origin. The book - which includes a new monitoring model, the Media for Democracy Monitor, together with the results of its initial empirical implementation - is intended to further discussion about how to monitor the contribution of the mass media to democracy. It is suitable for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars who teach and research in this area.

This is the first collection of readings on computer-mediated communication focusing exclusively on interpersonal interactions. Examining messages exchanged via email, Twitter, Facebook, websites, and blogs, the authors analyze communication issues of ongoing importance in relationships including deception, disclosure, identity, influence, perception, privacy, sexual fidelity, and social support. The book examines subjects that attract intense student interest - including online performance of gender, online dating, and using computer-mediated communication to achieve family/work life balance - and will inspire further research and course development in the area of computer-mediated communication in personal relationships. Because it provides a synthesis of ideas at the nexus of interpersonal communication theory and computer-mediated communication theory, the book can serve as a textbook for advanced undergraduate as well as graduate courses.

The 2008 U.S. election was arguably the most important election of our lifetime: the first African American president was elected to office; the candidacy of Sarah Palin marked only the second time that a major party ticket included a female; and the electoral performance of young citizens - digital natives, greatly attracted by digital media - signaled the highest turnout in a long time.Taking all these issues into consideration, this book offers a landmark examination of the 2008 election from a global perspective, with emphasis on the wide range of digital media utilized by the campaigners and how campaign communication influenced young citizens. The authors argue that the use of digital technologies in the campaign, and the success of Barack Obama in attracting young voters to his cause, provides an excellent case study - perhaps something of a turning point in campaign communication - for carefully examining the emerging role of digital political media, and a continuing renewal in young citizens' electoral engagement. The wide-ranging contributions to this volume provide a comprehensive examination of a historic political campaign and election. The book's findings offer revealing answers regarding the content and effects of various forms of political campaign communication, and raise questions and possibilities for future research.

China has lived with the Internet for nearly two decades. Will increased Internet use, with new possibilities to share information and discuss news and politics, lead to democracy, or will it to the contrary sustain a nationalist supported authoritarianism that may eventually contest the global information order? This book takes stock of the ongoing tug of war between state power and civil society on and off the Internet, a phenomenon that is fast becoming the centerpiece in the Chinese Communist Party's struggle to stay in power indefinitely. It interrogates the dynamics of this enduring contestation, before democracy, by following how Chinese society travels from getting access to the Internet to our time having the world's largest Internet population. Pursuing the rationale of Internet regulation, the rise of the Chinese blogosphere and citizen journalism, Internet irony, online propaganda, the relation between state and popular nationalism, and finally the role of social media to bring about China's democratization, this book offers a fresh and provocative perspective on the arguable role of media technologies in the process of democratization, by applying social norm theory to illuminate the competition between the Party-state norm and the youth/subaltern norm in Chinese media and society.

From 1993 to 2003, exports of Japan's cartoon arts tripled in value, to $12.5 billion. Fan phenomena around the world - in U.S. malls, teen girls flock to purchase the latest Fruits Basket graphic novel; in Hungary, young people gather for a summer "cosplay" (costume dress-up) event - illustrate the global popularity of manga and anime. Drawing on extensive research and more than 100 original interviews, Anne Cooper-Chen explains how and why the un-Disney has penetrated nearly every corner of the planet. This book uses concepts such as cultural proximity, uses and gratifications, and cultural variability to explain cross-cultural adaptations in a broad international approach. It emphasizes that overseas acceptance has surprised the Japanese, who create manga and anime primarily for a domestic audience. Including some sobering facts about the future of the industry, the book highlights how overseas enthusiasm could actually save a domestic industry that may decline in the contracting and graying country of its birth. Designed for courses covering international mass media, media and globalization and introduction to Japanese culture, the book is written primarily for undergraduates, and includes many student-friendly features such as a glossary, timeline and source list.

From 1993 to 2003, exports of Japan's cartoon arts tripled in value, to $12.5 billion. Fan phenomena around the world - in U.S. malls, teen girls flock to purchase the latest Fruits Basket graphic novel; in Hungary, young people gather for a summer "cosplay" (costume dress-up) event - illustrate the global popularity of manga and anime. Drawing on extensive research and more than 100 original interviews, Anne Cooper-Chen explains how and why the un-Disney has penetrated nearly every corner of the planet. This book uses concepts such as cultural proximity, uses and gratifications, and cultural variability to explain cross-cultural adaptations in a broad international approach. It emphasizes that overseas acceptance has surprised the Japanese, who create manga and anime primarily for a domestic audience. Including some sobering facts about the future of the industry, the book highlights how overseas enthusiasm could actually save a domestic industry that may decline in the contracting and graying country of its birth. Designed for courses covering international mass media, media and globalization and introduction to Japanese culture, the book is written primarily for undergraduates, and includes many student-friendly features such as a glossary, timeline and source list.

Cross-Media Promotion is the first book-length study of a defining feature of contemporary media, the promotion by media of their allied media interests. The book explores the range of forms of cross-promotion including synergistic marketing of mega-brands such as Harry Potter; promotional plugs in news media; repurposing media content, stars and brands across other media and outlets; product placement, and the integration of media content and advertising. Incorporating specialist literature, yet written in a clear, accessible style, the book combines three areas of study: media industry practices, media policy, and media theory. It examines the dynamics of cross-media promotion across converging media, drawing on a range of examples from the United States and the United Kingdom. Synergy and intertextuality are explored alongside critical debates about the 'problems' of cross-promotion. The book also offers a critical evaluation of media policy responses from the late 1980s to the present, which the book argues, have failed to grapple with the problems of media power, market power and commercialism generated by intensifying cross-media promotion.

Journalism in the Civil War Era examines the contributions of newspapers and magazines to the American public's understanding of the nation's greatest internal conflict. It documents the effect the Civil War had on journalism, and the effect journalism had on the Civil War. It describes the politics that affected the press, the constraints placed upon it, and the influence of technology. The book discusses the editors and reporters who covered the war, profiling the typical newspaper of the era as well as the response of the press corps to wartime challenges. Providing a broad account of journalism during this period, this book serves as an important reference for scholars and students, and as a supplementary text for courses in journalism history, U.S. press history, civil rights law, and nineteenth century history.

Since the eve of the war in Afghanistan, Al-Jazeera has become a global household name and a news source that cannot be ignored. Globalization theorists argue that Al-Jazeera promotes a cross-cultural debate, enforcing a counter-hegemonic perspective on the West not evident in former crises. Through a comprehensive empirical analysis covering the re-broadcasting of Al-Jazeera's images on major U.S. television networks since 9/11, this book draws an alternative picture, revealing that the advent of Al-Jazeera has actually eroded the counter-hegemonic debate in U.S. war reporting. It shows how the U.S. government persuaded television networks to systematically reformat legitimate war images from Al-Jazeera, labeling it a deviant network, in order to eliminate criticism of the war. Moreover, an examination of the U.S. reception by bloggers and network carriers of Al-Jazeera's English-language website and channel reveals the U.S. administration's continued resolve and ability to limit public discourse.

This volume represents a collection of recent thinking and research on the social and cultural aspects of contemporary broadband societies by exploring the social experiences and practices of using new information and communication technologies (ICT) within different contexts and domains of the emerging broadband society. It offers a compendium of the latest thoughts and questions on digitally mediated citizenship, networked identity, and sociality in the 21st Century and covers four main themes and empirical areas of research: uses and practices of new media, with particular focus on underprivileged groups, new media and the social differentiation of their use, ICT use and sustainable development, and finally new technologies, new challenges.

Since the 1990s journalism education programs have expanded exponentially around the world, but media freedom has not. Globally comparative, this edited volume assesses journalism education and the challenging environment in which it is delivered in countries with a partly free or not free status according to global press freedom. The countries covered include China, Singapore, Cambodia, Palestine, Oman, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Brazil, Russia, Romania, and Croatia. Contributors demonstrate through careful analysis that wealthy nations are able to set the terms of their journalism education while less affluent countries are more open to the influence of foreign NGOs. Although this book evidences the disconnection between what is taught and what can be practiced, it also illustrates the degree to which journalism education can be an agent of change.

For many weeks, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 dominated the newspapers which covered the consequences with an unprecedented immediateness. This study looks at diverging representations of 9/11 in U.S. and German newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Suddeutsche Zeitung) and explores effects on its possible readerships. The impact of the attacks, forms of heroism, the enactment of leadership, various demonstrations of patriotism and grief as well as the textual and visual presentation of the attacks are analyzed in detail. These intermedial representations reaffirm or contest U.S. American grand narratives. While the German newspapers tend to focus on information and analysis, the U.S. papers tend to strengthen shattered U.S. American identity constructions. The study is based on nearly 2,000 newspaper articles and documents the wide scope of topics prevalent in the post-9/11 newspaper coverage.

In much recent theory, the media are described as ephemeral, ubiquitous, and de-localized. Yet the activity of modern media can be traced to spatial centers that are tangible enough - some even monumental. This book offers multidisciplinary and historical perspectives on the buildings of some of the world's major media institutions. Paradoxically, as material and aesthetic manifestations of "mediated centers" of power, they provide sites to the siteless and solidity to the immaterial. The authors analyse the ways that architectural form and organization reflect different eras, media technologies, ideologies, and relations with the public in media houses from New York and Silicon Valley to London, Moscow, and Beijing.

This book discusses the personal and social lives of e-actors interacting within the socio-technical structures of the evolving broadband society by exploring the different ways in which individuals, social groups, institutions, operators, manufactures, policy makers, designers and other parties contribute to human communication and social interaction in contemporary media societies. The volume covers four theoretical and empirical areas of research: the conceptual perspectives of e-actors, the emergence of new forms of agency, subjectivity, and mediated interpersonal communication, the everyday life experiences of e-actors, and finally the shaping policies and regulations in the broadband society.

In much recent theory, the media are described as ephemeral, ubiquitous, and de-localized. Yet the activity of modern media can be traced to spatial centers that are tangible enough - some even monumental. This book offers multidisciplinary and historical perspectives on the buildings of some of the world's major media institutions. Paradoxically, as material and aesthetic manifestations of "mediated centers" of power, they provide sites to the siteless and solidity to the immaterial. The authors analyse the ways that architectural form and organization reflect different eras, media technologies, ideologies, and relations with the public in media houses from New York and Silicon Valley to London, Moscow, and Beijing.

Reporting for Journalists explains the key skills needed by the twenty-first century news reporter. From the process of finding a story and tracing sources, to interviewing contacts, gathering information and filing the finished report, it is an essential handbook for students of journalism and a useful guide for working professionals.

Reporting for Journalists explores the role of the reporter in the world of modern journalism and emphasises the importance of learning to report across all media - radio, television, online, newspapers and periodicals. Using case studies, and examples of print, online and broadcast news stories, the second edition of Reporting for Journalists includes:

• information on using wikis, blogs, social networks and online maps
• finding a story and how to develop ideas
• researching the story and building the contacts book including crowd sourcing and using chat rooms
• interactivity with readers and viewers and user generated content
• making best use of computer aided reporting (CAR), news groups and search engines
• covering courts, councils and press conferences
• reporting using video, audio and text
• preparing reports for broadcasting or publication
• consideration of ethical practice, and cultural expectations and problems
• an annotated guide to further reading, a glossary of key terms and a list of journalism websites and organisations.

Branding Democracy: U.S. Regime Change in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe is a study of the uses of systemic propaganda in U.S. foreign policy. Moving beyond traditional understandings of propaganda, Branding Democracy analyzes the expanding and ubiquitous uses of domestic public persuasion under a neoliberal regime and an informational mode of development and its migration to the arena of foreign policy. A highly mobile and flexible corporate-dominated new informational economy is the foundation of intensified Western marketing and promotional culture across spatial and temporal divides, enabling transnational interests to integrate territories previously beyond their reach. U.S. "democracy promotion" and interventions in the Eastern European "color revolutions" in the early twenty-first century serve as studies of neoliberal state interests in action. Branding Democracy will be of interest to students of U.S. and European politics, political economy, foreign policy, political communication, American studies, and culture studies.

The explicit ambition of this collection is to move 'beyond' the Universal Pragmatics of Jurgen Habermas. It is without doubt an ambitious programme whose architect has led since the 1960s a series of reflections on the rational potential of western society from the Enlightenment to the present. However, this theoretical emphasis on the irreducibility of the rational content of debate cannot avoid abstracting communicative universals from the empirical communication practices which are always embedded in multiple contexts of discourse, identity, media and institutions. This tension in Habermas's oeuvre has developed an antagonistic potential. An example of this antagonism can be seen in the distorting effects of a normative theory of communication whose very normativity means turning a blind eye to a history of social communication. For example, Habermas infamously neglects the constitutive role played by the media in constructions of what is held to be 'public' and even his more recent revisions do not resolve this dilemma. The nine contributions in this volume from the fields of psychology, politics, media, epistemology and aesthetics set out to move beyond the influence of communicative universals and propose alternative approaches to the challenge of reconciling autonomy, interaction and social organisation.

Reporting for Journalists explains the key skills needed by the twenty-first century news reporter. From the process of finding a story and tracing sources, to interviewing contacts, gathering information and filing the finished report, it is an essential handbook for students of journalism and a useful guide for working professionals.

Reporting for Journalists explores the role of the reporter in the world of modern journalism and emphasises the importance of learning to report across all media radio, television, online, newspapers and periodicals. Using case studies, and examples of print, online and broadcast news stories, the second edition of Reporting for Journalists includes:

• information on using wikis, blogs, social networks and online maps
• finding a story and how to develop ideas
• researching the story and building the contacts book including crowd sourcing and using chat rooms
• interactivity with readers and viewers and user generated content
• making best use of computer aided reporting (CAR), news groups and search engines
• covering courts, councils and press conferences
• reporting using video, audio and text
• preparing reports for broadcasting or publication
• consideration of ethical practice, and cultural expectations and problems
• an annotated guide to further reading, a glossary of key terms and a list of journalism websites and organisations.

The news media play a vital role in keeping the public informed and maintaining democratic processes. But that essential function has come under threat as emerging technologies and changing social trends, sped up by global economic turmoil, have disrupted traditional business models and practices, creating a financial crisis. Quality journalism is expensive to produce - so how will it survive as current sources of revenue shrink? Funding Journalism in the Digital Age not only explores the current challenges, but also provides a comprehensive look at business models and strategies that could sustain the news industry as it makes the transition from print and broadcast distribution to primarily digital platforms. The authors bring widespread international journalism experience to provide a global perspective on how news organizations are evolving, investigating innovative commercial projects in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Norway, South Korea, Singapore and elsewhere.

Scholars of journalism and media studies have illustrated the production of alternative media as a means for activists to generate dissent, while communication scholars have examined activists' performances and image events as challenges to dominant power structures. The approaches of both fields have contributed to academic understanding of social movements in modern society, but until now, their findings have emerged separate from one another. This book brings together both lines of research, and demonstrates the role of alternative media in the performance of resistance against power structures by contemporary activists. Specifically, the book explores the role of alternative media in the establishment of activist networks in local communities; the role of alternative media in the construction of strategies of resistance by networked activists; and the role of interactivity between local and global networks in production of alternative media content. The book is suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses concerning social movements within the fields of communication, media, and journalism.

Peace Journalism, War and Conflict Resolution draws together the work of over twenty leading international writers, journalists, theorists and campaigners in the field of peace journalism. Mainstream media tend to promote the interests of the military and governments in their coverage of warfare. This major new text aims to provide a definitive, up-to-date, critical, engaging and accessible overview exploring the role of the media in conflict resolution. Sections focus in detail on theory, international practice, and critiques of mainstream media performance from a peace perspective; countries discussed include the U.S., U.K., Germany, Cyprus, Sweden, Canada, India, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. Chapters examine a wide variety of issues including mainstream newspapers, indigenous media, blogs and radical alternative websites. The book includes a foreword by award-winning investigative journalist John Pilger and a critical afterword by cultural commentator Jeffery Klaehn.