Fake News in Digital Cultures presents a new approach to understanding disinformation and misinformation in contemporary digital communication, arguing that fake news is not an alien phenomenon undertaken by bad actors, but a logical outcome of contemporary digital and popular culture, conceptual changes meaning and truth, and shifts in the social practice of trust, attitude and creativity. Looking not to the problems of the present era but towards the continuing development of a future digital media ecology, the authors explore the emergence of practices of deliberate disinformation. This includes the circulation of misleading content or misinformation, the development of new technological applications such as the deepfake, and how they intersect with conspiracy theories, populism, global crises, popular disenfranchisement, and new practices of regulating misleading content and promoting new media and digital literacies.

On the Binding Biases of Time and Other Essays on General Semantics and Media Ecology consists of a series of explorations into our use of symbols, language, and media to relate to our environment, and how our different modes of perception and communication influence human consciousness, culture, and social organization. These essays draw upon and integrate the perspectives of general semantics, systems theory, and media ecology, bringing them to bear upon a diversity of topics that include the future of consciousness, identity and meaning, the Ten Commandments, media literacy, The Lord of the Rings, and our relationship to time. Throughout this volume, Strate grapples with the question of what it means to be human, and what the prospects may be for humanity's continued survival. As he concludes in the title essay of this book: "As a species, we are binders of time, bound up by our biases of time; we are moved by our consciousness of time, as we tell time, and as we tell ourselves that only time will tell; as we play for time, and as we pray, as we pray for time."

Winner of the 2022 AESA Critics' Choice Book Award Winner of the 2022 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award This diverse and global collection of scholars, educators, and activists presents a panorama of perspectives on media education and democracy in a digital age. Drawing upon projects in both the formal and non-formal education spheres, the authors contribute towards conceptualizing, developing, cultivating, building and elaborating a more respectful, robust and critically-engaged democracy. Given the challenges our world faces, it may seem that small projects, programs and initiatives offer just a salve to broader social and political dynamics but these are the types of contestatory spaces, openings and initiatives that enable participatory democracy. This book provides a space for experimentation and dialogue, and a platform for projects and initiatives that challenge or supplement the learning offered by traditional forms of education. The Foreword is written by Divina Frau-Meigs (Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris) and the Postscript by Roberto Apirici and David Garcia Marin (UNED, Madrid). Contributors are: Roberto Aparici, Adelina Calvo Salvador, Paul R. Carr, Colin Chasi, Sandra L. Cuervo Sanchez, Laura D'Olimpio, Milena Droumeva, Elia Fernandez-Diaz, Ellen Field, Michael Forsman, Divina Frau-Meigs, Aquilina Fueyo Gutierrez, David Garcia-Marin, Tania Goitandia Moore, Jose Gutierrez-Perez, Ignacio Haya Salmon, Bruno Salvador Hernandez Levi, Michael Hoechsmann, Jennifer Jenson, Maria Korpijaakko, Sirkku Kotilainen, Emil Marmol, Maria Dolores Olvera-Lobo, Tania Ouariachi, Mari Pienimaki, Anna Renfors, Ylva Rodney-Gumede, Carlos Rodriguez-Hoyos, Mar Rodriguez-Romero, Tafadzwa Rugoho, Juha Suoranta, Gina Thesee, Robyn M. Tierney, Robert C. Williams and Maria Luisa Zorrilla Abascal.

Explores the ways television documents, satirizes, and critiques the political era of the Trump presidency. In American Television during a Television Presidency, Karen McNally and contributors critically examine the various ways in which television became transfixed by the Trump presidency and the broader political, social, and cultural climate. This book is the first to fully address the relationship between TV and a presidency consistently conducted with television in mind. The sixteen chapters cover everything from the political theater of televised impeachment hearings to the potent narratives of fictional drama and the stinging critiques of comedy, as they consider the wide-ranging ways in which television engages with the shifting political culture that emerged during this period. Approaching television both historically and in the contemporary moment, the contributors-an international group of scholars from a variety of academic disciplines-illuminate the indelible links that exist between television, American politics, and the nation's broader culture. As it interrogates a presidency played out through the lens of the TV camera and reviews a medium immersing itself in a compelling and inescapable subject, American Television during a Television Presidency sets out to explore what defines the television of the Trump era as a distinctive time in TV history. From inequalities to resistance, and from fandom to historical memory, this book opens up new territory in which to critically analyze television's complex relationship with Donald Trump, his presidency, and the political culture of this unsettled and simultaneously groundbreaking era. Undergraduate and graduate students and scholars of film and television studies, comedy studies, and cultural studies will value this strong collection.

Media is rapidly evolving, from social media to news channels, individuals are being bombarded with headlines, new technologies, and varying opinions. Teaching the next generation of communication professionals how to interact with varying forms of media is paramount as they will be the future distributors of news and information. The Handbook of Research on Media Literacy in Higher Education Environments provides emerging research on the role of journalism and mass communication education in the digital era. While highlighting topics such as community media labs, political cognition, and public engagement, this publication explores the impact of globalization and a changing and diversified world within the realm of higher education. This publication is an important resource for educators, academicians, professionals, and researchers seeking current research on applications and strategies in promoting media and digital studies in higher education.

This expanded collection of new and fully revised explorations of media content identifies the ways we all have been negatively stereotyped and demonstrates how careful analysis of media portrayals can create more beneficial alternatives. Not all damaging stereotypes are obvious. In fact, the pictorial stereotypes in the media that we don't notice could be the most harmful because we aren't even aware of the negative, false ideas they perpetrate. This book presents a series of original research essays on media images of groups including African Americans, Latinos, women, the elderly, the physically disabled, gays and lesbians, and Jewish Americans, just to mention a few. Specific examples of these images are derived from a variety of sources, such as advertising, fine art, film, television shows, cartoons, the Internet, and other media, providing a wealth of material for students and professionals in almost any field. Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media, Third Edition not only accurately describes and analyzes the media's harmful depictions of cultural groups, but also offers creative ideas on alternative representations of these individuals. These discussions illuminate how each of us is responsible for contributing to a sea of meaning within our mass culture. 33 distinguished authors as well as new voices in the field combine their extensive and varied expertise to explain the social effects of media stereotyping. Includes historical and contemporary illustrations that range from editorial cartoons to the sinking of the Titanic Richly illustrated with historical and up-to-date photographic illustrations Every chapter's content is meticulously supported with numerous sources cited A glossary defines key words mentioned in the chapters

This book provides a rich description of the shifting production cultures in convergent Chinese television industries, through the examination of daily production practices, showing how they embody a new set of opportunities and tensions across strategic, programming and individual levels. Lin argues that the current Chinese television landscape is an ideological, cultural and financial paradox in which China's one-party ideological control clashes with consumer-orientated capitalism and technological advancement. These tensions are finely poised between new opportunities for innovation and creative autonomy, and anxiety over political interference marked by censorship and state surveillance. Through its in depth study of ethnographic data across Chinese broadcast and digital streaming sectors (including CCTV, Hunan Broadcasting System, and Tencent Video), this book illuminates how Chinese producers have placed their aspirations for creative freedoms within technological advancements and rhetorical strategies, both demonstrating compliance with ideological control, and leaving room for resistance and resilience to one-party state ideology. Nuanced and timely, Convergent Chinese Television Industries unveils a complex picture of an industry undergoing dramatic transformations.

This collection examines law and justice on television in different countries around the world. It provides a benchmark for further study of the nature and extent of television coverage of justice in fictional, reality and documentary forms. It does this by drawing on empirical work from a range of scholars in different jurisdictions. Each chapter looks at the raw data of how much "justice" material viewers were able to access in the multi-channel world of 2014 looking at three phases: apprehension (police), adjudication (lawyers), and disposition (prison/punishment). All of the authors indicate how television developed in their countries. Some have extensive public service channels mixed with private media channels. Financing ranges from advertising to programme sponsorship to licensing arrangements. A few countries have mixtures of these. Each author also examines how "TV justice" has developed in their own particular jurisdiction. Readers will find interesting variations and thought-provoking similarities. There are a lot of television shows focussed on legal themes that are imported around the world. The authors analyse these as well. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in law, popular culture, TV, or justice and provides an important addition to the literature due to its grounding in empirical data.

A fascinating look into what happens when comedy becomes political and politics becomes comedy Satirical TV has become mandatory viewing for citizens wishing to make sense of the bizarre contemporary state of political life. Shifts in industry economics and audience tastes have re-made television comedy, once considered a wasteland of escapist humor, into what is arguably the most popular source of political critique. From fake news and pundit shows to animated sitcoms and mash-up videos, satire has become an important avenue for processing politics in informative and entertaining ways, and satire TV is now its own thriving, viable television genre. Satire TV examines what happens when comedy becomes political, and politics become funny. A series of original essays focus on a range of programs, from The Daily Show to South Park, Da Ali G Show to The Colbert Report, The Boondocks to Saturday Night Live, Lil' Bush to Chappelle's Show, along with Internet D.I.Y. satire and essays on British and Canadian satire. They all offer insights into what today's class of satire tells us about the current state of politics, of television, of citizenship, all the while suggesting what satire adds to the political realm that news and documentaries cannot.

In this age of information technology, the media's role in international, bilateral, and diplomatic relations is increasingly important. It plays a crucial part in keeping countries connected and updated about actual and ground-level realities. Media Diplomacy and Its Evolving Role in the Current Geopolitical Climate provides emerging research on the changing practices in diplomacy, new media, and the connections between media and policy. It highlights how the media is changing countries' approaches to diplomacy and readers will learn the valuable aspects of the role that communication technology plays in resolving regional and international issues. This book is an important resource for professionals and researchers working in the field of media diplomacy, internet and diplomacy, e-diplomacy, international relations and media diplomacy, and contemporary diplomatic policy seeking current research on the best ways to globally expand on media and policy.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio presents exciting new research on radio and audio, including broadcasting and podcasting. Since the birth of radio studies as a distinct subject in the 1990s, it has matured into a second wave of inquiry and scholarship. As broadcast radio has partly given way to podcasting and as community initiatives have pioneered more diverse and innovative approaches so scholars have embarked on new areas of inquiry. Divided into seven sections, the Handbook covers: - Communities - Entertainment - Democracy - Emotions - Listening - Studying Radio - Futures The Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio is designed to offer academics, researchers and practitioners an international, comprehensive collection of original essays written by a combination of well-established experts, new scholars and industry practitioners. Each section begins with an introduction by Hugh Chignell and Kathryn McDonald, putting into context each contribution, mapping the discipline and capturing new directions of radio research, while providing an invaluable resource for radio studies.

Art is a multi-faceted part of human society, and often is used for more than purely aesthetic purposes. When used as a narrative on modern society, art can actively engage citizens in cultural and pedagogical discussions. Convergence of Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Global Civic Engagement is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on the relationship between popular media, art, and visual culture, analyzing how this intersection promotes global pedagogy and learning. Highlighting relevant perspectives from both international and community levels, this book is ideally designed for professionals, upper-level students, researchers, and academics interested in the role of art in global learning.

Highlights the trailers, merchandising and cultural conversations that shape our experiences of film and television It is virtually impossible to watch a movie or TV show without preconceived notions because of the hype that precedes them, while a host of media extensions guarantees them a life long past their air dates. An onslaught of information from print media, trailers, internet discussion, merchandising, podcasts, and guerilla marketing, we generally know something about upcoming movies and TV shows well before they are even released or aired. The extras, or "paratexts," that surround viewing experiences are far from peripheral, shaping our understanding of them and informing our decisions about what to watch or not watch and even how to watch before we even sit down for a show. Show Sold Separately gives critical attention to this ubiquitous but often overlooked phenomenon, examining paratexts like DVD bonus materials for The Lord of the Rings, spoilers for Lost, the opening credits of The Simpsons, Star Wars actions figures, press reviews for Friday Night Lights, the framing of Batman Begins, the videogame of The Thing, and the trailers for The Sweet Hereafter. Plucking these extra materials from the wings and giving them the spotlight they deserve, Jonathan Gray examines the world of film and television that exists before and after the show.

Over the past decade, as digital media has expanded and print outlets have declined, pundits have bemoaned a "crisis of criticism" and mourned the "death of the critic". Now that well-paying jobs in film criticism have largely evaporated, while blogs, message boards, and social media have given new meaning to the saying that "everyone's a critic" urgent questions have emerged about the status and purpose of film criticism in the twenty-first century. Film Criticism in the Digital Age, ten scholars from across the globe come together to consider whether we are witnessing the extinction of serious film criticism or seeing the start of its rebirth in a new form. Drawing from a wide variety of case studies and methodological perspectives, the book's contributors find many signs of the film critic's declining clout, but they also locate surprising examples of how critics - whether moonlighting bloggers or salaried writers - have been able to intervene in current popular discourse about arts and culture. In addition to collecting a plethora of scholarly perspectives, Film Criticism in the Digital Age includes statements from key bloggers and print critics, like Armond White and Nick James. Neither an uncritical celebration of digital culture nor a jeremiad against it, this anthology offers a comprehensive look at the challenges and possibilities that the Internet brings to the evaluation, promotion, and explanation of artistic works.

Exploring a prominent digital mythology, this book proposes a new way of viewing both online narratives and the online communities which tell them. The Slender Man - a monster known for making children disappear and causing violent deaths to the adults who seek to know more about him - is used as an extended case study to explore the role of digital communities, as well as the question of the existence of a broader "digital culture". Structural anthropological mythic analysis and ethnographic details demonstrate how the Slender Man mythology is structured, and how its everlasting nature in the online communities demonstrates an importance of the mythos.

Gone is the era of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, when news programs fought to gain the trust and respect of a wide spectrum of American viewers. Today, the fastest-growing news programs and media platforms are fighting hard for increasingly narrow segments of the public and playing on old prejudices and deep-rooted fears, coloring the conversation in the blogosphere and the cable news chatter to distract from the true issues at stake. Using the same tactics once used to mobilize political parties and committed voters, they send their fans coded messages and demonize opposing groups, in the process securing valuable audience share and website traffic. Race-baiter is a term born out of this tumultuous climate, coined by the conservative media to describe a person who uses racial tensions to arouse the passion and ire of a particular demographic. Even as the election of the first black president forces us all to reevaluate how we think about race, gender, culture, and class lines, some areas of modern media are working hard to push the same old buttons of conflict and division for new purposes. In Race-Baiter, veteran journalist and media critic Eric Deggans dissects the powerful ways modern media feeds fears, prejudices, and hate, while also tracing the history of the word and its consequences, intended or otherwise.

In Authenticating Whiteness: Karens, Selfies, and Pop Stars, Rachel E. Dubrofsky explores the idea that popular media implicitly portrays whiteness as credible, trustworthy, familiar, and honest, and that this portrayal is normalized and ubiquitous. Whether on television, film, social media, or in the news, white people are constructed as believable and unrehearsed, from the way they talk to how they look and act. Dubrofsky argues that this way of making white people appear authentic is a strategy of whiteness, requiring attentiveness to the context of white supremacy in which the presentations unfold. The volume details how ideas about what is natural, good, and wholesome are reified in media, showing how these values are implicitly racialized. Additionally, the project details how white women are presented as particularly authentic when they seem to lose agency by expressing affect through emotional and bodily displays. The chapters examine a range of popular media-newspaper articles about Donald J. Trump, a selfie taken at Auschwitz, music videos by Miley Cyrus, the television series UnREAL, the infamous video of Amy Cooper calling the police on an innocent Black man, and the documentary Miss Americana-pinpointing patterns that cut across media to explore the implications for the larger culture in which they exist. At its heart, the book asks: Who gets to be authentic? And what are the implications?

This book introduces the fast-developing field of book history. James Raven, a leading historian of the book, offers a fresh and accessible guide to the global study of the production, dissemination and reception of written and printed texts across all societies and in all ages. Students, teachers, researchers and general readers will benefit from the book s investigation of the subject s origins, scope and future direction. Based on original research and a wide range of sources, What is the History of the Book? shows how book history crosses disciplinary boundaries and intersects with literary, historical, communications, media, library and conservation studies. Raven uses examples from around the world to explore different traditions in bibliography, palaeography and manuscript studies. He analyses book history s growing global ambition and demonstrates how the study of reading practises opens up new horizons in social history and the history of knowledge. He shows how book history is contributing to debates about intellectual and popular culture, colonialism and the communication of ideas. The first global, accessible introduction to the field of book history from ancient to modern times, What is the History of the Book? is essential reading for all those interested in one of society s most important cultural artefacts.

The election of President Barack Obama signaled for many the realization of a post-racial America, a nation in which racism was no longer a defining social, cultural, and political issue. While many Americans espouse a "colorblind" racial ideology and publicly endorse the broad goals of integration and equal treatment without regard to race, in actuality this attitude serves to reify and legitimize racism and protects racial privileges by denying and minimizing the effects of systematic and institutionalized racism.

In The Colorblind Screen, the contributors examine television's role as the major discursive medium in the articulation and contestation of racialized identities in the United States. While the dominant mode of televisual racialization has shifted to a "colorblind" ideology that foregrounds racial differences in order to celebrate multicultural assimilation, the volume investigates how this practice denies the significant social, economic, and political realities and inequalities that continue to define race relations today. Focusing on such iconic figures as President Obama, LeBron James, and Oprah Winfrey, many chapters examine the ways in which race is read by television audiences and fans. Other essays focus on how visual constructions of race in dramas like 24, Sleeper Cell, and The Wanted continue to conflate Arab and Muslim identities in post-9/11 television. The volume offers an important intervention in the study of the televisual representation of race, engaging with multiple aspects of the mythologies developing around notions of a "post-racial" America and the duplicitous discursive rationale offered by the ideology of colorblindness.

Examines the bleak television comedies that illustrate the obsession of the white left with its own anxiety and suffering At the same time that right-wing political figures like Donald Trump were elected and reactionary socio-economic policies like Brexit were voted into law, representations of bleakly comic white fragility spread across television screens. American and British programming that featured the abjection of young, middle-class, liberal white people-such as Broad City, Casual, You're the Worst, Catastrophe, Fleabag, and Transparent-proliferated to wide popular acclaim in the 2010s. Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey track how these shows of the white left, obsessed with its own anxiety and suffering, are complicit in the rise and maintenance of the far right-particularly in the mobilization, representation, and sustenance of structural white supremacy on television. Nygaard and Lagerwey examine a cycle of dark television comedies, the focus of which are "horrible white people," by putting them in conversation with similar upmarket comedies from creators and casts of color like Insecure, Atlanta, Dear White People, and Master of None. Through their analysis, they demonstrate the ways these non-white-centric shows negotiate prestige TV's dominant aesthetics of whiteness and push back against the centering of white suffering in a time of cultural crisis. Through the lens of media analysis and feminist cultural studies, Nygaard and Lagerwey's book opens up new ways of looking at contemporary television consumption-and the political, cultural, and social repercussions of these "horrible white people" shows, both on- and off-screen.

Media, Ideology and Hegemony contains a range of topics that provide readers with opportunities to think critically about the new digital world. This includes work on old and new media, on the corporate power structure in communication and information technology, and on government use of media to control citizens. Demonstrating that the new world of media is a hotly contested terrain, the book also uncovers the contradictions inherent in the system of digital power and documents how citizens are using media and information technology to actively resist repressive power. This collection of essays is grounded with a critical theoretical foundation, and is informed by the importance of undertaking the analysis in historical perspective. Contributors are: Alfonso M. Rodriguez de Austria Gimenez de Aragon, Burton Lee Artz, Arthur Asa Berger, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Marco Briziarelli, Savas Coban, Jeffrey Hoffmann, Junhao Hong, Robert Jensen, Douglas Kellner, Thomas Klikauer, Peter Ludes, Tanner Mirrlees, Vincent Mosco, Victor Pickard, Padmaja Shaw, Nick Stevenson, Gerald Sussman, Minghua Xu.