History has always been a matter of arranging evidence into a narrative, but the public debate over the meanings we attach to a given history can seem particularly acute in our current age. Like all artistic mediums, comics possess the power to mold history into shapes that serve its prospective audience and creator both. It makes sense, then, that history, no stranger to the creation of hagiographies, particularly in the service of nationalism and other political ideologies, is so easily summoned to the panelled page. Comics, like statues, museums, and other vehicles for historical narrative, make both monsters and heroes of men while fuelling combative beliefs in personal versions of United States history. Drawing the Past, Volume 1: Comics and the Historical Imagination in the United States, the first book in a two-volume series, provides a map of current approaches to comics and their engagement with historical representation. The first section of the book on history and form explores the existence, shape, and influence of comics as a medium. The second section concerns the question of trauma, understood both as individual traumas that can shape the relationship between the narrator and object, and historical traumas that invite a reassessment of existing social, economic, and cultural assumptions. The final section on mythic histories delves into ways in which comics add to the mythology of the US. Together, both volumes bring together a range of different approaches to diverse material and feature remarkable scholars from all over the world. Contributions by Lawrence Abrams, Dorian Alexander, Max Bledstein, Peter Cullen Bryan, Stephen Connor, Matthew J. Costello, Martin Flanagan, Michael Fuchs, Michael Goodrum, Bridget Keown, Kaleb Knoblach, Christina M. Knopf, Martin Lund, Jordan Newton, Stefan Rabitsch, Maryanne Rhett, and Philip Smith.

This volume provides an important update to our current understanding of politics and the internet in a variety of new contexts, both geographically and institutionally. The subject of e-democracy has morphed over the years from speculative and optimistic accounts of a future heightened direct citizen involvement in political decision-making and an increasingly withered state apparatus, to more prosaic investigations of party and governmental website content and micro level analyses of voters' online activities. Rather than levelling the communications and participation playing field, most studies concluded that existing patterns of bias and power distribution were being repeated online, with the one exception of a genuine change in the potential for protest and e-activism. Across all of these accounts, the question remains whether the internet is a levelling communication tool that elevates the profile of marginalised players in the political system, or whether it is a medium that simply reinforces existing power and participatory biases. While employing case studies from various global perspectives, this book investigates the role of digital media and competitive advantage, campaigns and the effect of social media, online communication as way of fomenting nonviolent revolutions and the undeniable and important role of the internet on democracy around the world.

This is the first sustained comparative examination of the importance of media attention on the provision of economic assistance, suggesting that the news media is an important medium for policy makers to gauge potential domestic political pressures and thus the need to be responsive and even anticipatory in addressing problems real or perceived. Particular attention is paid to the responsiveness of bureaucracies, long held to among the most insulated institutions of government. Cross-national in scope, this book looks at the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France and Japan, facilitating a nuanced understanding of the interaction of international and domestic politics as mediated by the media.

In the modern world of networked digital media, authors must navigate many challenges. Most pressingly, the illegal downloading and streaming of copyright material on the internet deprives authors of royalties, and in some cases it has discouraged creativity or terminated careers. Exploring technology's impact on the status and idea of authorship in today's world, The Near-Death of the Author reveals the many obstacles facing contemporary authors. John Potts details how the online culture of remix and creative reuse operates in a post-authorship mode, with little regard for individual authorship. The book explores how developments in algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) have yielded novels, newspaper articles, musical works, films, and paintings without the need of human authors or artists. It also examines how these AI achievements have provoked questions regarding the authorship of new works, such as Does the author need to be human? And, more alarmingly, Is there even a need for human authors? Providing suggestions on how contemporary authors can endure in the world of data, the book ultimately concludes that network culture has provoked the near-death, but not the death, of the author.

Religion and the Social Order

Electric Dreams turns to the past to trace the cultural history of computers. Ted Friedman charts the struggles to define the meanings of these powerful machines over more than a century, from the failure of Charles Babbage's "difference engine" in the nineteenth century to contemporary struggles over file swapping, open source software, and the future of online journalism. To reveal the hopes and fears inspired by computers, Electric Dreams examines a wide range of texts, including films, advertisements, novels, magazines, computer games, blogs, and even operating systems.

Electric Dreams argues that the debates over computers are critically important because they are how Americans talk about the future. In a society that in so many ways has given up on imagining anything better than multinational capitalism, cyberculture offers room to dream of different kinds of tomorrow.

Violence and Understanding in Gaza is the first comprehensive investigation of the British broadsheets' coverage of the Gaza War. Written in accessible language and engaging style, it critiques the newspapers' output, which it is argued replicates the black and white logic of war instead of focusing on negotiations and peace.

This is an important study of the publishing of contemporary writing in Britain. It analyzes the changing social, economic and cultural environment of the publishing industry in the 1990s-2000s, and investigates its impact on genre, authorship and reading. It includes case studies of Trainspotting and the His Dark Materials trilogy.

This lively, entertaining, and often funny history of America's supermarket tabloids is the first book to offer a behind-the-scene's look at the intriguing world of tabloid journalism, and especially the unique personalities that made it such a tremendously successful and influential force in today's media. Perhaps no one is more qualified to give the complete insider's account of the tabs than Bill Sloan, who helped guide the destinies of three major tabloids in their heyday. Sloan profiles the publishing eccentrics who conceived the first national tabloids, the greedy owners and screwball executives who called the shots, the ruthless underworld manipulators who fed off of the tabloids' phenomenal success, and the money-driven journalists who did the dirty work. I Watched a Wild Hog Ate My Baby reveals the whole sometimes-sordid, often-silly, but always-amazing story behind the multibillion-dollar industry these characters spawned.
Based on candid interviews with the author, the fascinating personalities who created the tabloids explain in their own words how and why they built these notorious rags into powerful and often feared journalistic empires. The late, legendary Enquirer founder Generoso (Gene) Pope, former Enquirer president Iain Calder, Globe cocreator and longtime editor John Vader, and many others offer hundreds of funny, juicy, irresistible glimpses into their zany business. Sloan traces the development of the tabs from their beginnings in sleazy, gore-filled sensationalism or soft-core smut and sex scandals, through the celebrity crazes of Jackie O. and Princess Di. He also discusses the widespread influence of the tabloids today on television journalism and the Internet, where the distinction between news and entertainment is quickly vanishing.
This enjoyable, eye-opening account is must reading for anyone interested in the people and the trends that shape our popular culture.

Opportunities to "have your say," "get involved," and "join the conversation" are everywhere in public life. From crowdsourcing and town hall meetings to government experiments with social media, participatory politics increasingly seem like a revolutionary antidote to the decline of civic engagement and the thinning of the contemporary public sphere. Many argue that, with new technologies, flexible organizational cultures, and a supportive policymaking context, we now hold the keys to large-scale democratic revitalization. Democratizing Inequalities shows that the equation may not be so simple. Modern societies face a variety of structural problems that limit potentials for true democratization, as well as vast inequalities in political action and voice that are not easily resolved by participatory solutions. Popular participation may even reinforce elite power in unexpected ways. Resisting an oversimplified account of participation as empowerment, this collection of essays brings together a diverse range of leading scholars to reveal surprising insights into how dilemmas of the new public participation play out in politics and organizations. Through investigations including fights over the authenticity of business-sponsored public participation, the surge of the Tea Party, the role of corporations in electoral campaigns, and participatory budgeting practices in Brazil, Democratizing Inequalities seeks to refresh our understanding of public participation and trace the reshaping of authority in today's political environment.

In what ways have social movements attracted the attention of the mass media since the sixties? How have activists influenced public attention via visual symbols, images, and protest performances in that period? And how do mass media cover and frame specific protest issues? Drawing on contributions from media scholars, historians, and sociologists, this volume explores the dynamic interplay between social movements, activists, and mass media from the 1960s to the present. It introduces the most relevant theoretical approaches to such issues and offers a variety of case studies ranging from print media, film, and television to Internet and social media.

In Cold War historiography, the 1960s are often described as a decade of mounting diplomatic tensions and international social unrest. At the same time, they were a period of global media revolution: communication satellites compressed time and space, television spread around the world, and images circulated through print media in expanding ways. Examining how U.S. policymakers exploited these changes, this book offers groundbreaking international research into the visual media battles that shaped America's Cold War from West Germany and India to Tanzania and Argentina.

This study explores Hollywood's invention of Britain through the adaptation of its literature. Utilizing Derrida's Margins of Philosophy , texts by Gilles Deleuze and his work with Felix Guattari, this text identifies the future of British and Anglophone literary and cultural studies as a group of citations appropriated for American ends.

This book opens up a new field at the intersections of transnational, feminist, and media studies. The collection brings feminist theories to bear on the discourses of transnationality embedded in a range of recent films and video art from diverse locations in North Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. Paying particular attention to new frontiers of migration, an increasing vigilance vis-a-vis the foreign, and the gendered and racialized representations of mobility, the book charts innovative feminist strategies for the interpretation of contemporary visual cultures. This ambitious volume will be an important guide for scholars and students interested in approaching global media cultures from transnational feminist perspectives

Fifteen thought-provoking essays engage in an innovative dialogue between cultural studies of affect, feelings and emotions, and digital cultures, new media and technology. The volume provides a fascinating dialogue that cuts across disciplines, media platforms and geographic and linguistic boundaries.

Contemporary anthropology is done in a world where social and digital media are playing an increasingly significant role, where anthropological and arts practices are often intertwined in museum and public intervention contexts, and where anthropologists are encouraged to engage with mass media. Because anthropologists are often expected and inspired to ensure their work engages with public issues, these opportunities to disseminate work in new ways and to new publics simultaneously create challenges as anthropologists move their practice into unfamiliar collaborative domains and expose their research to new forms of scrutiny. In this volume, contributors question whether a fresh public anthropology is emerging through these new practices.

The church struggles with media. Whether it is a denomination negotiating the 24 hour news cycle or a church evaluating how Facebook or online games are influencing the youth group, media is raising questions and placing demands on communities of faith in ways that could not have been imagined just 20 years ago. Thus the importance of understanding media for the church has never been greater.In Mediating Faith, church leaders of all kinds will find Clint Schnekloth an engaging and insightful guide to this new and sometimes wondrous world. In doing so he offers an evaluation and theological response to the trans-media era that highlights its potential to transform our work and world.Far from frightening, Schnekloth highlights the opportunities and the riches of this fascinating time.

This book shows how the release of the free market in the last part of the twentieth century produced a rise in inequality and violence, the development of a huge criminal economy and the degradation of social and cultural life. It questions the silence of academics in the face of these changes and asks how much they have been incorporated into the priorities of commerce and governments. Many academics in the social sciences, media and cultural studies have avoided critical issues and become occupied in obscure theoretical debates such as post-modernism. The effect was to draw inellectuals and students away from the engaged and empirical work needed to identify key social problems and possibilities for change. The authors of this book point to the need for independent research which can criticise political policies and reveal their effects. They show, for example, why contemporary policies on drugs and education are creating more problems than they solve. The book features contributions from a wide range of academic disciplines including mass communications, sociology, politics, geography, philosophy and economics, and points to new directions for radical science. It also examines the possibilities for a free and democratic media and calls for the development of critical and open debate.

This book presents essays and scientific contributions examining the link between popular media and politics. The essays focus on the question of how political and social change, concepts of power, and utopian elements are reflected in selected films and television series. The book applies a political science perspective, covering theories from political philosophy, political sociology and international relations, and examines a wide range of movies and TV series, such as The Godfather, Fight Club, The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. It will appeal to anyone interested in studying how political ideas, concepts and messages can be illustrated and visualized using the complex media of movies and TV series.

Media and Gender Adaptation examines how fans and professionals change the gender of characters when they adapt existing work. Using research into fans, and case studies on Sherlock Holmes, Ghostbusters and Doctor Who, it illustrates the foundation of the process and ways the works engage with and critique media and gender at a political level. The default maleness of narratives in media are reworked to be inclusive of other points of view. Regendering as an adaptational technique relies on audience familiarity with existing works, however it also reveals an increasing trend in aggressive backlash against interpretations of media that include marginalised and minority communities. Combining analysis of fanfiction, television and big budget Hollywood productions, Media and Gender Adaptation also analyses fan responses to regendering in popular media. Through demographic surveys and interviews with fans, creators and broader audiences, a combination of playful and serious attitudes to gender are revealed to be part of how transformative fans (professional or not) adapt work. Specific fanfiction examples are analysed alongside professional works to reveal the depth and breadth of fannish play in regendered work and the constraints that professional adaptations are held to. It also reveals a schism in audiences, and those researching media, where the intersection of gender and race are sites of tension - nostalgia combining with expected representation of gender and race to create an aggressive defence of an original work that reiterates the mainstream hierarchies of gender and race.

Television is the most pervasive mass medium of the industrialised world. It is blamed for creating alienation and violence in society, yet at the same time regarded as trivial and unworthy of serious attention. It is the main purveyor of global popular culture, yet also intensely local. The Australian TV Book paints the big picture of the small screen in Australia. It examines industry dynamics in a rapidly changing environment, the impact of new technology, recent changes in programming, and the ways in which the television industry targets its audiences. The authors highlight what is distinctive about television in Australia, and how it is affected by international developments. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Australian television today.Stuart Cunningham is Professor of Media and Journalism at Queensland University of Technology. Graeme Turner is director of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. They are editors of the leading textbook The Media in Australia and authors of many other works on the media.

The Chinese government has long kept tight control on both traditional and new media to prevent potential challenges to its authority. But, for better or worse, China has now reached a stage where it is difficult to exercise political hegemony through laws and regulations and the control of the mass media. China has become a global superpower and in 2011 surpassed Japan as the world's second largest economy, second only to the USA. China's entertainment industry is also flourishing, and the market is large enough to attract foreign investors that either view China as an important market or are interested in Chinese capital. Today, more children in China watch television than in any other country in the world, and Internet usage is also increasing, making the implementation of media literacy education an important issue. This book presents the prevailing perspectives on media literacy education in China and describes how the current curriculum reform for implementing media literacy education is being developed. It will not only stimulate debate and further research, but will also influence policy decisions regarding media literacy education in China.

This book is a unique contribution to both media studies and contemporary politics. It analyzes the American media's structure and its role in shaping perceptions of the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, and looks at the key issues involved, from self-determination to genocide. Sadkovich sees the failure of the U.S. media and the West as having prolonged and even aggravated the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. This work will prove useful to both the general reader and students of media and current affairs.

Ben Light puts forward an alternative way of thinking about how we engage with social networking sites. He analyses our engagements social networking sites in public, at work, in our personal lives and as related to our health and wellbeing, emphasizing the importance of disconnection instead of connection.