The contributors to Re-Understanding Media advance a feminist version of Marshall McLuhan's key text, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, repurposing his insight that "the medium is the message" for feminist ends. They argue that while McLuhan's theory provides a falsely universalizing conception of the technological as a structuring form of power, feminist critics can take it up to show how technologies alter and determine the social experiences of race, gender, class, and sexuality. This volume showcases essays, experimental writings, and interviews from media studies scholars, artists, activists, and those who work with and create technology. Among other topics, the contributors extend McLuhan's discussion of transportation technology to the attics and cargo boxes that moved Black women through the Underground Railroad, apply McLuhan's concept of media as extensions of humans to analyze Tupperware as media of containment, and take up 3D printing as a feminist and decolonial practice. The volume demonstrates how power dynamics are built into technological media and how media can be harnessed for radical purposes. Contributors. Nasma Ahmed, Morehshin Allahyari, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Brooke Erin Duffy, Ganaele Langlois, Sara Martel, Shannon Mattern, Cait McKinney, Jeremy Packer, Craig Robertson, Sarah Sharma, Ladan Siad, Rianka Singh, Nicholas Taylor, Armond R. Towns, and Jennifer Wemigwans

Taking a thematic approach, this new companion provides an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and international study of American literary journalism. From the work of Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman to that of Joan Didion and Dorothy Parker, literary journalism is a genre that both reveals and shapes American history and identity. This volume not only calls attention to literary journalism as a distinctive genre but also provides a critical foundation for future scholarship. It brings together cutting-edge research from literary journalism scholars, examining historical perspectives; themes, venues, and genres across time; theoretical approaches and disciplinary intersections; and new directions for scholarly inquiry. Provoking reconsideration and inquiry, while providing new historical interpretations, this companion recognizes, interacts with, and honors the tradition and legacies of American literary journalism scholarship. Engaging the work of disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, African American studies, gender studies, visual studies, media studies, and American studies, in addition to journalism and literary studies, this book is perfect for students and scholars of those disciplines.

This edited collection analyzes the role of digital technology in contemporary society dialectically. While many authors, journalists, and commentators have argued that the internet and digital technologies will bring us democracy, equality, and freedom, digital culture often results in loss of privacy, misinformation, and exploitation. This collection challenges celebratory readings of digital technology by suggesting digital culture's potential is limited because of its fundamental relationship to oppressive social forces. The Dialectic of Digital Culture explores ways the digital realm challenges and reproduces power. The contributors provide innovative case studies of various phenomenon including #metoo, Etsy, mommy blogs, music streaming, sustainability, and net neutrality to reveal the reproduction of neoliberal cultural logics. In seemingly transformative digital spaces, these essays provide dialectical readings that challenge dominant narratives about technology and study specific aspects of digital culture that are often under explored. Check out the blog for more: http://blog.uta.edu/digitaldialectic

Americans say that reading, watching, or listening to the news is a leading cause of stress. Of course journalists, as watchdogs and public informants, must disseminate information that is inherently negative, but experts argue that the news media's emphasis on the problem has had a negative effect on the public, the press itself, and democracy. At the same time, the past sixty years have seen a rise of journalistic practices that purport to cover the news beyond the typical problem-based narrative. These genres of journalistic reporting are not positive news or fluff reporting: They are rigorous reporting philosophies and practices that share a common goal-reporting beyond the problem-based narrative, thereby exemplifying a commitment to the social responsibility theory of the press, which asserts that journalists have a duty to consider society's best interests. However, there is little academic or professional understanding of these journalistic approaches. As such, this book provides an in-depth examination of socially-responsible news reporting practices, such as constructive journalism, solutions journalism, and peace journalism. Each chapter focuses on one reporting form, defining it and detailing its evolution and status among scholars and practitioners, as well as discussing its known effects and future direction. This edited volume is the first academic book published on these forms of reporting in the United States. It provides a comprehensive resource that explores the theoretical underpinnings of these journalistic genres that grounds these approaches and allows for a coherent line of research to follow as these approaches evolve.

In Performative Memoir: Moving between Worlds, Theresa Carilli and Adrienne Viramontes construct a new genre of writing, performative memoir. Drawing on scholarship in performance studies and autoethnography, the authors outline a methodology for studying autoethnography, performance, and memoir in a new creative process. Carilli and Viramontes then demonstrate the process by creating their own performative memoirs, titled "Loving Crazy" and "Mexican Love," and perform a close reading of each memoir to show how these theories can be applied to our own personal experiences and trauma. Scholars of performance studies, communication, media studies, cultural studies, and trauma studies will find this book particularly useful.

This volume addresses the relationship between irony and popular culture and the role of the consumer in determining and disseminating meaning. Arguing that in a cultural climate largely characterised by fractious communications and perilous linguistic exchanges, the very role of irony in popular culture needs to come under greater scrutiny, it focuses on the many uses, abuses, and misunderstandings of irony in contemporary popular culture, and explores the troubling political populism at the heart of many supposedly satirical and (apparently) non-satirical texts. In an environment in which irony is frequently claimed as a defence for material and behaviour judged controversial, how do we, as a society entrenched in forms of popular culture and media, interpret work that is intended as satire but which reads as unironic? How do we accurately decode works of popular film, literature, television, music, and other cultural forms which sell themselves as bitingly ironic commentaries on current society, but which are also problematic celebrations of the very issues they purport to critique? And what happens when texts intended and received in one manner are themselves ironically recontextualised in another? Bringing together studies across a range of cultural texts including popular music, film and television, Isn't it Ironic? will appeal to scholars of the social sciences and humanities with interests in cultural studies, media studies, popular culture, literary studies and sociology.

In Sudan Media Makers: Writings from the Diaspora, Mohamed A. Satti identifies and interviews six prominent Sudanese media personalities in the diaspora to tell their stories and examine their contributions to Sudanese media. The media and communication professionals are from a variety of backgrounds including print and television journalists, a political cartoonist, and a novelist. Throughout the book, Satti connects the lives of these media makers to the history of Sudan from the last three decades to the present, providing provides insights on Sudan, Sudanese media, and the Sudanese people.

This book explores and explains how traditional and alternative media have framed the issues of gun trafficking into Mexico, drug-related violence, and spillover violence. It reveals how gun trafficking and drug-related violence are social problems for Mexico, while spillover violence is portrayed as a moral panic for the US. Readers will gain a better understanding of how the media portrays and frames the criminal activity that is occurring in Mexico and how it impacts the US. The book analyzes national newspapers from both sides of the US–Mexico border—The New York Times and El Universal—and draws on a theoretical framework of moral panics, social problems, and cultivation theory. It reveals six framing devices, "the blame game," "worthy and unworthy victims," "positive aspects," "negative aspects of gun trafficking," "indirect mention of gun trafficking," and "direct mention of gun trafficking," which are utilized by The New York Times and El Universal to discuss and frame the issue of gun trafficking into Mexico and its impact on Mexico’s border violence. Mexico’s Drug-Related Violence will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in the perception of media and crime, as well as those researching the topic of drug cartels and drug-related violence.

Volume 3 of A History of Early Film examines critical responses to early cinema, including the impassioned thoughts of one of the first film critics, the American poet Vachel Lindsay and considers some contemporary judgements of the social aspects of moving pictures. The volume also includes the 1917 report The Cinema: Its Present Position and Future Possibilities...which provides a unique record of the attitudes towards the cinema by its British audiences exhibitors, producers, guardians of morality and those responsible for licensing.

Americans say that reading, watching, or listening to the news is a leading cause of stress. Of course journalists, as watchdogs and public informants, must disseminate information that is inherently negative, but experts argue that the news media's emphasis on the problem has had a negative effect on the public, the press itself, and democracy. At the same time, the past sixty years have seen a rise of journalistic practices that purport to cover the news beyond the typical problem-based narrative. These genres of journalistic reporting are not positive news or fluff reporting: They are rigorous reporting philosophies and practices that share a common goal-reporting beyond the problem-based narrative, thereby exemplifying a commitment to the social responsibility theory of the press, which asserts that journalists have a duty to consider society's best interests. However, there is little academic or professional understanding of these journalistic approaches. As such, this book provides an in-depth examination of socially-responsible news reporting practices, such as constructive journalism, solutions journalism, and peace journalism. Each chapter focuses on one reporting form, defining it and detailing its evolution and status among scholars and practitioners, as well as discussing its known effects and future direction. This edited volume is the first academic book published on these forms of reporting in the United States. It provides a comprehensive resource that explores the theoretical underpinnings of these journalistic genres that grounds these approaches and allows for a coherent line of research to follow as these approaches evolve.

Algorithmic Culture: How Big Data and Artificial Intelligence are Transforming Everyday Life explores the complex ways in which algorithms and big data, or algorithmic culture, are simultaneously reshaping everyday culture while perpetuating inequality and intersectional discrimination. Contributors situate issues of humanity, identity, and culture in relation to free will, surveillance, capitalism, neoliberalism, consumerism, solipsism, and creativity, offering a critique of the myriad constraints enacted by algorithms. This book argues that consumers are undergoing an ontological overhaul due to the enhanced manipulability and increasingly mandatory nature of algorithms in the market, while also positing that algorithms may help navigate through chaos that is intrinsically present in the market democracy. Ultimately, Algorithmic Culture calls attention to the present-day cultural landscape as a whole as it has been reconfigured and re-presented by algorithms.

Provides journalism students and professionals with clear practical advice on using digital technologies alongside a critical analysis of the impact these technologies have on news reporting. Set in an international context, the new edition features updated discussions of key issues such as Blockchain, 360 degree photography, VR, AR and artificial intelligence. Includes expanded chapters on writing for both social media and chat apps and email, with updated interviews and examples to trace the development of both platforms. The dynamic and engaging companion website features cutting edge supporting resources that illustrate the content and link the book’s material to the web.

The public has always appreciated communication technology for its ability to bring people together but every week we read more and more stories of someone who commits suicide, gets fired, gets "canceled", abandoned, or worse, because of a conflict or misunderstanding involving social media. By examining the technological shortcomings of online media platforms as well as the inhumane speed of information travel, Emami emphasizes that the technology itself is implicated in the current environment of ubiquitous conflict and the pursuit of punishing others online. Using theories that originated in studies of extremism and terrorism, Jessica Emami analyzes the processes that drive people to punish others using social media. Emami demonstrates that "cyberpunishment" is driven by outrage against our personal sense of morality, and a deep desire for our act of punishment to be acknowledged by others. This attitude is maximized on today's social media platforms which are, by their very structure, unable to curb or resist cyberpunishment. This book would be of interest to scholars and students in sociology, criminology, and media studies.

This book concentrates exclusively on the dialogic turn in the governance of science and the environment. The starting point for this book is the dialogic turn in the production and communication of knowledge in which practices claiming to be based on principles of dialogue and participation have spread across diverse social fields. As in other fields of social practice in the dialogic turn, the model of communication underpinning science and environmental governance is dialogue in which scientists and citizens engage in mutual learning on the basis of the different knowledge forms that they bring with them. The official aim is to involve citizens in processes of decision-making on scientific and environmental issues, including issues relating to the built environment such as urban planning. The attempt in this book has been made to build bridges across the fields of science and technology studies, environmental studies and media and communication studies in order to provide theoretically informed and empirically rich accounts of how citizen voices are articulated, invoked, heard, marginalised or silenced in science and environment communication.

Flashbacks in Film examines film flashback as a rich multimodal narrative device, analyzing the cognitive underpinnings of film flashbacks and the mechanisms that lead viewers to successfully comprehend them. Combining a cognitive film theory approach with the theoretical framework proposed by blending theory, which claims that human beings' general ability for conceptual integration underlies most of our daily activities, this book argues that flashbacks make sense to the viewer, as they are specifically designed for the viewer's cognitive understanding. Through a mixture of analysis and dozens of case studies, this book demonstrates that successful film flashbacks appeal to the spectator's natural perceptual and cognitive abilities, which spectators exercise daily. This book will serve as a valuable resource for scholars interested in film studies, media studies, and cognitive linguistics.

This edited volume investigates for the first time the impact of conspiracy theories upon the understanding of Europe as a geopolitical entity as well as an imagined political and cultural space. Focusing on recent developments, the individual chapters explore a range of conspiratorial positions related to Europe. In the current climate of fear and threat, new and old imaginaries of conspiracies such as Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have been mobilised. A dystopian or even apocalyptic image of Europe in terminal decline is evoked in Eastern European and particularly by Russian pro-Kremlin media, while the EU emerges as a screen upon which several narratives of conspiracy are projected trans-nationally, ranging from the Greek debt crisis to migration, Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic. The methodological perspectives applied in this volume range from qualitative discourse and media analysis to quantitative social-psychological approaches, and there are a number of national and transnational case studies. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of extremism, conspiracy theories and European politics.

In what ways is comedy subversive? This vital new book critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining our relations to race and racism through the lens of political correctness. By viewing comedy as both a constitutive feature of social interaction and as a necessary requirement in the appraisal of what is often deemed to be 'politically correct', this book provides an innovative and multidisciplinary approach to the study of comedy and popular culture. In doing so, it engages with the social and cultural tensions inherent to our understandings of political correctness, arguing that comedy can subversively redefine our approach to 'PC Debates', contestations surrounding free speech and the popular portrayal of political correctness in the media and society. Aided by the work of both Slavoj Zizek and Alenka Zupancic, this unique analysis adopts a psychoanalytic/philosophical framework to explore issues of race, racism and political correctness in the widely acclaimed BBC 'mockumentary', The Office (UK), as well as a variety of television comedies. Drawing from psychoanalysis, social psychology and philosophy, this book will be highly relevant for postgraduate students and academic researchers studying comedy, race/racism, multiculturalism, political correctness and television/film.

An Encyclopedia of Communication Ethics: Goods in Contention complements existing communication ethics scholarship with an examination of 103 scholars who explicitly and implicitly contributed to our understanding of this crucial subject matter. The purpose of this collection is to give an overview of key figures whose work assists our understanding of the development and influence of communication ethics. We selected voices on communication ethics after considering an individual author's contribution to the following coordinates: (1) dialectical and dialogical engagement with other scholars and perspectives; (2) the performative praxis of ethics in the interplay of theory and the public domain; and (3) examination of the connection between history and questions with a constitutive ethical theory offering a connecting response. Dialogical and dialectical engagement, performative praxis of ethics, and the intimate relationship between historical moments and ethical reflection provide a background for understanding author selection for this volume.

This volume examines the evolution of the depictions of black femininity in French visual culture as a prism through which to understand the Global North's destructive relationship with the natural world. Drawing on a broad spectrum of archives extending back to the late 18th century - paintings, fashion plates, prints, photographs, and films - this study traces the intricate ways a patriarchal imperialism and a global capitalism have paired black women with the realm of nature to justify the exploitation both of people and of ecosystems. These dehumanizing and speciesist strategies of subjugation have perpetuated interlocking patterns of social injustice and environmental depletion that constitute the most salient challenges facing humankind today. Through a novel approach that merges visual studies, critical race theory, and animal studies, this interdisciplinary investigation historicizes the evolution of the boundaries between human and non-human animals during the modern period. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual studies, critical race theory, colonial and post-colonial studies, animal studies, and French studies.

Exploring the evolution of song and dance in the popular Hindi film, this book examines how these quintessential elements have been and continue to be theorized. As song 'picturizations', as they are frequently called, have evolved, shifting from little more than impromptu moves around tree trunks to highly choreographed affairs featuring scores of professional dancers and exotic backgrounds, their theorization has also developed beyond the initial, peremptory dismissals of earlier critics. Featuring a landmark collection of essays from leading theorists, as well as newer contributions from up-and-coming scholars, this book develops new and exciting ways of thinking about song and dance in Hindi cinema and, in turn, explores how these elements work to (re)define popular Hindi cinema in the twenty-first century. This collection will be of interest to students and scholars of Hindi cinema, musicals, and global popular cultures. It was originally published as a special issue of South Asian Popular Culture.

In Homemaking for the Apocalypse, Jill E. Anderson interrogates patterns of Atomic Age conformity that controlled the domestic practices and private activities of Americans. Used as a way to promote security in a period rife with anxieties about nuclear annihilation and The Bomb, these narratives of domesticity were governed by ideals of compulsory normativity, and their circulation upheld the wholesale idealization of homemaking within a white, middle-class nuclear family and all that came along with it: unchecked reproduction, constant consumerism, and a general policing of practices deemed contradictory to normative American life. Homemaking for the apocalypse seeks out the disruptions to the domestic ideals found in memoirs, Civil Defense literature, the fallout shelter debate, horror films, comics, and science fiction, engaging in elements of horror in order to expose how closely domestic practices are tied to dread and anxiety. Homemaking for the Apocalypse offers a narrative of the Atomic Age that calls into question popular memory's acceptance of the conformity thesis and proposes new methods for critiquing the domestic imperative of the period by acknowledging its deep tie to horror.

This volume examines the shift toward positive and more accurate portrayals of mental illness in entertainment media, asking where these succeed and considering where more needs to be done. With studies that identify and analyze the characters, viewpoints, and experiences of mental illness across film and television, it considers the messages conveyed about mental illness and reflects on how the different texts reflect, reinforce, or challenge sociocultural notions regarding mental illness. Presenting chapters that explore a range of texts from film and television, covering a variety of mental health conditions, including autism, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and more, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, cultural and media studies, and mental health.

This book addresses a prominent group of virtues and vices as portrayed in popular films to further our understanding of these moral character traits. The discussions emphasize the interplay between the philosophical conception of the virtues and vices and the cinematic representations of character. Joseph H. Kupfer explores how fictional characters possessing certain moral strengths and weaknesses concretize our abstract understanding of them. Because the actions that flow from these traits occur in cinematic contexts mirroring real world conditions, the narrative portrayals of these moral characteristics can further our appreciation of their import. Humility, integrity, and perseverance, for example, are depicted in Chariots of Fire, The Fabulous Baker Boys, and Billy Elliot, while the vices of envy, arrogance and vanity are captured in Amadeus, Whiplash, and Young Adult. This interdisciplinary work in philosophy and film criticism will be of great interest to scholars and students of film studies, philosophy of film, ethics, aesthetics, and popular culture.

The first two seasons of Star Trek: Discovery, the newest instalment in the long-running and influential Star Trek franchise, received media and academic attention from the moment they arrived on screen. Discovery makes several key changes to Star Trek's well-known narrative formulae, particularly the use of more serialized storytelling, appealing to audiences' changed viewing habits in the streaming age - and yet the storylines, in their topical nature and the broad range of socio-political issues they engage with, continue in the political vein of the series' megatext. This volume brings together eighteen essays and one interview about the series, with contributions from a variety of disciplines including cultural studies, literary studies, media studies, fandom studies, history and political science. They explore representations of gender, sexuality and race, as well as topics such as shifts in storytelling and depictions of diplomacy. Examining Discovery alongside older entries into the Star Trek canon and tracing emerging continuities and changes, this volume will be an invaluable resource for all those interested in Star Trek and science fiction in the franchise era. List of contributors: Sherryl Vint, Andrea Whiteacre, Torsten Kathke, John Andreas Fuchs, Ina Batzke, Sarah Boehlau, Will Tattersdill, Kerstin-Anja Munderlein, Diana Mafe, Whit Frazier Peterson, Henrik Schillinger, Arne Soennichsen, Judith Rauscher, Amy C. Chambers, Mareike Spychala, Sabrina Mittermeier, Jennifer Volkmer, Si Sophie Pages Whybrew and Lisa Meinecke.