This book offers comparative studies of the production, content, distribution and reception of film and television drama in Europe. The collection brings together scholars from the humanities and social sciences to focus on how new developments are shaped by national and European policies and practices, and on the role of film and television in our everyday lives. The chapters explore key trends in transnational European film and television fiction, addressing issues of co-production and collaboration, and of how cultural products circulate across national borders. The chapters investigate how watching film and television from neighbouring countries can be regarded as a special kind of cultural encounter with the possibility of facilitating reflections on national differences within Europe and negotiations of what characterizes a national or a European identity respectively.

As the pioneering work in its field, Jewish Serials of the World brings together a diverse body of literature essential to the study of the Jewish press from 1674 to the present. It identifies pertinent primary source materials and provides comprehensive coverage of the secondary literature in a field where no bibliographical control has ever existed. Arranged for the most part geographically, the citations include descriptions of significant publications of books, pamphlets, theses and articles, as well as jubilee issues of Jewish newspapers and magazines. In addition to internal cross-references, the work also contains subject and author indexes.

Fashion Writing and Criticism provides students with the tools to critique fashion with skill and style. Explaining the history and theory of criticism, this innovative text demonstrates how the tradition of criticism has developed and how this knowledge can be applied to fashion, enabling students to acquire the methods and proper vocabulary to be active critics themselves. Integrating history and theory, this innovative book explains the development of fashion writing, the theoretical basis on which it sits, and how it might be improved and applied. Through concise snapshot case studies, top international scholars McNeil and Miller analyse fashion excerpts in relation to philosophical ideas and situate them within historical contexts. Case studies include classic examples of fashion writing, such as Diana Vreeland at Harper's Bazaar and Richard Martin on Karl Lagerfeld, as well as contemporary examples such as Suzy Menkes and the blogger Tavi. Accessibly written, Fashion Writing and Criticism enables readers to understand, assess and make value judgments about the fascinating and changeable field of fashion. It is an invaluable text for students and researchers alike, studying fashion, journalism, history and media studies.

Exploring how technological apparatuses "capture" invisible worlds, this book looks at how spirits, UFOs, discarnate entities, spectral energies, atmospheric forces and particles are mattered into existence by human minds. Technological and scientific discourse has always been central to the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century spiritualist quest for legitimacy, but as this book shows, machines, people, and invisible beings are much more ontologically entangled in their definitions and constitution than we would expect. The book shows this entanglement through a series of contemporary case studies where the realm of the invisible arises through technological engagement, and where the paranormal intertwines with modern technology.

Over the last decade there has been a dramatic increase in publications on media and translation. In fact, there are those who believe that so much has been published in this field that any further publications are superfluous. But if one views media and translation as anything ranging from film and television drama to news-casting, commercials, video games, web-pages and electronic street signs, it would seem that research in media and translation has barely scratched the surface. The research in this field is shared largely by scholars in communication and translation studies, often without knowledge of each other or access to their respective methods of scholarship. This collection will rectify this lack of communication by bringing such scholars together and creating a context for a theoretical discussion of the entire emerging field of Media and Translation, with a preference for theoretical work (rather than case studies) on translation and communications of various forms, and through various media.

This book provides detailed insights into how space and popular culture intersect across a broad spectrum of examples, including cinema, music, art, arcade games, cartoons, comics, and advertisements. This is a pertinent topic since the use of space themes differs in different cultural contexts, and these themes can be used to explore various aspects of the human condition and provide a context for social commentary on politically sensitive issues. With the use of space imagery evolving over the past sixty years of the space age, this is a topic ripe for in-depth exploration. The book also discusses the contrasting visions of space from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the reality of today, and analyzes space vehicles and habitats in popular depictions of space from an engineering perspective, exploring how many of those ideas have actually been implemented in practice, and why or why not (a case of life imitating art and vice versa). As such, it covers a wide array of relevant and timely topics examining intersections between space and popular culture, and offering accounts of space and its effect on culture, language, and storytelling from the southern regions of the world.

A lot of personal data is being collected and stored as we use our media devices for business and pleasure in mobile and online spaces. This book helps us contemplate what a post-Facebook or post-Google world might look like, and how the tensions within capitalist information societies between corporations, government and citizens might play out.

Sponsored by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS), this volume celebrates the section's thirtieth anniversary. Lead editor Barry Wellman joins forces with former and current CITAMS chairs Wenhong Chen, Shelia Cotten, and Laura Robinson, as well as Casey Brienza, founder of the Media Sociology Preconference, to look back at the history of the section, review some of its most important themes, and set the agenda for future discussion. Alongside its sister volume, The "M" in CITAMS@30: Media Sociology, this valuable book shows the impact CITAMS has had, and continues to have, on academic and public discourse. Featuring leading scholars in the fields of sociology of communication, information technologies and media, it reveals how the section had transcended disciplinary boundaries, and demonstrates how it holds the skills to address some of the biggest challenges of our digital age. It is essential reading for all those interested in both the story of CITAMS to date, and the role it will play in the future.

There have been famous chefs for centuries. But it was not until the second half of the twentieth century that the modern celebrity chef business really began to flourish, thanks largely to media advances like television which allowed ever greater numbers of people to tune in.

"Food Media" charts the growth of this enormous entertainment industry, and also how, under the threat of the obesity 'epidemic', some of its stars have taken on new authority as social activists, while others continue to provide delicious distractions from a world of potentially unsafe food. The narrative that joins these chapters moves from private to public consumption, and from celebrating food fantasies to fueling anxieties about food realities, with the questionable role of interference in people's everyday food choices gaining ground along the way.

Covering celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver and Rachael Ray, and popular trends like foodies, food porn and fetishism, "Food Media" describes how the intersections between celebrity culture and food media have come to influence how many people think about feeding themselves and their families - and how often that task is complicated when it need not be.

Sponsored by the Communication and Information Technologies Section of the American Sociological Association, this volume examines wide-ranging aspects of culture, communication, and [new] media broadly defined. Themes include the interplay between [new] media and any of the following: culture, communication, technology, convergence, the arts, cultural production, and cultural change in the digital age. Contributions shed light on emergent phenomena that -sociologists, particularly those studying media or communication, culture scholars will find intriguing.

In this book, Fattorello addresses the differences between contingent and non-contingent information. The theory is translated into English for the first time and is contextualized and put into a historical framework by Prof. Ragnetti's additional text.

The 21st century has seen a board game renaissance. At a time when streaming television finds millions of viewers, video games garner billions of dollars, and social media grows ever more intense, little has been written about the rising popularity of board games. And yet board games are one of our fastest growing hobbies, with sales increasing every year. Today's board games are more than just your average rainy-day mainstay. Once associated solely with geek subcultures, complex and strategic board games are increasingly dominating the playful media environment. The popularity of these complex board games mirrors the rise of more complex cult media products. In Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games, Paul Booth examines complex board games based on book, TV, and film franchises, including Doctor Who, The Walking Dead, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, The Hunger Games and the worlds of H.P. Lovecraft. How does a game represent a cult world? How can narratives cross media platforms? By investigating the relationship between these media products and their board game versions, Booth illustrates the connections between cult media, gameplay, and narrative in a digital media environment.

This landmark collection brings leading scholars in the field of political communication to debate one of the most important questions of our age: Can the media serve democracy? For the media to be democratic, they must enter into a positive relationship with their readers, viewers and listeners as citizens rather than consumers who buy things, audiences who gaze upon spectacles or isolated egos, obsessed with themselves. The media's first task is to remind people that they are inhabitants of a world in which they can make a difference. By enabling citizens to encounter and make sense of events, relationships and cultures of which they have no direct experience, the media constitute a public arena in which members of the public come together as more than passing strangers.

How did the events of September 11, 2001 come to be thought of as 9/11? The Shock of the News is an authoritative account of post-9/11 political and social processes, offering an in-depth analysis of the media coverage of this momentous event. Brian Monahan demonstrates how 9/11 has been transformed into a morality tale centered on patriotism, victimization, and heroes.

Introducing the idea of "public drama" as a way of making sense of how media processed and packaged the 9/11 attacks for their audiences, Monahan not only illuminates how and why the coverage took shape as it did, but also provides us with new insights into the social, cultural, and political consequences of the attacks and their aftermath. Monahan explains how and why 9/11 became such a potent symbol, exploring how meanings and symbols get created, reinforced, and disseminated in modern society. Ultimately, Monahan offers an important new understanding of this singular event of our time, and his compelling narrative brings the momentous events back into focus.

Ghost Movies in Southeast Asia and Beyond explores ghost movies, one of the most popular film genres in East and Southeast Asia, by focusing on movie narratives, the cultural contexts of their origins and audience reception. In the middle of the Asian crisis of the late 1990s, ghost movies became major box office hits. The emergence of the phenomenally popular "J-Horror" genre inspired similar ghost movie productions in Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Singapore. Ghost movies are embedded and reflected in national as well as transnational cultures and politics, in narrative traditions, in the social worlds of the audience, and in the perceptual experience of each individual. They reflect upon the identity crises and traumas of the living as well as of the dead, and they unfold affection and attraction in the border zone between amusement and thrill, secular and religious worldviews. This makes the genre interesting not only for sociologists, anthropologists, media and film scholars, but also for scholars of religion.

Newspapers and journalism began in the Middle East in the nineteenth century and evolved during a period of accelerated change which shaped their unique political, social and cultural role. Drawing on a wealth of sources, this study for the first time explores the press as a Middle Eastern institution. It focuses on the circumstances that influences the growth of the Arab press, its own impact on local historical developments, and the long-term effects that early patterns of its emergence have had on later evolution.

This volume describes the use of mass media and other communication channels by corporations, bureaucrats, politicians and consumer advocates to influence the development and implementation of public policy in areas of science, technology and social service delivery. It provides answers to the critical question--who sets the media agenda, how, and for what purposes. This book is the first to reveal the degree of inequality that exists between participants in any policy debate.

In the age of globalization, digitization, and media convergence, traditional hierarchies between media are breaking down. This book offers new approaches to understanding the politics and their underlying ideologies that are reshaping our global media landscape, including questions of audience participation and transmedia storytelling.

Fascination with satellite television and Internet technology has become an obsession. People throughout the world watch television and believe what they see and hear--without realizing that pictures are selected and stories are sometimes distorted. Concurrently, the world's elite are drawn to the increasing availability of news on the Internet, effectively widening the gap between those who have and do not have access to the new technologies. This analysis of the worldwide impact of new communications technologies shows how ordinary citizens can protect themselves from media brainwashing. Interviews from across the globe shed light on this dynamic and on the roles of viewers as victims or victors in different situations. This is a book for the media professional; students and scholars in the fields of journalism, communications, political science, international relations, and business; as well as for government officials and concerned citizens who do not want to be controlled by the media.

Joel Osteen, the smiling preacher, has quickly emerged as one of the most recognizable Protestant leaders in the country. His megachurch, the Houston based Lakewood Church, hosts an average of over 40,000 worshipers each week. Osteen is the best-selling author of numerous books, and his sermons and inspirational talks appear regularly on mainstream cable and satellite radio. How did Joel Osteen become Joel Osteen? How did Lakewood become the largest megachurch in the U. S.? Salvation with a Smile, the first book devoted to Lakewood Church and Joel Osteen, offers a critical history of the congregation by linking its origins to post-World War II neopentecostalism, and connecting it to the exceptionally popular prosperity gospel movement and the enduring attraction of televangelism. In this richly documented book, historian Phillip Luke Sinitiere carefully excavates the life and times of Lakewood's founder, John Osteen, to explain how his son Joel expanded his legacy and fashioned the congregation into America's largest megachurch. As a popular preacher, Joel Osteen's ministry has been a source of existential strength for many, but also the routine target of religious critics who vociferously contend that his teachings are theologically suspect and spiritually shallow. Sinitiere's keen analysis shows how Osteen's rebuttals have expressed a piety of resistance that demonstrates evangelicalism's fractured, but persistent presence. Salvation with a Smile situates Lakewood Church in the context of American religious history and illuminates how Osteen has parlayed an understanding of American religious and political culture into vast popularity and success.

This book examines the multi-media explosion of contemporary political satire. Rooted in 18th century Augustan practice, satire's indelible link with politics underlies today's universal disgust with the ways of elected politicians. This study interrogates the impact of British and American satirical media on political life, with a special focus on political cartoons and the levelling humour of Australasian satirists.

Best known for "The Piano," Jane Campion is a author/director whose films explore the relationship between literature and cinema. This book mixes cultural and textual analysis of Campion's films alongside consideration of concepts such as context, pastiche and genre. All those interested in Campion or adaptation studies must read this text.

Since 1952, when Eisenhower's media consultants decided they could warm up the General's personality and overcome selective exposure by using short spots on television, advertising has played a major role in American presidential campaigns. By the late 1990s, candidates and their political parties spend hundreds of millions on TV ads. Political spots have become the dominant form of communication between voters and candidates.

Kaid and Johnston report the results of a systematic and thorough analysis of virtually all of the political commercials used in general election campaigns from 1952 through the 1996 presidential contest. Important to scholars, students, and other researchers involved with political communications, mass communications, and presidential elections.

'It's fascinating and moving to discover and identify those LGBT people in less happy times, who fought for the freedoms LGBT people now enjoy in the UK. This book will make you look back with gratitude and astonishment for what has been achieved.' Sir Ian McKellen LGBT activist and civil rights history from the 1960s to the 2000s has had a huge impact on our social and political landscape in the UK, yet much of this history remains hidden. Prejudice and Pride: LGBT Activist Stories from Manchester and Beyond explores aspects of LGBT activist history. It covers educational activism, youth work activism and the history of the LGBT Centre in Manchester. Through personal stories of activists, heard and recorded by young people from LGBT Youth North West, the book explores the 'wibbly wobbly' nature of people's histories. It reveals how they interlink in surprising and creative ways to form the current landscape of both prejudice and pride. Also contains exercises for interpreting and ideas for collecting activist histories within youth work.