We live in a media age where technologies become the sites and sources of our practices and beliefs, including those deeper values that guide decisions about how we should live. Practical Spiritualities in a Media Age explores how and why media become the site and source of spiritual expressions that address the mundane or everydayness of our lives. Including international case studies and essays from leading scholars such as Stewart Hoover and Graham Harvey, the book examines the ways and the places in which people have employed media and information technologies to weave spiritual meaning throughout the demands and pastimes of their lives. Topics range from food and sex to spiritual tourism. In doing so, the volume takes up a call from Paul Heelas' seminal work, Spiritualities of Life, to provide more examples, more richness and more depth to the variety of spiritual practices that exist in late modernity. Providing critical, scholarly explorations of the complexities and contradictions of late-modern spiritual practices, Practical Spiritualities in a Media Age is a must-read for anyone working in the intersection of media, religion or spirituality, and culture.

This highly original and lively study represents the first analysis of the dynamics of British press reporting of India and the attempts made by the British Government to manipulate press coverage as part of a strategy of imperial control. The press was an important forum for debate over India's future and was used by groups within the political elite to advance their agendas. Yet it also provided the wider British public with the information and images from which they formed their perceptions of the subcontinent. The repercussions of press reporting were therefore considerable, being felt not only in Britain, but also within India and the wider world. For this reason British imperial administrators felt the need to integrate press management with their approach to government. Kaul focuses on a period of critical transition in the history of the Raj, a period which witnessed the impact of the First World War, major constitutional reform initiatives, the tragedy of the Amritsar massacre, and the launching of Gandhi's mass movement. The war was also a watershed in official media manipulation, the Government's previously informal and ad hoc attempts to shape press reporting were placed on a more formal basis and explicitly incorporated into official strategy. This book will be essential reading for students of the British Empire, Indian history and the British press. It also offers important insights for students of media and communications studies and the history of political communication - and indeed anyone concerned with understanding the ever-deepening relationship between politics and the mass media today.

Anthropological interest in mass communication and media has exploded in the last two decades, engaging and challenging the work on the media in mass communications, cultural studies, sociology and other disciplines. This is the first book to offer a systematic overview of the themes, topics and methodologies in the emerging dialogue between anthropologists studying mass communication and media analysts turning to ethnography and cultural analysis. Drawing on dozens of semiotic, ethnographic and cross-cultural studies of mass media, it offers new insights into the analysis of media texts, offers models for the ethnographic study of media production and consumption, and suggests approaches for understanding media in the modern world system. Placing the anthropological study of mass media into historical and interdisciplinary perspectives, this book examines how work in cultural studies, sociology, mass communication and other disciplines has helped shape the re-emerging interest in media by anthropologists.

This book throws light on ideologies, practices and sociocultural developments currently shaping language use in Japan by departing from the more common investigation of language in private contexts and examining aspects of the language found in a range of significant public spaces, from the material (an international airport, the streets of Tokyo, the JSL classroom in Japan and courtrooms) to the electronic (television dramas, local government web pages and cyberspace). Through its study of the language encountered in such settings, the volume provides a deeper understanding of multifaceted aspects of linguistic diversity, both in terms of the use of languages other than Japanese and of issues relating to the Japanese language itself. The variety of theoretical approaches brought to bear by contributing authors ensures a substantial intellectual contribution to the literature on language in contemporary Japan. This book was published as a special issue of Japanese Studies.

First published in 1994, this book examines the extent to which television affects the people who watch it. Television is frequently blamed for increased violence, shortened attention spans, the decline of literacy and political indoctrination. In this book, the author considers the theories and evidence against television and argues that much of the panic is unfounded. Instead, he asserts that the danger of television is that it is the central apparatus of consumer society. He states that the success of television is measured not in terms of the enjoyment we get from programs, but by how much money we spend as a result of watching them.

This book looks at how media coverage reinforces gender stereotyping and influence the public evaluations of women leaders' candidacies and performance. Through the analysis of several examples and experiences illustrating specific issues, like the double bind; the trivialization effect and personal politics, readers will be introduced to the controversial yet familiar question of why there are so few women in power and why the glass ceiling seems still so difficult to break.The book also analyzes the consequences of recent developments in political communication for female leadership. Processes such as the popularization and the personalization of politics as well as the advent of the new media are changing the nature and the scope of leadership in contemporary democracies. The book discusses some of the implications of such a complex framework in terms of possible changes in the style of female political leadership.

"Beyond the Box" gives students and couch potatoes alike a better understanding of what it means to watch television in an era of profound technological change.
Charts the revolution in television viewing that is currently underway in living rooms across the world
Probes how the Internet's development has altered how television is made and consumed
Looks at a range of topics and programmes - from voting practices on American Idol to online forums for Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans
Offers a fresh and innovative perspective that focuses on the shift in audience experience and how it has blurred established boundaries

"Analysts," "political scientists," "scholars," and "consultants,"--The News Shapers describes the elite club of individuals that the media approach for "inside information," background, or predictions concerning the outcome of still-unfolding stories. Although they are presented as detached experts, Lawrence C. Soley uncovers their long histories of partisanship as former government officials or politicians, and charges that most of the shapers have no better credentials than the millions of people to whom the news media never turn. Soley's findings, based on a University of Minnesota study which examined three major networks' evening newscasts during 1987-1988, reveal that a small number of white, politically conservative men associated with Washington-based think tanks, former Republican administrations, and private, East Coast universities virtually monopolize political discourse in the mass media. Dispelling the myth of the media's liberal bias, Soley discusses the shortcomings of both print and broadcast journalism which lead to selection of partisan news analysts, and the effects of their commentaries on foreign and domestic affairs. Special attention is given to Henry Kissinger, Washington "Think Tanks," and the media's handling of the conflict with Iraq. The News Shapers identifies the "experts," their past political affiliations, and their often thin academic credentials. It is highly recommended for scholars in communications, journalism, and political science, as well as for newspaper readers and television news viewers.

Cinema in India is an entertainment medium that is interwoven into society and culture at large. It is clearly evident that continuous struggle and conflict at the personal as well as societal levels is depicted in cinema in India. It has become a reflection of society both in negative and positive ways. Hence, cinema has become an influential factor and one of the largest mass communication mediums in the nation. Social and Cultural Dynamics in Indian Cinema is an essential reference source that discusses cultural and societal issues including caste, gender, oppression, and social movements through cinema and particularly in specific language cinema and culture. Featuring research on topics such as Bollywood, film studies, and gender equality, this book is ideally designed for researchers, academicians, film studies students, and industry professionals seeking coverage on various aspects of regional cinema in India.

This book examines, through the case study of Indonesia over recent decades, how the reporting of violence can drive the escalation of violence, and how journalists can alter their reporting practices in order to have the opposite effect and promote peace. It discusses the nature of press freedom in Indonesia from 1966 onwards, considers the relationship between the press and politicians, and explores journalists working methods. It goes on to outline in detail the communal wars in eastern Indonesia in the period 1999-2000, arguing that communication as much as physical preparations for violence were key to bringing about the wars, with journalists rigid professional routines and newswriting conventions causing them to reproduce and enlarge the battle cries of those at war. The book concludes by advocating a "development communication" approach to journalism in transitional settings, in order to help journalists to counter the disintegrative tendencies of failing states and the communal strife that can result.

Why do people read newspapers? How is community possible in an urban setting? Answers to both these questions have been attempted in the theorizing of urban sociologist and in journalist accounts of the role of local newspapers. Newspapers are said to foster a "sense of community." The existence of local community ties, on the other hand, is said to foster newspaper circulation and readership. By focusing on the community/communication relationship, this book raises questions and analyzes the nature of these relationships and how they work.

In recent years, the US fake news program The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has become a surprisingly important source of information, conversation, and commentary about public affairs. Perhaps more surprisingly, so-called 'fake news' is now a truly global phenomenon, with various forms of news parody and political satire programming appearing throughout the world. This collection of innovative chapters takes a close and critical look at global news parody from a wide range of countries including the USA and the UK, Italy and France, Hungary and Romania, Israel and Palestine, Iran and India, Australia, Germany, and Denmark. Traversing a range of national cultures, political systems, and programming forms, News Parody and Political Satire Across the Globe offers insight into the central and perhaps controversial role that news parody has come to play in the world, and explores the multiple forces that enable and constrain its performance. It will help readers to better understand the intersections of journalism, politics, and comedy as they take shape across the globe in a variety of political and media systems. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Popular Communication.

Food, Media and Contemporary Culture is designed to interrogate the cultural fascination with food as the focus of a growing number of visual texts that reveal the deep, psychological relationship that each of us has with rituals of preparing, presenting and consuming food and images of food.

Stripping away the hype, this book describes how, when, and why media violence can influence children of different ages, giving parents and teachers the power to maximize the media's benefits and minimize its harm. There are many opinions about media violence and children, but not all are supported by science. In this book, the top experts gather the latest results from 50 years of scientific study as the basis for a comprehensive, in-depth examination of the complex issues surrounding the effects of media violence of different types. Each chapter focuses on a particular issue of concern, including "hot" topics such as brain development, cyber-bullying, video games, and verbal aggression. Articles take into account factors such as economics, differences based on the ages of children, and differences between types of media violence. This book provides the information parents and those who work with families need to make the best choices. It includes chapters specifically relevant to the types of bullying schools have the most trouble identifying and controlling. Most importantly, the writing is both intelligent and accessible so that parents, educators, pediatricians, and policymakers can understand and apply the findings presented. Includes the newest research on topics of particular concern today, including cyber-bullying, video games, song lyrics, and brain development Covers all major media, including television, movies, music, video games, and the Internet Describes the psychological processes through which media violence influences attitudes, emotions, and behaviors Provides the context necessary to understand why media violence does not affect everyone the same way Discusses how media violence intersects with public policy, identifies the problems with the existing rating systems, and suggests strategies to improve the situation and foster children's healthy development

What happens when communication breaks down? Is it the condition for mistakes and errors that is characteristic of digital culture? And if mistakes and errors have a certain power, what stands behind it? To address these questions, this collection assembles a range of cutting-edge philosophical, socio-political, art historical and media theoretical inquiries that address contemporary culture as a terrain of miscommunication. If the period since the industrial revolution can be thought of as marked by the realisation of the possibilities for global communication, in terms of the telephone, telegraph, television, and finally the internet, Miscommunications shows that to think about the contemporary historical moment, a new history and theory of these devices needs to be written, one which illustrates the emergence of the current cultures of miscommunication and the powers of the false. The essays in the book chart the new conditions for discourse in the 21st century and collectively show how studies of communication can be refigured when we focus on the capacity for errors, accidents, mistakes, malfunctions and both intentional and non-intentional miscommunications.

With contributions from leading international experts from within both the communications industry and academia, "Trends in Communication Policy Research" comprises the very latest developments in the theories, methods, and practical applications of the dynamic field of communication policy research. Topical and of high societal and political relevance, this authoritative and up-to-date volume will prove an invaluable reference for students and scholars seeking to understand future trends in communication policy research.

Designed for the critical media studies curriculum, The Media Studies Reader is an entry point into the major theories and debates that have shaped critical media studies from the 1940s to the present. Combining foundational essays with influential new writings, this collection provides a tool box for understanding old and new media as objects of critical inquiry. It is comprised of over 40 readings that are organized into seven sections representing key concepts and themes covered in an introductory media studies course: culture, technology, representation, industry, identity, audience and citizenship. Critical introductions frame each section to help students place each reading in context and within a broader scholarly dialogue. Rather than relegating the issue of difference to just one section, each section includes scholarship that foregrounds the politics of gender, ethnicity, race, class, sexuality, and geopolitics. Longer readings were selectively edited for conciseness and accessibility, and to maximize breath of coverage. A map of a rapidly growing---and changing---field, The Media Studies Reader is an invaluable resource to students as well as established scholars.

Contemporary observers of politics in America often reduce democracy to demography. Whatever portion of the vote not explained by the class, gender, race, and religious differences of voters is attributed to the candidates' positions on the issues of the day. But are these the only--or even the main--factors that determine the vote?
The Performance of Politics develops a new way of looking at democratic struggles for power, explaining what happened, and why, during the 2008 presidential campaign in the United States. Drawing on vivid examples taken from a range of media coverage, participant observation at a Camp Obama, and interviews with leading political journalists, Jeffrey Alexander argues that images, emotion, and performance are the central features of the battle for power. While these features have been largely overlooked by pundits, they are, in fact, the primary foci of politicians and their staff. Obama and McCain painstakingly constructed heroic self-images for their campaigns and the successful projections of those images suffused not only each candidate's actual rallies, and not only their media messages, but also the ground game. Money and organization facilitate the ground game, but they do not determine it. Emotion, images, and performance do. Though an untested senator and the underdog in his own party, Obama succeeded in casting himself as the hero--and McCain the anti-hero--and the only candidate fit to lead in challenging times.
Illuminating the drama of Obama's celebrity, the effect of Sarah Palin on the race, and the impact of the emerging financial crisis, Alexander's engaging narrative marries the immediacy and excitement of the final months of this historic presidential campaign with a new understanding of how politics work.

Offering a unique focus on the development of human communication, this book integrates and synthesizes a more comprehensive array of research than most investigations of communicative development. As such, it incorporates materials dealing with the development of nonverbal communication, language, and cognition, and examines how they are integrated in the growing child's everyday interaction. This information is distilled into a set of key principles and practices--culled from a variety of fields including developmental and social psychology, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and communication--for parents or adults interested in child development. While this book does not offer an in-depth view in any one area, it provides a comprehensive overview of the various components of human communicative development and its significance for the child's cognitive and emotional growth. It is quite clear that developmental processes are constrained by multiple influences whose interactions have just begun to be uncovered. Examining the diverse facets of communicative development will enable professionals to garner further insights into the mystery of human communication.

Editorial ScopeThe Environmental Communication Yearbook is a multidisciplinary forum through which a broad audience of academics, professionals, and practitioners can share and build theoretical, critical, and applied scholarship addressing environmental communication in a variety of contexts. This peer-reviewed annual publication invites submissions that showcase and/or advance our understanding of the production, reception, contexts, or processes of human communication regarding environmental issues. Theoretical expositions, literature reviews, case studies, cultural and mass media studies, best practices, and essays on emerging issues are welcome, as are both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Areas of topical coverage will include: *participatory processes: public participation, collaborative decision making, dispute resolution, consensus building processes, regulatory negotiations, community dialogue, building civic capacity; *journalism and mass communications: newspaper, magazine, book and other forms of printed mass media; advertising and public relations; media studies; and radio, television, and Internet broadcasting; and *communication studies: rhetorical/historical case studies, organizational analyses, public relations/issues management, interpersonal/relational dimensions, risk communication, and psychological/cognitive research, all of which examine the origins, content, structure, and outcomes of discourse about environmental issues. Submissions are accepted on an ongoing basis for inclusion in volumes published annually. Audience Researchers, scholars, students and practitioners in environmental communication, journalism, rhetoric, public relations, mass communication, risk analysis, political science, environmental education, environmental studies, public administrations; policymakers; others interested in environmental issues and the communication channels used for discourse and information dissemination on the topic. For more information and guidelines for submissions, visit www.erlbaum.com/ecy.htm.

Journalism Studies: The Basics provides an introductory overview of the emerging field of Journalism Studies, discussing key issues and contemporary debates. Drawing on Conboy s extensive experience in the field, the changing nature of journalism and its future directions are addressed, through chapters covering:

• the history and development of Journalism Studies
• how journalists are created through training and education
• changing research methods and processes in journalism
• the impact of the end product in wider society
• global perspectives on journalism
• technology and the future of the discipline.

Situated within a fast growing and dynamic field of study, this engaging introduction will be valuable reading for students of journalism, media and communication, along with those seeking to develop a broader understanding of contemporary journalism.

Born in Millheim, Texas, to a family of German immigrants who moved to Texas in the wake of the 1848 revolution, William Andreas Trenckmann was a teacher, journalist, and publisher who successfully combined his German heritage with a new, distinctly Texan identity. His education was cultivated at the brand new Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, where he distinguished himself as the valedictorian of the first graduating class; he later served on the college's board of directors and was even offered the presidency. From 1907 to 1909, he represented Austin County in the Texas legislature. Trenckmann's lasting contribution to Texas history, however, was the creation of Das Wochenblatt, a German-language weekly newspaper that he edited and published for over forty years. Das Wochenblatt became a popular and respected source of information for German-speaking immigrants, their descendants, and the Texas communities where they lived and worked. Through the paper, Trenckmann advocated for civil liberties and free elections. He also vigorously opposed prohibition, the Ku Klux Klan, and later the rise of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism. When the United States entered World War I, many German-language publications were suspended or otherwise heavily censored, but Trenckmann's newspaper was granted a rare exemption from the wartime government. From 1931 to 1933, Trenckmann serialized his memoirs, Erlebtes und Beobachtetes, or "experiences and observations." In Preserving German Texan Identity, historians Walter L. Buenger and Walter D. Kamphoefner present a revised and annotated translation of those memoirs as a revealing window into the lives of German Texans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Television had, until recently, a social and cultural purpose. In Britain, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, were committed to develop and maintain these purposes. With the enlargement of the range of choices for viewers by digital television and the provision of access to cable and satellite TV and the Internet, the role of the terrestrial television channels is being diluted. The authors examine these effects and consider what can be done to maintain the standards and quality of television at a time of unlimited competition.

Thatcher& After explores the persistent reappearances of Margaret Thatcher, Britain's most loved and reviled Prime Minister, in contemporary British culture. Twenty years after Thatcher left office, Britain is still struggling to come to terms with her legacy. This exciting and original volume reads Thatcher's moment as a profound and powerful rupture in British political and cultural life and argues that there is an afterlife to Thatcher and Thatcherism that requires address and even redress in the present. The urgent goal of this volume is to restore a Thatcherite past to a present that is increasingly forgetful and celebratory of Thatcher and to resist the growing conservatism in British life. Its contributors provide strategies and opportunities to resist in the present, however belatedly, Thatcherism's all-pervasive policies - policies that can be seen problematically even at the core of New Labour's ideologies. Through a range of essays, scholars of literature, cultural studies, media studies, film and drama question what it means to be living in a post-Thatcher world.