Inspired by Raymond Williams' cultural materialism, H.F. Pimlott explores the connections between political practice and cultural form through Marxism Today's transformation from a Communist Party theoretical journal into a 'glossy' left magazine. Marxism Today's successes and failures during the 1980s are analysed through its political and cultural critiques of Thatcherism and the left, especially by Stuart Hall and Eric Hobsbawm, innovative publicity and marketplace distribution, relationships with the national UK press, cultural coverage, design and format, and writing style. Wars of Position offers insights for contemporary media activists and challenges the neglect of the left press by media scholars.

Tourism consumers are increasingly demanding and seek to base their travel decision-making process on relevant and credible tourism information. In recent years, user-generated content on social media, the opinion of travel bloggers, and entertainment programs in the media have influenced the public's travel purchasing behavior and acted as a driving force for the development of tourism products, such as film tourism. It also has played a role in the evolution and development of marketing, giving rise to new applications, as in the case of digital and influence marketing. On the other hand, tourism organizations and destination management organizations face major challenges in communicating the attributes of a tourism product, since this cannot be experienced before consumption. Thus, they need to know how and in which means or platforms of communication they can inform potential consumers. Impact of New Media in Tourism provides theoretical and practical contributions in tourism and communication including current research on the influence of new media and the active role of consumers in tourism. With a focus on decision making and increasing the visibility of products and destinations, the book provides support for tourism agencies and organizations around the world. Covering themes that include digital marketing, social media, and online branding, this book is essential for professionals, academicians, researchers, and students working or studying in the field of tourism and hospitality management, marketing, advertising, and media and communications.

Nearly sixty years after Freedom Summer, its events-especially the lynching of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Mickey Schwerner-stand out as a critical episode of the civil rights movement. The infamous deaths of these activists dominate not just the history but also the public memory of the Mississippi Summer Project. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, movement veterans challenged this central narrative with the shocking claim that during the search for Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, the FBI and other law enforcement personnel discovered many unidentified Black bodies in Mississippi's swamps, rivers, and bayous. This claim has evolved in subsequent years as activists, journalists, filmmakers, and scholars have continued to repeat it, and the number of supposed Black bodies-never identified-has grown from five to more than two dozen. In Black Bodies in the River: Searching for Freedom Summer, author Davis W. Houck sets out to answer two questions: Were Black bodies discovered that summer? And why has the shocking claim only grown in the past several decades-despite evidence to the contrary? In other words, what rhetorical work does the Black bodies claim do, and with what audiences? Houck's story begins in the murky backwaters of the Mississippi River and the discovery of the bodies of Henry Dee and Charles Moore, murdered on May 2, 1964, by the Ku Klux Klan. He pivots next to the Council of Federated Organization's voter registration efforts in Mississippi leading up to Freedom Summer. He considers the extent to which violence generally and expectations about interracial violence, in particular, serves as a critical context for the strategy and rhetoric of the Summer Project. Houck then interrogates the unnamed-Black-bodies claim from a historical and rhetorical perspective, illustrating that the historicity of the bodies in question is perhaps less the point than the critique of who we remember from that summer and how we remember them. Houck examines how different memory texts-filmic, landscape, presidential speech, and museums-function both to bolster and question the centrality of murdered white men in the legacy of Freedom Summer.

Serial Mexico responds to a continued need to historicize and contextualize seriality, particularly as it exists outside of dominant U.S./European contexts. In Mexico, serialization has been an important feature of narrative since the birth of the nation. Amy Wright's exploration begins with a study of novels serialized in pamphlets and newspapers by key Mexican authors of the nineteenth century, showing that serialization was essential to the development of both the novel and national identities-to Mexican popular culture-during its foundational period. In the twentieth century, a technological explosion after the Mexican Revolution (1910-20) set Mexico's transmedial wheels into motion, as a variety of media recycled and repurposed earlier serialized tales, themselves drawn from a repertoire of oral traditions to national nostalgic effect. Along the way, Serial Mexico responds to the following series of questions: How has serialized storytelling functioned in Mexico? How can we better understand the relationship of seriality to transmediality through this historical case study? Which stories (characters, themes, storylines, and storyworlds) have circulated repeatedly over time? How have those stories defined Mexico? The goal of this book is to begin to understand some of the possible answers to these questions through five case studies, which highlight five key artifacts, in five different media, at five different historical points spanning nearly two hundred years of Mexico's history. Serial Mexico offers important insights into not only the topic of serialized storytelling, but to larger notions of how national identities are created through narrative, with crucial cultural and sometimes political implications.

The evolution of how gender and feminism have been portrayed within media and literature has changed dramatically over the years as society continues to understand the importance of representation within entertainment. To fully understand how the field has changed, further study on the current and past forms of media representation is required. The Handbook of Research on Gender Studies and Feminism in Literature and Media engages with literary texts, digital media, films, and art to consider the relevant issues and empowerment strategies of feminism and gender and discusses the latest theories and ideas. Covering topics such as gender performativity, homophobia, patriarchy, sexuality, LGBTQ community, digital studies, and empowerment strategies, this major reference work is ideal for government officials, policymakers, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.

Serial Mexico responds to a continued need to historicize and contextualize seriality, particularly as it exists outside of dominant U.S./European contexts. In Mexico, serialization has been an important feature of narrative since the birth of the nation. Amy Wright's exploration begins with a study of novels serialized in pamphlets and newspapers by key Mexican authors of the nineteenth century, showing that serialization was essential to the development of both the novel and national identities-to Mexican popular culture-during its foundational period. In the twentieth century, a technological explosion after the Mexican Revolution (1910-20) set Mexico's transmedial wheels into motion, as a variety of media recycled and repurposed earlier serialized tales, themselves drawn from a repertoire of oral traditions to national nostalgic effect. Along the way, Serial Mexico responds to the following series of questions: How has serialized storytelling functioned in Mexico? How can we better understand the relationship of seriality to transmediality through this historical case study? Which stories (characters, themes, storylines, and storyworlds) have circulated repeatedly over time? How have those stories defined Mexico? The goal of this book is to begin to understand some of the possible answers to these questions through five case studies, which highlight five key artifacts, in five different media, at five different historical points spanning nearly two hundred years of Mexico's history. Serial Mexico offers important insights into not only the topic of serialized storytelling, but to larger notions of how national identities are created through narrative, with crucial cultural and sometimes political implications.

Young adult literature featuring LGBTQ characters is booming. In the 1980s and 1990s, only a handful of such titles were published every year. Recently, these numbers have soared to over one hundred annual releases. Queer characters are also appearing more frequently in film, on television, and in video games. This explosion of queer representation, however, has prompted new forms of longstanding cultural anxieties about adolescent sexuality. What makes for a good "coming out" story? Will increased queer representation in young people's media teach adolescents the right lessons and help queer teens live better, happier lives? What if these stories harm young people instead of helping them? In Queer Anxieties of Young Adult Literature and Culture, Derritt Mason considers these questions through a range of popular media, including an assortment of young adult books; Caper in the Castro, the first-ever queer video game; online fan communities; and popular television series Glee and Big Mouth. Mason argues themes that generate the most anxiety about adolescent culture - queer visibility, risk taking, HIV/AIDS, dystopia and horror, and the promise that "It Gets Better" and the threat that it might not - challenge us to rethink how we read and engage with young people's media. Instead of imagining queer young adult literature as a subgenre defined by its visibly queer characters, Mason proposes that we see "queer YA" as a body of transmedia texts with blurry boundaries, one that coheres around affect - specifically, anxiety - instead of content.

Reveals the legacy of the train as a critical site of race in the United States Despite the seeming supremacy of car culture in the United States, the train has long been and continues to be a potent symbol of American exceptionalism, ingenuity, and vastness. For almost two centuries, the train has served as the literal and symbolic vehicle for American national identity, manifest destiny, and imperial ambitions. It's no surprise, then, that the train continues to endure in depictions across literature, film, ad music. The Racial Railroad highlights the surprisingly central role that the railroad has played-and continues to play-in the formation and perception of racial identity and difference in the United States. Julia H. Lee argues that the train is frequently used as the setting for stories of race because it operates across multiple registers and scales of experience and meaning, both as an invocation of and a depository for all manner of social, historical, and political narratives. Lee demonstrates how, through legacies of racialized labor and disenfranchisement-from the Chinese American construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and the depictions of Native Americans in landscape and advertising, to the underground railroad and Jim Crow segregation-the train becomes one of the exemplary spaces through which American cultural works explore questions of racial subjectivity, community, and conflict. By considering the train through various lenses, The Racial Railroad tracks how racial formations and conflicts are constituted in significant and contradictory ways by the spaces in which they occur.

Our Blessed Rebel Queen: Essays on Carrie Fisher and Princess Leia is the first full-length exploration of Carrie Fisher's career as actress, writer, and advocate. Fisher's entangled relationship with the iconic Princess Leia is a focal point of this volume. Editors Linda Mizejewski and Tanya D. Zuk have assembled a collection that engages with the multiple interfaces between Fisher's most famous character and her other life-giving work. The contributors offer insights into Fisher as science-fiction idol, author, feminist inspiration, and Lucasfilm commodity. Jennifer M. Fogel examines the thorny ""ownership"" of Fisher's image as a conflation of fan nostalgia, merchandise commodity, and eventually, feminist icon. Philipp Dominik Keidl looks at how Carrie Fisher and her iconic character are positioned within the male-centric history of Star Wars. Andrew Kemp-Wilcox researches the 2016 controversy over a virtual Princess Leia that emerged after Carrie Fisher's death. Tanya D. Zuk investigates the use of Princess Leia and Carrie images during the Women's March as memetic reconfigurations of historical propaganda to leverage political and fannish ideological positions. Linda Mizejewski explores Carrie Fisher's autobiographical writing, while Ken Feil takes a look at Fisher's playful blurring of truth and fiction in her screenplays. Kristen Anderson Wagner identifies Fisher's use of humor and anger to challenge public expectations for older actresses. Cynthia Hoffner and Sejung Park highlight Fisher's mental health advocacy, and Slade Kinnecott personalizes how Fisher's candidness and guidance about mental health were especially cherished by those who lacked a support system in their own lives. Our Blessed Rebel Queen is distinct in its interdisciplinary approach, drawing from a variety of methodologies and theoretical frameworks. Longtime fans of Carrie Fisher and her body of work will welcome this smart and thoughtful tribute to a multimedia legend.

There has been a noticeable shift in the way the news is accessed and consumed, and most importantly, the rise of fake news has become a common occurrence in the media. With news becoming more accessible as technology advances, fake news can spread rapidly and successfully through social media, television, websites, and other online sources, as well as through the traditional types of newscasting. The spread of misinformation when left unchecked can turn fiction into fact and result in a mass misconception of the truth that shapes opinions, creates false narratives, and impacts multiple facets of society in potentially detrimental ways. With the rise of fake news comes the need for research on the ways to alleviate the effects and prevent the spread of misinformation. These tools, technologies, and theories for identifying and mitigating the effects of fake news are a current research topic that is essential for maintaining the integrity of the media and providing those who consume it with accurate, fact-based information. The Research Anthology on Fake News, Political Warfare, and Combatting the Spread of Misinformation contains hand-selected, previously published research that informs its audience with an advanced understanding of fake news, how it spreads, its negative effects, and the current solutions being investigated. The chapters within also contain a focus on the use of alternative facts for pushing political agendas and as a way of conducting political warfare. While highlighting topics such as the basics of fake news, media literacy, the implications of misinformation in political warfare, detection methods, and both technological and human automated solutions, this book is ideally intended for practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the current surge of fake news, the means of reducing its effects, and how to improve the future outlook.

Technology is rapidly advancing, and each innovation provides opportunities for such technology to mesh with the human enactment of physical intimacy or to be used in the quest for information about sexuality. However, the availability of this technology has complicated sexual decision making for young adults as they continually navigate their sexual identity, orientation, behavior, and community. Young Adult Sexuality in the Digital Age is a pivotal reference source that improves the understanding of the combination of technology and sexual decision making for young adults, examining the role of technology in sexual identity formation, sexual communication, relationship formation and dissolution, and sexual learning and online sexual communities and activism. While highlighting topics such as privacy management, cyber intimacy, and digital communications, this book is ideally designed for therapists, social workers, sociologists, psychologists, counselors, healthcare professionals, scholars, researchers, and students.

In this selective overview of scholarship generated by The Hunger Games-the young adult dystopian fiction and film series which has won popular and critical acclaim-Zhange Ni showcases various investigations into the entanglement of religion and the arts in the new millennium. Ni introduces theories, methods, and the latest developments in the study of religion in relation to politics, audio/visual art, new media, material culture, and popular culture, whilst also reading The Hunger Games as a story that explores the variety, complexity, and ambiguity of enchantment. In popular texts such as this, religion and art-both broadly construed, that is, beyond conventional boundaries-converge in creating an enchantment that makes life more bearable and effects change in the world.

Throughout the 1990s, artists experimented with game engine technologies to disrupt our habitual relationships to video games. They hacked, glitched, and dismantled popular first-person shooters such as Doom (1993) and Quake (1996) to engage players in new kinds of embodied activity. In Unstable Aesthetics: Game Engines and the Strangeness of Art Modding, Eddie Lohmeyer investigates historical episodes of art modding practices-the alteration of a game system's existing code or hardware to generate abstract spaces-situated around a recent archaeology of the game engine: software for rendering two and three-dimensional gameworlds. The contemporary artists highlighted throughout this book-Cory Arcangel, JODI, Julian Oliver, Krista Hoefle, and Brent Watanabe, among others -- were attracted to the architectures of engines because they allowed them to explore vital relationships among abstraction, technology, and the body. Artists employed a range of modding techniques-hacking the ROM chips on Nintendo cartridges to produce experimental video, deconstructing source code to generate psychedelic glitch patterns, and collaging together surreal gameworlds-to intentionally dissect the engine's operations and unveil illusions of movement within algorithmic spaces. Through key moments in game engine history, Lohmeyer formulates a rich phenomenology of video games by focusing on the liminal spaces of interaction among system and body, or rather the strangeness of art modding.

Communication plays a critical role in enhancing social, cultural, and business relations. Research on media, language, and cultural studies is fundamental in a globalized world because it illuminates the experiences of various populations. There is a need to develop effective communication strategies that will be able to address both health and cultural issues globally. Dialectical Perspectives on Media, Health, and Culture in Modern Africa is a collection of innovative research on the impact of media and especially new media on health and culture. While highlighting topics including civic engagement, gender stereotypes, and interpersonal communication, this book is ideally designed for university students, multinational organizations, diplomats, expatriates, and academicians seeking current research on how media, health, and culture can be appropriated to overcome the challenges that plague the world today.

This open access book brings together an international team of experts, The Middle Ages in Modern Culture considers the use of medieval models across a variety of contemporary media - ranging from television and film to architecture - and the significance of deploying an authentic medieval world to these representations. Rooted in this question of authenticity, this interdisciplinary study addresses three connected themes. Firstly, how does historical accuracy relate to authenticity, and whose version of authenticity is accepted? Secondly, how are the middle ages presented in modern media and why do inaccuracies emerge and persist in these works? Thirdly, how do creators of modern content attempt to produce authentic medieval environments, and what are the benefits and pitfalls of accurate portrayals? The result is nuanced study of medieval culture which sheds new light on the use (and misuse) of medieval history in modern media. This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

Winner, Sociology of the Body and Embodiment Best Publication Award, given by the American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, 2021 Sexualities Section Book Award, given by the American Sociological Association The first inside look at how sex workers use webcams to make a living The erotic webcam industry, also known as "camming," is a thriving global business. Angela Jones takes readers inside this multi-billion dollar industry, revealing how its workers experience intimacy, community, empowerment-and, as she compellingly argues, pleasure. Drawing on in-depth interviews, survey data, web analytics, and more, Jones highlights not only the dangers, but also the rewards, of working in one of the most taboo corners of the Internet. She provides an inside look at the public and private shows between cam models and their customers, from exotic dancing and pornographic videos, to masturbation shows and erotic chatrooms. A fascinating, much-needed glimpse into the lives of cam models, Camming takes us behind the webcam lens to experience the power of erotic labor in the twenty-first century.

Exploring Instagram’s public pedagogy at scale, this book uses innovative digital methods to trace and analyze how publics reinforce and resist settler colonialism as they engage with the Trans Mountain pipeline controversy online. The book traces opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline in so-called Canada, where overlapping networks of concerned citizens, Indigenous land protectors, and environmental activists have used Instagram to document pipeline construction, policing, and land degradation; teach using infographics; and express solidarity through artwork and re-shared posts. These expressions constitute a form of “public pedagogy,� where social media takes on an educative force, influencing publics whether or not they set foot in the classroom.