Bridal magazines have become increasingly popular in Western society, proliferating the idea of a 'princess bride' on her 'big day'. Yet little has been written on how the ever-expanding wedding media and the popular wedding culture constructs gender and affects the ways women live and experience their weddings. Offering a critique of contemporary wedding discourse, this book marries together analyses of media texts and their reception to propose a new approach to media discourse. The analysis richly illustrates how women are invited to embrace not only the stereotypical idea of bridal femininity but also a consumptive way of experiencing it. Through examination of brides' accounts of their 'big days', the book observes the imprints of the popular gender imagery on their self-portraits and self-narratives, and describes the women's diverse approaches to them. Based on insights from gender and critical discourse studies, sociology and audience research, this exploration illuminates the ongoing debate on 'media and gender' and its methodological approaches.

This book investigates interaction-focused scholarship on online communication. It focuses on a broad range of online contexts including social media, dating apps, online comments, instant messaging and video-mediated interaction. Bringing together experts from a variety of scholarly backgrounds, chapters demonstrate how different microanalytic methods, including conversation analysis, membership categorization analysis and discursive psychology, can be applied to online communication. The book also goes on to address ethical, methodological and theoretical issues of analysing online social interaction. With the explosion of the use of online platforms for everyday and institutional interaction, this book is a timely collection which explores the current state of the field, and considers future directions for microanalysis of online communication.

This volume sets out the state-of-the-art in the discipline of journalism at a time in which the practice and profession of journalism is in serious flux. While journalism is still anchored to its history, change is infecting the field. The profession, and the scholars who study it, are reconceptualizing what journalism is in a time when journalists no longer monopolize the means for spreading the news. Here, journalism is explored as a social practice, as an institution, and as memory. The roles, epistemologies, and ethics of the field are evolving. With this in mind, the volume revisits classic theories of journalism, such as gatekeeping and agenda-setting, but also opens up new avenues of theorizing by broadening the scope of inquiry into an expanded journalism ecology, which now includes citizen journalism, documentaries, and lifestyle journalism, and by tapping the insights of other disciplines, such as geography, economics, and psychology. The volume is a go-to map of the field for students and scholars-highlighting emerging issues, enduring themes, revitalized theories, and fresh conceptualizations of journalism.

This book focuses on a development for assessing mental changes using eye pupil reactions, namely extracting emotional change from the response to evaluate the viewer's interest in visual information. The pupil of the eye reacts to both brightness and emotional state, including interest, enjoyment, and mental workload. Because pupillary change is a biological signal, various artifacts influence measurements of eye images. Technical procedures are required to extract mental activities from pupillary changes, and they are summarized here step by step, although some procedures contain earlier techniques such as analog video processing. This study examines the possibility of estimating the viewer's interest and enjoyment of viewing movies by measuring the dynamic pupillary changes, blinking, and subjective interest responses. In evaluation of pupil size, there was a significant difference in pupil size between the higher and the lower shot for the degree of subject interest response in each kind of movies. The first part of the book shows a pupil reaction model for brightness changes to extract mental activities. Pupil reactions were observed for various visual stimuli in brightness changes. With regard to the characteristics of pupillary changes, a model with a three-layer neural network was developed and the performance was evaluated. Characteristics of pupil reactions during model development are summarized here. The second part examines the possibility of estimating the viewer's interest and enjoyment of television programs by measuring dynamic pupillary changes, blinking, and subjective interest responses. The final part describes a development of estimation model of pupil size for blink artifact. The model development was able to estimate pupillary changes and pupil size while the viewer was blinking and was applied to pupillary changes in viewing television programs.

An international collection of papers focused on media, culture and society in postcommunist Russia. Contributors deploy a wealth of primary data in examining the kinds of issues that are central to our understanding of the kind of system that has been established in the worlds largest country after a period of far-reaching change.

Compact Cinematics challenges the dominant understanding of cinema to focus on the various compact, short, miniature, pocket-sized forms of cinematics that have existed from even before its standardization in theatrical form, and in recent years have multiplied and proliferated, taking up an increasingly important part of our everyday multimedia environment. Short films or micro-narratives, cinematic pieces or units re-assembled into image archives and looping themes, challenge the concepts that have traditionally been used to understand cinematic experience, like linear causality, sequentiality, and closure, and call attention to complex and modular forms of cinematic expression and perception. Such forms, in turn, seem to meet the requirements of digital convergence, which has pushed the development of more compact and mobile hardware for the display and use of audiovisual content on laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Meanwhile, contemporary economies of digital content acquisition, filing, and sharing equally require the shrinking of cinematic content for it to be recorded, played, projected, distributed, and installed with ease and speed. In this process, cinematic experience is shortened and condensed as well, so as to fit the late-capitalist attention economy. The essays in this volume ask what this changed technical, socio-economic and political situation entails for the aesthetics and experience of contemporary cinematics, and call attention to different concepts, theories and tools at our disposal to analyze these changes.

Global Journalism Practice and New Media Performance provides an overview of new and traditional media in their political, economic and cultural contexts while exploring the role of journalism practice and media education. The authors examine media systems in 16 countries, including China, Russia and the United States.

"This book is an examination of German media attempts to deal with the recent past at a time of heightened Cold War tensions, focusing on East and West German radio broadcasts around the time of the first Auschwitz Trial in 1963. It highlights reportage on the trial and the ideological interpretations of the Holocaust used by broadcasters"--Provided by publisher.

In an age of information and new media the relationships between remembering and forgetting have changed. This volume addresses the tension between loud and often spectacular histories and those forgotten pasts we strain to hear. Employing social and cultural analysis, the essays within examine mnemonic technologies both new and old, and cover subjects as diverse as U.S. internment camps for Japanese Americans in WWII, the Canadian Indian Residential School system, Israeli memorial videos, and the desaparecidos in Argentina. Through these cases, the contributors argue for a re-interpretation of Guy Debord's notion of the spectacle as a conceptual apparatus through which to examine the contemporary landscape of social memory, arguing that the concept of spectacle might be developed in an age seen as dissatisfied with the present, nervous about the future, and obsessed with the past. Perhaps now "spectacle" can be thought of not as a tool of distraction employed solely by hegemonic powers, but instead as a device used to answer Walter Benjamin's plea to "explode the continuum of history" and bring our attention to now-time.

Taking a close look at ordinary people 'telling their own story', Nancy Thumim explores self-representations in contemporary digital culture in settings as diverse as reality TV, online storytelling, and oral histories displayed in museums. Self-Representation and Digital Culture addresses the institutional contexts of production, technology and form of the texts, and the point of view of those who represent themselves. This highly original research examines how contradictory and widely different politics inform and shape examples of 'speaking for oneself'. Thumim argues that analysis and theorization of the activity of self-representation is vital for media, communication and cultural studies at a time when examples of this genre both surround us and appear, at first glance, to all be alike.

This project offers a critical overview of how online activities and platforms are becoming an important source for the production and promotion of women's films. Inspired by a transnational feminist framework, Maule examines blogs, websites, online services and projects related to women's filmmaking in an interrogation of the very meaning of women's cinema at the complex intersection with digital technology and globalization. It discusses women's cinema 2.0 as a resistant type of cinematic expression and brings attention to the difficulties inherent in raising and expanding visibility for women's filmic expression within a global sphere dominated by neo-liberalism and post-feminism. The author pays close attention to the challenges and contradictions involved in bringing a niche area of filmmaking and feminist discourse to the broad and diverse communities of the Internet and global media market, while also highlighting the changing forms of media and feminism.

This new work summarizes the research on all forms of media on children, looking at how much time they spend with media everyday, television programming and its impact on children, how advertising has changed to appeal directly to children and the effects on children and the consumer behavior of parents, the relationship between media use and scholastic achievement, the influence of violence in media on anti-social behavior, and the role of media in influencing attitudes on body image, sex and work roles, fashion, & lifestyle.
The average American child, aged 2-17, watches 25 hours of TV per week, plays 1 hr per day of video or computer games, and spends an additional 36 min per day on the internet. 19% of children watch more than 35 hrs per week of TV. This in the face of research that shows TV watching beyond 10 hours per week decreases scholastic performance.
In 1991, George Comstock published Television and the American Child, which immediately became THE standard reference for the research community of the effects of television on children. Since then, interest in the topic has mushroomed, as the availability and access of media to children has become more widespread and occurs earlier in their lifetimes. No longer restricted to television, media impacts children through the internet, computer and video games, as well as television and the movies. There are videos designed for infants, claiming to improve cognitive development, television programs aimed for younger and younger children-even pre-literates, computer programs aimed for toddlers, and increasingly graphic, interactive violent computer games.
*Presents the most recent research on the media use of young people
*Investigates the content of children's media and addresses areas of great concern including violence, sexual behavior, and commercialization
*Discusses policy making in the area of children and the media
*Focuses on experiences unique to children and adolescents

Transnational and transborder journalism are in a unique position to address public discourses on European and regional border-transcending identities. A valuable resource for journalists, students, and scholars of international communication, Journalism across Borders explores how journalists in the border regions of Europe navigate different journalistic cultures and the lack of established routines. Drawing on dozens of interviews and newsroom observation, Kevin Grieves addresses an overlooked but important aspect of international journalism by examining how journalists carry out their daily work in the transnational and regional transborder context.

We live in a world of the image. In many ways, images have replaced words as the defining aspect of cultural identity, whilst at the same time they have become part of our global culture. The rapidly developing discipline of visual cultural studies has become the key ares for examining the issues of our age. This book explains issues and concepts such as psychoanalysis, cultural theory, psotmodernism, queer theory, gender studies and narrative theory. The major theorists are all covered as the authors look at the significance of the visual in the works of Foucault, Barthes, Lacan, Derrida, Baudrillard and Guattari. Taking up a range of themes such as spectatorship, pleasure, power, doubles, hallucination and the frame, the book explains them within the context of these theoretical developments.

Toy Story and the Inner World of the Child offers the first comprehensive analysis of the role of toys and play within the development of film and animation. The author takes the reader on a journey through the complex interweaving of the animation industry with inner world processes, beginning with the early history of film. Karen Cross explores digital meditations through an in-depth analysis of the Pixar Studios and the making of the Toy Story franchise. The book shows how the Toy Story functions as an outlet for exploring fears and anxieties relating to new technologies and industrial processes and the value of taking a psycho-cultural approach to recent controversies surrounding the film industry, particularly its cultural and sexual politics. The book is key reading for film and animation scholars as well as those who are interested in applications of psychoanalysis to popular culture and children's media.

The book provides a comprehensive application of narrative theory to video games, and presents the player-response paradigm of game criticism. Video Game Narrative and Criticism explains the nature of gameplay - a psychological experience and a meaning-making process in the fictional world of video games.

Despite the recent explosion of scholarly interest in "star studies," Brazilian film has received comparatively little attention. As this volume demonstrates, however, the richness of Brazilian stardom extends well beyond the ubiquitous Carmen Miranda. Among the studies assembled here are fascinating explorations of figures such as Eliane Lage (the star attraction of Sao Paulo's Vera Cruz studios), cult horror movie auteur Coffin Joe, and Lazaro Ramos, the most visible Afro-Brazilian actor today. At the same time, contributors interrogate the inner workings of the star system in Brazil, from the pioneering efforts of silent-era actresses to the recent advent of the non-professional movie star.

Sensationalist newspaper coverage of crime has been a matter of keen public interest. But what role has sensationalist reporting played in creating public understanding of the criminal justice system in England and Wales? This book provides an answer, presenting an engaging account of crime reportage from the late eighteenth century to the present day; from the era of specialist reporters to the days of modern investigative journalism. Written in a lively and accessible style and locating familiar crime stories from Constance Kent to Sara Payne in their contemporary presentations to newspaper readers, the chapters explore crime news in broadsheet, quality and tabloid publications and explain its importance to how the criminal justice system has been understood. The book identifies why particular crime stories came to public prominence and how these were constructed and presented for popular consumption, offering new ways of thinking about reportage and the criminal justice system.

Global Media Convergence and Cultural Transformation: Emerging Social Patterns and Characteristics aims to engage the complex relationship between technology, culture, and socio-economic elements by exploring it in a transnational, yet contextually grounded, framework. This book explores diverse perspectives and approaches, from political economy to cultural studies, and from policy studies to ethnography, In order to reflect varied perspectives on the convergence of culture and new media technology.

Ongoing interest in the turmoil of the 1960s clearly demonstrates how these social conflicts continue to affect contemporary politics. In The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements, Kristen Hoerl focuses on fictionalized portrayals of 1960s activism in popular television and film. Hoerl shows how Hollywood has perpetuated politics deploring the detrimental consequences of the 1960s on traditional American values. During the decade, people collectively raised fundamental questions about the limits of democracy under capitalism. But Hollywood has proved dismissive, if not adversarial, to the role of dissent in fostering progressive social change. Film and television are salient resources of shared understanding for audiences born after the 1960s because movies and television programs are the most accessible visual medium for observing the decade's social movements. Hoerl indicates that a variety of television programs, such as Family Ties, The Wonder Years, and Law and Order, along with Hollywood films, including Forrest Gump, have reinforced images of the ""bad sixties."" These stories portray a period in which urban riots, antiwar protests, sexual experimentation, drug abuse, and feminism led to national division and moral decay. According to Hoerl, these messages supply distorted civics lessons about what we should value and how we might legitimately participate in our democracy. These warped messages contribute to ""selective amnesia,"" a term that stresses how popular media renders radical ideas and political projects null or nonexistent. Selective amnesia removes the spectacular events and figures that define the late-1960s from their motives and context, flattening their meaning into reductive stereotypes. Despite popular television and film, Hoerl explains, memory of 1960s activism still offers a potent resource for imagining how we can strive collectively to achieve social justice and equality.

This book investigates the role of citizen journalism in railroading social and political changes in sub-Saharan Africa. Case studies are drawn from research conducted by leading scholars from the fields of media studies, journalism, anthropology and history, who uniquely probe the real impact of technologies in driving change in Africa.

This is the third edition of Character Development and Storytelling for Games, a standard work in the field that brings all of the teaching from the first two books up to date and tackles the new challenges of today. Professional game writer and designer Lee Sheldon combines his experience and expertise in this updated edition. New examples, new game types, and new challenges throughout the text highlight the fundamentals of character writing and storytelling. But this book is not just a box of techniques for writers of video games. It is an exploration of the roots of character development and storytelling that readers can trace from Homer to Chaucer to Cervantes to Dickens and even Mozart. Many contemporary writers also contribute insights from books, plays, television, films, and, yes, games. Sheldon and his contributors emphasize the importance of creative instinct and listening to the inner voice that guides successful game writers and designers. Join him on his quest to instruct, inform, and maybe even inspire your next great game.

The traditional documentary programming of network television's bygone era has given way to the recent explosion of ratings-driven, personality-based news magazine programming. While ostensibly conforming to a high standard of public service, these magazines, as even some of their producers admit, must succumb to the forces of public appetite and profit maximization in order to be competitive.

This study examines this phenomenon of the electronic magazine and shows how the soft news programs affect the public's view of American politics and culture. Maintaining the distinction between the syndicated, tabloid-style programming (whose survival depends almost entirely on rating success) and the more responsibly conceived network magazine programming, Spragens provides a thorough content analysis of "60 Minutes," "Dateline NBC," "20/20," and similar network series. His study traces the development of the television magazine genre from the original "60 Minutes" through the current crop of news programs; it tracks the soft/hard or sensational/serious content dichotomy and its relation to ratings; and it draws conclusions about the trends in soft news programming and their impact on the American public.

Research examining how schoolteachers have been represented in the news is scarce. This is noteworthy, given the recognition that the news media has an influential agenda-setting function, plays a pivotal role in shaping public opinion, and can influence educational policy. Indeed, there is a view amongst some authorities that education policy and news media coverage are irrevocably interconnected. In addition to the widespread concern about the decline in the status of teaching, many countries are experiencing ongoing teacher recruitment and retention problems. Despite this, very few studies have considered how schoolteachers and teaching as a profession are depicted in the news media. Particularly scarce are investigations with a historical dimension. This book helps fill the gap by examining the reporting in The West Australian newspaper, one of the oldest newspapers in Australia and a daily publication since 1885. It is offered as a contribution towards rectifying the deficit in the corpus of work on how newspapers have depicted teachers and points the way towards one of a number of avenues of research that other scholars in the field could take for various contexts (including different countries) and time periods. Overall, the book highlights the need for key media spokespeople in education--politicians, union representatives, bureaucrats and academics--to consider carefully the messages they want to send regarding teachers and teaching. It also points to implications for journalism education and journalism practice. This book should be read by those working in the fields of educational policy, journalism education, media studies, and history of education internationally, particularly those working in these fields in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.

This book is a vibrant investigation on a deeply human subconscious desire: the desire for omnipresence, or in a nutshell, the desire to be here, there, and everywhere at the same time. After all, why is it not enough just to be in the offline ordinariness of the here and now? To answer this question, Camila Mozzini-Alister does the crossing of two seemingly distant universes: mediation and meditation. Throughout a vigorous archaeology of the relationship between screen and mind allied with an engaging first-person narrative, the author raises awareness of the risks of becoming addicted to social media and obsessed by meditation. This brings forth a vital question: what are the limits for the desire to be more than a body?