![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Communication studies > Media studies
The term "emerging media " responds to the "big data " now available as a result of the larger role digital media play in everyday life, as well as the notion of "emergence " that has grown across the architecture of science and technology over the last two decades with increasing imbrication. The permeation of everyday life by emerging media is evident, ubiquitous, and destined to accelerate. No longer are images, institutions, social networks, thoughts, acts of communication, emotions and speech-the "media " by means of which we express ourselves in daily life-linked to clearly demarcated, stable entities and contexts. Instead, the loci of meaning within which these occur shift and evolve quickly, emerging in far-reaching ways we are only beginning to learn and bring about. This volume's purpose is to develop, broaden and spark future philosophical discussion of emerging media and their ways of shaping and reshaping the habitus within which everyday lives are to be understood. Drawing from the history of philosophy ideas of influential thinkers in the past, intellectual path makers on the contemporary scene offer new philosophical perspectives, laying the groundwork for future work in philosophy and in media studies. On diverse topics such as identity, agency, reality, mentality, time, aesthetics, representation, consciousness, materiality, emergence, and human nature, the questions addressed here consider the extent to which philosophy should or should not take us to be facing a fundamental transformation.
Music and the Broadcast Experience explores the complex ways in which music and broadcasting have developed together throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. It brings into dialogue researchers working in media and music studies; explores and develops crucial points of contact between studies of music in radio and music in television; and investigates the limits, persistence, and extensions of music broadcasting in the Internet era. The book presents a series of case studies that address key moments and concerns in music broadcasting, past and present, written by leading scholars in the field, who hail from both media and music studies. Unified by attentiveness both to musical sound and meaning and to broadcasting structures, practices, audiences, and discourses, the chapters in this collection address the following topics: the role of live orchestral concerts and opera in the early development of radio and their relation to ideologies of musical uplift; the relation between production culture, music, and television genre; the function of music in sponsored radio during the 1930s; the fortunes of musical celebrity and artistic ambition on television; questions of music format and political economy in the development of online radio; and the negotiation of space, community, and participation among audiences, online and offline, in the early twenty-first century. The collection's ultimate aim is to explore the usefulness and limitations of broadcasting as a concept for understanding music and its cultural role, both historically and today.
This book tackles online social networks by navigating these
systems from the birth to the death of their digital presence.
Navigating the social within the digital can be a contentious
undertaking, as social networks confuse the boundary between
offline and online relationships. These systems work to bring
people together in an online environment, yet participation can
dislocate users from other relationships and deviant online
behaviour can create offline issues. The author begins by examining
the creation of a digital presence in online networks popularized
by websites such as Facebook and MySpace. The book explores how the
digital presence influences how social, cultural and professional
relationships are discovered, forged, maintained and broken, and
journeys through the popular criticisms of social networking such
as employee time-wasting, bullying, stalking, the alleged links
between social networks and suicide and the decline of a user s
public image. Social networks are often treated as morally
ambiguous spaces, which highlights a dissonance between digital and
social literacies. This discord is approached through an
exploration of the everyday undercurrents present in social
networks. The discussion of the digital presence ends by addressing
the intricacies of becoming digitally dead, which explores how a
user removes their identity, with finality, from social networks
and the entire web.
People use online social forums for all sorts of reasons, including
political conversations, regardless of the site's main purpose. But
what leads some of these people to take their online political
activity into the offline world of activism?
Since the advent of the cinema, Jesus has frequently appeared in
our movie houses and on our television screens. Indeed, it may well
be that more people worldwide know about Jesus and his life story
from the movies than from any other medium. Indeed, Jesus' story
has been adapted dozens of times throughout the history of
commercial cinema, from the 1912 silent From the Manger to the
Cross to Mel Gibson's 2004 The Passion of the Christ. No doubt
there are more to come.
Watching Jazz: Encounters with Jazz Performance on Screen is the first systematic study of jazz on screen media. Where earlier studies have focused almost entirely on the role and portrayal of jazz in Hollywood film, the present book engages with a plethora of technologies and media from early film and soundies through television to recent developments in digital technologies and online media. Likewise, the authors discuss jazz in the widest sense, ranging from Duke Ellington and Jimmy Dorsey through the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Oscar Peterson, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charles Mingus to Pat Metheny. Much of this rich and fascinating material has never been studied in depth before, and what emerges most clearly are the manifold connections between the music and the media on which it was and is being recorded. Its long association with film and television has left its trace in jazz, just as online and social media are subtly shaping it now. Vice versa, visual media have always benefited from focusing on music and this significantly affected their development. The book follows these interrelations, showing how jazz was presented and represented on screen and what this tells us about the music, the people who made it and their audiences. The result is a new approach to jazz and the media, which will be required reading for students of both fields.
Devices of Curiosity excavates a largely unknown genre of early cinema, the popular-science film. Primarily a work of cinema history, it also draws on the insights of the history of science. Beginning around 1903, a variety of producers made films about scientific topics for general audiences, inspired by a vision of cinema as an educational medium. This book traces the development of popular-science films over the first half of the silent era, from its beginnings in England to its flourishing in France around 1910. Devices of Curiosity also considers how popular-science films exemplify the circulation of knowledge. These films initially relied upon previous traditions such as the magic-lantern lecture for their representational strategies, and they continually had recourse to established visual iconography, but they also created novel visual paradigms and led to the creation of ambitious new film collections. Finally, the book discerns a transit between nonfictional and fictional modes, seeing affinities between popular-science films and certain aspects of fiction films, particularly Louis Feuillade's crime melodramas. This kind of circulation is important for an understanding of the wider relevance of early popular-science films, which impacted the formation of the documentary, educational, and avant-garde cinemas.
Since 1997, the war in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has taken more than 6 million lives and shapes the daily existence of the nation's residents. While the DRC is often portrayed in international media as an unproductive failed state, the Congolese have turned increasingly to art-making to express their experience to external eyes. Author Cherie Rivers Ndaliko argues that cultural activism and the enthusiasm to produce art exists in Congo as a remedy for the social ills of war and as a way to communicate a positive vision of the country. Ndaliko introduces a memorable cast of artists, activists, and ordinary people from the North-Kivu province, whose artistic and cultural interventions are routinely excluded from global debates that prioritize economics, politics, and development as the basis of policy decision about Congo. Rivers also shows how art has been mobilized by external humanitarian and charitable organizations, becoming the vehicle through which to inflict new kinds of imperial domination. Written by a scholar and activist in the center of the current public policy debate, Necessary Noise examines the uneasy balance of accomplishing change through art against the unsteady background of civil war. At the heart of this book is the Yole!Africa cultural center, which is the oldest independent cultural center in the east of Congo. Established in the aftermath of volcano Nyiragongo's 2002 eruption and sustained through a series of armed conflicts, the cultural activities organized by Yole!Africa have shaped a generation of Congolese youth into socially and politically engaged citizens. By juxtaposing intimate ethnographic, aesthetic, and theoretical analyses of this thriving local initiative with case studies that expose the often destructive underbelly of charitable action, Necessary Noise introduces into heated international debates on aid and sustainable development a compelling case for the necessity of arts and culture in negotiating sustained peace. Through vivid descriptions of a community of young people transforming their lives through art, Ndaliko humanizes a dire humanitarian disaster. In so doing, she invites readers to reflect on the urgent choices we must navigate as globally responsible citizens. The only study of music or film culture in the east of Congo, Necessary Noise raises an impassioned and vibrantly interdisciplinary voice that speaks to the theory and practice of socially engaged scholarship.
When talk circulates through technological media - through television or radio and through the activities they support, like the dissemination of news, product advertising or entertainment - it takes on distinctive characteristics, functions and styles. The talking media have developed their own ways of styling individuals (often as celebrities of different types, but also as 'ordinary people'), and ways of styling relationships (such as constructing informality or trust or authority). Media also style their own ways of communicating (how to read the news, how to conduct interviews, how to entertain or educate others, and so on). Media invest heavily in style and styling, drawing on semiotic modes well beyond speech itself. 'Style' therefore needs to be theorised carefully in sociolinguistics and neighbouring disciplines. Episodes and fragments of mediated styles commonly take on new lives when they are re-circulated via interactive 'new' media platforms. Style therefore points to both stability, where ways of speaking and ways of being have become culturally familiar, and to instability, in the talking media's persistent dynamic reworking of stylistic norms. This book explores a wide range of normative structures and creative media processes of this sort, in many different national contexts and in different languages. The globalised world is already massively mediatised - what we know about language, people and society is necessarily shaped through our engagement with media. But talking media are caught up in wider currents of rapid change too. Creative innovations in media styling can heighten our reflexive awareness, but they can also unsettle our existing understandings of language-society relations. In reporting new investigations by expert researchers, situated in relation to relevant theory, the book gives an original and timely account of how style, media and change need to be integrated further to advance the discipline of sociolinguistics.
Through popular movies starring Bruce Lee and songs like the disco hit "Kung Fu Fighting," martial arts have found a central place in the Western cultural imagination. But what would 'martial arts' be without the explosion of media texts and images that brought it to a wide audience in the late 1960s and early 1970s? In this examination of the media history of what we now call martial arts, author Paul Bowman makes the bold case that the phenomenon of martial arts is chiefly an invention of media representations. Rather than passively taking up a preexisting history of martial arts practices-some of which, of course, predated the martial arts boom in popular culture-media images and narratives actively constructed martial arts. Grounded in a historical survey of the British media history of martial arts such as Bartitsu, jujutsu, judo, karate, tai chi, and MMA across a range of media, this book thoroughly recasts our understanding of the history of martial arts. By interweaving theories of key thinkers on historiography, such as Foucault and Hobsbawm, and Said's ideas on Orientalism with analyses of both mainstream and marginal media texts, Bowman arrives at the surprising insight that media representations created martial arts rather than the other way around. In this way, he not only deepens our understanding of martial arts but also demonstrates the productive power of media discourses.
Video and interactive computer games now constitute an enormous industry that rivals television and film. Moreover, gaming is of growing importance in spheres beyond mere entertainment; games and gaming technology are increasingly applied to other ends, including for educational, political, and military purposes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, the cultural, social, and economic significance of games and gaming is now profound, and ripe for scholarly scrutiny and study. As research continues to flourish as never before, this major new reference resource from Routledge's Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies series offers a multi-dimensional overview of games and gaming culture and brings together in four volumes the very best foundational and cutting-edge scholarship. Edited by the field's leading scholar, Mark J. P. Wolf, the collection encompasses the socio-cultural, political, and economic dimensions of gaming from a wide variety of perspectives. The materials gathered explore issues of game design and development, provide close analysis of games as cultural artefacts, and address issues of policy, such as those related to race, class, gender, and sexuality. Video Games and Gaming Culture is supplemented by a comprehensive index and includes a full introduction, newly written by the editor.
The diffusion and rapid evolution of new communication technologies has reshaped media and politics. But who are the new power players? Written by a leading scholar in the field, The Hybrid Media System is a sweeping and compelling new theory of how political communication now works. Politics is increasingly defined by organizations, groups, and individuals who are best able to blend older and newer media logics, in what Andrew Chadwick terms a hybrid system. Power is wielded by those who create, tap, and steer information flows to suit their goals and in ways that modify, enable, and disable the power of others, across and between a range of older and newer media. Chadwick examines news making in all of its contemporary "professional" and "amateur" forms, parties and election campaigns, activist movements, and government communication. He presents compelling illustrations of the hybrid media system in flow, from American presidential campaigns to WikiLeaks, from live prime ministerial debates to hotly-contested political scandals, from the daily practices of journalists, campaign workers, and bloggers to the struggles of new activist organizations. This wide-ranging book maps the emerging balance of power between older and newer media technologies, genres, norms, behaviors, and organizational forms. Political communication has entered a new era. This book reveals how the clash of older and newer media logics causes chaos and disintegration but also surprising new patterns of order and integration.
Fox News, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Rush Limbaugh Show, National Public Radio - a list of available political media sources could continue without any apparent end. This book investigates how people navigate these choices. It asks whether people are using media sources that express political views matching their own, a behavior known as partisan selective exposure. By looking at newspaper, cable news, news magazine, talk radio, and political website use, this book offers the most comprehensive look to-date at the extent to which partisanship influences our media selections. Using data from numerous surveys and experiments, the results provide broad evidence about the connection between partisanship and news choices. This book also examines who seeks out likeminded media and why they do it. Perceptions of partisan biases in the media vary - sources that seem quite biased to some don't seem so biased to others. These perceptual differences provide insight into why some people select politically likeminded media - a phenomenon that is democratically consequential. On one hand, citizens may become increasingly divided from using media that coheres with their political beliefs. In this way, partisan selective exposure may result in a more fragmented and polarized public. On the other hand, partisan selective exposure may encourage participation and understanding. Likeminded partisan information may inspire citizens to participate in politics and help them to organize their political thinking. But, ultimately, the partisan use of niche news has some troubling effects. It is vital that we think carefully about the implications both for the conduct of media research and, more broadly, for the progress of democracy.
The common admission that 'everything I know about religion I learned from the movies' is true for believers as much as for unbelievers. And at the movies, Catholicism is the American religion. As an intensely visual faith with a well-defined ritual and authority structure, Catholicism lends itself to the drama and pageantry of film. Beginning with the 1915 silent movie Regeneration and ending with Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, eleven prominent scholars explore how Catholic characters, spaces, and rituals are represented in cinema. Each of the contributors to Catholics in the Movies has chosen one movie from over one hundred years of moviemaking to discuss what happens when an organized religion - not just Bible stories or spiritual themes - enter into a film. Arranged chronologically, Catholics in the Movies sets the films within a wider historical narrative while providing close readings of critical themes and images that go beyond the conventional. Several chapters focus on the many directors and screenwriters who were raised in Catholic families, and who explore this faith in complex and compelling ways. Authors look at film classics like Going My Way and The Song of Bernadette to reveal how Catholic characters simultaneously reflect outsider status as well as the 'American way-of-life.' They consider the violence of The Godfather and the physicality of The Exorcist not simply as antonyms for religion but as tightly linked to Catholic sensibilities. Lesser known films like Seven Cities of Gold and Santitos are examined for their connection to historical movements like anti-communism and Mexican immigration. Tracing the story of American Catholic history through popular films, Catholics in the Movies should be a valuable resource for anyone interested in American Catholicism and religion and film.
As our world becomes more globalized, documentary film and
television tell more cosmopolitan stories of the world's social,
political, and cultural situation. Ib Bondebjerg examines how
global challenges are reflected and represented in documentaries
from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Scandinavia after
2001. The documentaries deal with the war on terror, the
globalization of politics, migration, the multicultural challenge,
and climate change.
The media play a key role in post-apartheid South Africa and is often positioned at the centre of debates around politics, identity and culture. Media, such as radio, are often said to also play a role in deepening democracy, while simultaneously holding the power to frame political events, shape public discourse and impact citizens' perceptions of reality. Broadcasting Democracy: Radio and Identity in South Africa provides an exciting look into the diverse world of South African radio, exploring how various radio formats and stations play a role in constructing post-apartheid identities. At the centre of the book is the argument that various types of radio stations represent autonomous systems of cultural activity, and are 'consumed' as such by listeners. In this sense, it argues that South African radio is 'broadcasting democracy'. Broadcasting Democracy will be of interest to media scholars and radio listeners alike.
Outside the Lettered City traces how middle-class Indians responded to the rise of the cinema as a popular form of mass entertainment in early 20th century India, focusing on their preoccupation with the mass public made visible by the cinema and with the cinema's role as a public sphere and a mass medium of modernity. It draws on archival research to uncover aspirations and anxieties about the new medium, which opened up tantalizing possibilities for nationalist mobilization on the one hand, and troubling challenges to the cultural authority of Indian elites on the other. Using case-studies drawn from the film cultures of Bombay and Kolkata, it demonstrates how discourses about the cinematic public dovetailed into discourses about a national public, giving rise to considerable excitement about cinema's potential to democratize the public sphere beyond the limits of print-literate culture, as well as to deepening anxieties about cultural degeneration. The case-studies also reveal that early twentieth century discourses about the cinema contain traces of a formative tension in Indian public culture, between visions of a deliberative public and spectres of the unruly masses.
How do stories of particular events turn into global myths, while others fade away? What becomes known and seen as a global iconic event? In Stories without Borders, Julia Sonnevend considers the ways in which we recount and remember news stories of historic significance. Focusing on journalists covering the fall of the Berlin Wall and on subsequent retellings of the event in a variety of ways - from Legoland reenactments to slabs of the Berlin Wall installed in global cities - Sonnevend discusses how certain events become built up so that people in many parts of the world remember them for long periods of time. She argues that five dimensions determine the viability and longevity of international news events. First, a foundational narrative must be established with certain preconditions. Next, the established narrative becomes universalized and a mythical message developed. This message is then condensed and encapsulated in a simple phrase, a short narrative, and a recognizable visual scene. Counter-narratives emerge that reinterpret events and in turn facilitate their diffusion across multiple media platforms and changing social and political contexts. Sonnevend examines these five elements through the developments of November 9, 1989 - what came to be known as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Stories Without Borders concludes with a discussion of how global iconic events have an enduring effect on individuals and societies, pointing out that after common currencies, military alliances, and international courts have failed, stories may be all that we have to bring hope and unity.
There is much controversy about the dangers of a free media when it
comes to children and adolescents. Many believe that this
constitutional right should be amended, altered, or revoked
entirely to prevent the young from being negatively influenced.
Graphic violence, sexual content, and the depiction of cigarette
smoking have all come under fire as being unacceptable in media
that is geared toward adolescents, from television and movies to
magazines and advertising. Yet not much has been written about the
developmental science behind these ideas, and what effects a free
media really has on adolescents.
From smartphones to social media, from streaming videos to fitness bands, our devices bring us information and entertainment all day long, forming an intimate part of our lives. Their ubiquity represents a major shift in human experience, and although we often hold our devices dear, we do not always fully appreciate how their nearly constant presence can influence our lives for better and for worse. In this second edition of How Fantasy Becomes Reality, social psychologist Karen E. Dill-Shackleford explains what the latest science tells us about how our devices influence our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In engaging, conversational prose, she discusses both the benefits and the risks that come with our current level of media saturation. The wide-ranging conversation explores Avatar, Mad Men, Grand Theft Auto, and Comic Con to address critical issues such as media violence, portrayals of social groups, political coverage, and fandom. Her conclusions will empower readers to make our favorite sources of entertainment and information work for us and not against us.
This accessible yet research-based text offers both foundational theories and practical applications of analysis and criticism of mass media portrayals of sex, love, and romance in a wide variety of mass media, from entertainment to advertising to news. The multidisciplinary methodological perspective comes out of a media literacy approach and embraces a variety of traditions along the quantitative-qualitative continuum. Focused on portrayals of male-female coupleship, the book is centered around the 12 major myths and stereotypes of Galician's Dr. FUN!'s Mass Media Love Quiz (c), each of which has a corresponding Dr. Galician Prescription (R) that encapsulates healthy strategies--rarely found in the mass media--to counteract that myth or stereotype. Readers learn how to identify, illustrate, deconstruct, evaluate, and reframe the mass media's mythic and stereotypic portrayals of sex, love, and romance. They also learn how to use their own formal critical evaluations to clarify their own values and--as media consumers or mass communication creators--to share their insights with others. Thus, the learning objectives encompass all three major educational domains: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. Part I of this book covers the five foundations: *myths and stereotypes of love and coupleship; *models of realistic and constructive love and coupleship; *mass media storytelling approaches, techniques, and devices; *research and theories of mass media effects; and *strategies and skills of media literacy. Part II is devoted to exploring the myths and stereotypes identified in the Quiz. Following several brief case studies and a summary of related research and commentary, each chapter focuses on analyses and criticisms of portrayals of sex, love, and romance in the content of news and advertising, as well as entertainment using Galician's Seven-Step Dis-illusioning Directions. Each chapter concludes with a "Dis-illusion Digest." While critical of unrealistic portrayals and the damage they can cause unsuspecting media consumers, Galician--a media literacy advocate--is not anti-media. Rather, her goal is to empower consumers to use these portrayals with more awareness of their possible consequences, to resist adopting them as models for actual behavior, and to consciously reframe them into more realistic, productive scenarios. This unique text is an engaging classroom resource for media literacy, media and relationships, and media and society coursework.
This book puts sampling studies on the academic map by focusing on sampling as a logic of exchange between audio-visual media. While some recent scholarship has addressed sampling primarily in relation to copyright, this book is a first: a critical study of sampling and remixing across audio-visual media. Of special interest here are works that bring together both audio and visual sampling: music that samples film and television; underground dance and multimedia scenes that rely on sampling; Internet "memes" that repurpose music videos, trailers and news broadcasts; films and videos that incorporate a wide range of sampling aesthetics; and other provocative variations. Comprised of four sections titled "roots," "scenes," "cinema" and "web" this collection digs deep into and across sampling practices that intervene in popular culture from unconventional or subversive perspectives. To this end, Sampling Media extends the conceptual boundaries of sampling by emphasizing its inter-medial dimensions, exploring the politics of sampling practice beyond copyright law, and examining its more marginal applications. It likewise puts into conversation compelling instances of sampling from a wide variety of historical and contemporary, global and local contexts.
The world of media production is in a state of rapid
transformation. In this age of the Internet, interactivity and
digital broadcasting, do traditional standards of quality apply or
must we identify and implement new criteria?
The heart of Mike Saunders’ exciting new book is how to build a successful business in the Fourth Industrial Revolution while focusing on human stakeholders. Never before have we had so much information so readily available at our fingertips and there is no doubt that acceleration of innovation and the velocity of disruption underpinning the Fourth Industrial Revolution are having a major impact on businesses. Is it realistic to be at the forefront of these disruptive forces? Is it even necessary? It most certainly is. Knowledge of these disruptive forces – notably mobile, social, the Internet of Things, data and blockchain – equips us to build our businesses in the change that is enveloping us, but we need a framework to help us understand how to operate in a new revolution, how to organise the chaos into success. It is this framework to which Mike has been applying his mind for the last ten years and in this book he presents just such a model to help us to navigate the digital world and build value in a humancentric way. The four concepts of his model are explore, ideate, intersect and create and he unpacks each of them in detail and with crystal-clear clarity, while never losing sight of the human element so essential to ensuring success in an ever-evolving world. With his wide experience both locally and internationally, and his success in running the highly respected DigitLab, as well as his passion for sharing knowledge, Mike is uniquely positioned to share a complete framework for human-centred digital transformation.
Democracy of Sound is the first book to examine music piracy in the United States from the dawn of sound recording to the rise of Napster and online file-sharing. It asks why Americans stopped thinking of copyright as a monopoly-a kind of necessary evil-and came to see intellectual property as sacrosanct and necessary for the prosperity of an "information economy." Recordings only became eligible for federal copyright in 1972, following years of struggle between pirates, musicians, songwriters, broadcasters, and record companies over the right to own sound. Beginning in the 1890s, the book follows the competing visions of Americans who proposed ways to keep obscure and noncommercial music in circulation, preserve out-of-print recordings from extinction, or simply make records more freely and cheaply available. Genteel jazz collectors swapped and copied rare records in the 1930s; radicals pitched piracy as a mortal threat to capitalism in the 1960s, while hip-hop DJs from the 1970s onwards reused and transformed sounds to create a freer and less regulated market for mixtapes. Each challenged the idea that sound could be owned by anyone. The conflict led to the contemporary stalemate between those who believe that "information wants to be free" and those who insist that economic prosperity depends on protecting intellectual property. The saga of piracy also shows how the dubbers, bootleggers, and tape traders forged new social networks that ultimately gave rise to the social media of the twenty first century. Democracy of Sound is a colorful story of people making law, resisting law, and imagining how law might shape the future of music, from the Victrola and pianola to iTunes and BitTorrent. |
You may like...
|