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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Communication studies > Media studies
Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful
introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and
law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to
be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of
the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject
areas. As the world faces extreme economic, environmental and
political crises, this bold and accessible Advanced Introduction
argues for a future-facing approach to the creative economy and
creative innovation. The book analyses contemporary and historical
arts and culture whilst assessing historical shifts from national
to global cultures; analogue to digital technologies; and
individualist to systems thinking. Key features include: A new
approach to the creative industries based on complex systems and
evolutionary dynamics Combining humanities-based analysis with
economics of innovation A critique of important theorists and
intellectual traditions involved in the study of modern mediated
creativity Reconceptualizing arts, copyright, cities, time, global
media and social agency A thought-provoking reassessment of
modernity to pivot creative enterprise for the challenges of the
Anthropocene era. Scholars and students of media and communications
studies, political economy and economics will benefit from the new
approach to creative media and culture, and its proposals to
rethink the economics of creativity and innovation. This book will
be a helpful guide for policy-makers, consultants and freelancers
who work across the borderlines of art, media, technology, business
and regulation.
While the Western was dying a slow death across the cultural
landscape, it was blazing back to life as a video game in the early
twenty-first century. Rockstar Games' Red Dead franchise, beginning
with Red Dead Revolver in 2004, has grown into one of the most
critically acclaimed video game franchises of the twenty-first
century. Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the
Video Game West offers a critical, interdisciplinary look at this
cultural phenomenon at the intersection of game studies and
American history. Drawing on game studies, western history,
American studies, and cultural studies, the authors train a
wide-ranging, deeply informed analytic perspective on the Red Dead
franchise-from its earliest incarnation to the latest, Red Dead
Redemption 2 (2018). Their intersecting chapters put the series in
the context of American history, culture, and contemporary media,
with inquiries into issues of authenticity, realism, the meaning of
play and commercial promotion, and the relationship between the
game and the wider cultural iterations of the classic Western. The
contributors also delve into the role the series' development has
played in recent debates around working conditions in the gaming
industry and gaming culture. In its redeployment and reinvention of
the Western's myth and memes, the Red Dead franchise speaks to
broader aspects of American culture-the hold of the frontier myth
and the "Wild West" over the popular imagination, the role of gun
culture in society, depictions of gender and ethnicity in mass
media, and the increasing allure of digital escapism-all of which
come in for scrutiny here, making this volume a vital, sweeping,
and deeply revealing cultural intervention.
This edited collection explores the malleability and influence of
body image, focusing particularly on how media representation and
popular culture's focus on the body exacerbates the crucial social
influence these representations can have on audiences' perceptions
of themselves and others. Contributors investigate the cultural
context and lived experiences of individuals' relationships with
their bodies, going beyond examination of the thin, ideal body type
to explore the emerging representations and portrayals of a diverse
set of body types across the media spectrum, paving the way for
future research on this topic. Scholars of media studies, popular
culture, and health communication will find this book particularly
useful.
American Boarding School Fiction, 1981-2021: Inclusion and Scandal
is a study of contemporary American boarding-school narratives.
Before the 1980s, writers of American boarding-school fiction
tended to concentrate on mournful teenagers - the center was filled
with students: white, male, Protestant students at boys' schools.
More recently, a new generation of writers-including Richard A.
Hawley, Anita Shreve, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Tobias Wolff-has
transformed school fiction by highlighting issues relating to
gender, race, scandal, sexuality, education, and social class in
unprecedented ways. These new writers present characters who are
rich and underprivileged, white and Black, male and female,
adolescent and middle-aged, conformist and rebellious. By turning
their attention away from the bruised feelings of teenagers, they
have reinvented American boarding-school fiction, writing vividly
about a host of subjects the genre overlooked in the past.
Film festivals around the world are in the business of making
experiences for audiences, elites, industry, professionals, and
even future cultural workers. Cinema and the Festivalization of
Capitalism explains why these non-profit organizations work as they
do: by attracting people who work for free, while appealing to
businesses and policymakers as a cheap means to illuminate the
creative city and draw attention to film art. Ann Vogel's
unprecedented systematic sociological analysis thus provides firm
evidence for the 'festival effect', which situates the festival as
a key intermediary in cinema value chains, yet also demonstrates
the impact of such event culture on cultural workers' lives. By
probing the various resources and institutional pillars ensuring
that the festivalization of capitalism is here to stay, Vogel urges
us to think critically about publicly displayed benevolence in the
context of cinema-and beyond.
From 1910 to the end of World War I, American society witnessed a
tremendous outpouring of books, pamphlets, and especially
newspapers espousing virulently anti-Catholic themes and calling on
readers to recognize the danger of Catholicism to the American
republic. By 1915 the most popular anti-Catholic newspaper, The
Menace, boasted over 1.6 million weekly readers. Justin Nordstrom's
Danger on the Doorstep examines for the first time the rise and
abrupt decline of anti-Catholic literature during the Progressive
Era, as well as the issues and motivations that informed
anti-Catholic writers and their "Romanist" opponents. Nordstrom
explores the connection between anti-Catholicism and nationalism
from 1910-1919. He argues that the anti-Catholic literature that
occupied such a prominent place in the cultural landscape derived
its popularity by infusing long-standing anti-Catholic traditions
with the emerging themes of progressivism, masculinity, and
nationalism. Nordstrom demonstrates that in the pages of
anti-Catholic texts, Catholicism emerged as a manifestation of and
a scapegoat for the dangers of modernity-including rampant
urbanization, immigration, political corruption, and the
proliferation of power conglomerates. Samples of Menace cartoons
underscore Nordstrom's arguments. Danger on the Doorstep also
examines Catholics' vigorous and highly-organized responses to
journalistic attacks in the 1910s, ranging from lawsuits to
widespread public relations campaigns. According to Nordstrom, the
unraveling of anti-Catholic print literature by the end of the
1910s and the growing public presence of American Catholicism
suggest that Catholic claims to full citizenship had trumped
opponents' assertions of conspiracy. This fascinating look at an
understudied episode of anti-Catholic radicalism will be of
interest to scholars and students of religious history, popular
culture, and journalism.
This collection of original essays examines debates on how written,
printed, visual, and performed works produced meaning in American
culture before 1900. The contributors argue that America has been a
multimedia culture since the eighteenth century. According to
Sandra M. Gustafson, the verbal arts before 1900 manifest a
strikingly rich pattern of development and change. From the wide
variety of indigenous traditions, through the initial productions
of settler communities, to the elaborations of colonial,
postcolonial, and national expressive forms, the shifting dynamics
of performed, manuscript-based, and printed verbal art capture
critical elements of rapidly changing societies. The contributors
address performances of religion and government, race and gender,
poetry, theater, and song. Their studies are based on
texts-intended for reading silently or out loud-maps, recovered
speech, and pictorial sources. As these essays demonstrate, media,
even when they appear to be fixed, reflected a dynamic American
experience. Contributors: Caroline F. Sloat, Matthew P. Brown,
David S. Shields, Martin Bruckner, Jeffrey H. Richards, Phillip H.
Round, Hilary E. Wyss, Angela Vietto, Katherine Wilson, Joan Newlon
Radner, Ingrid Satelmajer, Joycelyn Moody, Philip F. Gura, Coleman
Hutchison, Oz Frankel, Susan S. Williams, Laura Burd Schiavo, and
Sandra M. Gustafson
It may be stipulated that, in the emergent media age of illusion,
the scope of media issues is vast and pervasive in every field of
scientific research as-well-as mystical philosophy. Issues of a
"conscious universe", "universal fractal "sentience", and subjects
of nanotechnology and the "Psychic paranormal" have begun to be
understood as issues of the global media that have been subdivided
into issues of "fake news", social media, propaganda, transpersonal
psychology, human "embodiment", climate change & human
intention, governmental structure, and more. This book establishes
a possible template for addressing the global media mandate as a
scientific study of paranormal influence on global culture. Such an
approach to the "New Normal" has been mandated by recent events
(especially the attempted insurrection in the U.S.) that highlight
global issues of mediated influences on the dynamic of government.
Futurist academics and professionals who are researching this ""new
normal"" of the mediasphere and this book will be a valuable
contribution to the field.
This book explores the media ecologies of literature - the ways in
which a literary text is interwoven in its material, technical,
performative, praxeological, affective, and discursive network and
which determine how it is experienced and interpreted. Through
novel approaches to the complex, contingent and interdependent
environments of literature, this volume demonstrates how questions
about the mediality of literature - particularly in the wake of
digitization - shed a new light on our understanding of textuality,
reading, platforms and reception processes. By drawing on recent
developments in advanced media theory, Media Ecologies of
Literature emphasizes the productivity of innovative
re-conceptualizations of literature as a medium in its own right.
In an intentionally wide historical scope, the essays engage with
literary texts from the Romantic to the contemporary period, from
Charlotte Smith and Oscar Wilde to A. L. Kennedy and Mark Z.
Danielewski, from the traditionally printed novel to audiobooks and
reading apps.
We are at a defining point in the history of news. Following a
surge of fake news, clickbait and conspiracy theories, the 2020s
have ushered in a welter of existential threats for public service
broadcasting. So, where do we go from here? Former Today editor and
head of BBC television news Roger Mosey thinks public service
broadcasters must buck the trends and in this incisive book he
offers twenty core ways in which the news can save itself by
getting smarter, sharper, more diverse, more nuanced and less
exposed to pummelling by politicians. Mosey sees two possible
futures: one in which the incitements of populist demagogues and
the passions of social media are ever dominant - or one where we
fight hard to retain media that has an interest in the public good
and preserves truth, fairness and evidence-based judgements. From
one of British broadcasting's most experienced voices comes the
definitive exploration of Britain's news output and what must
change if we are to avoid a future of uninspiring news, uninformed
decision-making and accountability-dodging politicians.
International advertising is an important discipline in social
sciences studies. Many books and articles have been published in
international advertising, however only few of them contain
information about advertising industry and research in specific
international countries/regions. This book intends to give a
local/global perspective to international advertising. Therefore,
this book provides an ideal resource for academicians, researchers,
advertising and marketing experts and students on a global
perspective. This book includes information about international
advertising and different international cultures. It covers
specific countries and specific international regions regarding
advertising. This text also includes a literature review of the
advertising industry for various countries and regions. This book,
within the social science studies discipline, is comprised of
articles in international advertising about specific countries and
international regions.
In nineteenth-century Toronto, people took to the streets to
express their jubilation on special occasions, such as the 1860
visit of the Prince of Wales and the return in 1885 of the local
Volunteers who helped to suppress the Riel resistance in the
North-West. In a contrasting mood, people also took to the streets
in anger to object to government measures, such as the Rebellion
Losses bill, to heckle rival candidates in provincial election
campaigns, to assert their ethno-religious differences, and to
support striking workers. Expressive Acts examines instances of
both celebration and protest when Torontonians publicly displayed
their allegiances, politics, and values. The book illustrates not
just the Victorian city's vibrant public life but also the intense
social tensions and cultural differences within the city. Drawing
from journalists' accounts in newspapers, Expressive Acts
illuminates what drove Torontonians to claim public space, where
their passions lay, and how they gave expression to them.
On March 15, 2011, Donald Trump changed television forever. The
Comedy Central Roast of Trump was the first major live broadcast to
place a hashtag in the corner of the screen to encourage real-time
reactions on Twitter, generating more than 25,000 tweets and making
the broadcast the most-watched Roast in Comedy Central history. The
#trumproast initiative personified the media and tech industries'
utopian vision for a multiscreen and communal live TV experience.
In Social TV: Multiscreen Content and Ephemeral Culture, author
Cory Barker reveals how the US television industry promised-but
failed to deliver-a social media revolution in the 2010s to combat
the imminent threat of on-demand streaming video. Barker examines
the rise and fall of Social TV across press coverage, corporate
documents, and an array of digital ephemera. He demonstrates that,
despite the talk of disruption, the movement merely aimed to
exploit social media to reinforce the value of live TV in the
modern attention economy. Case studies from broadcast networks to
tech start-ups uncover a persistent focus on community that aimed
to monetize consumer behavior in a transitionary industry period.
To trace these unfulfilled promises and flopped ideas, Barker draws
upon a unique mix of personal Social TV experiences and curated
archives of material that were intentionally marginalized amid
pivots to the next big thing. Yet in placing this now-forgotten
material in recent historical context, Social TV shows how the era
altered how the industry pursues audiences. Multiscreen campaigns
have shifted away from a focus on live TV and toward all-day
"content" streams. The legacy of Social TV, then, is the further
embedding of media and promotional material onto every screen and
into every moment of life.
How did the Israeli military learn to cope with the ubiquity of
media technologies that routinely document their power abuses? Why
did they re-appropriate these to tighten their grip on Palestinian
civilians? This book explains why a high-tech nation with advanced
military technologies came to rely on the everyday media habits
performed by soldiers and civilians. Daniel Mann argues that the
intensification of the security regime in Palestine, and the
increasingly personal use of media technologies by both soldiers
and civilians, are deeply entangled. The book traces how, beginning
in the 1990s, the integration of media into the lives of civilians
and Israeli soldiers enabled Israel to transfer responsibilities to
individual users, who in turn became legally and ethically liable
for state abuses of power. Drawing on declassified documents, found
footage, and social media, Mann shows how both media and warfare
have been remodelled around the figure of the defensive, isolated,
and insular 'individual'. Mann suggests that the focus on
representations and their close visual analysis paradoxically
hinders our ability to understand media. Instead of zooming into
fine details, we must step back to reveal the assemblage of images,
users, and infrastructure that together serve to maintain the
racial, legal and aesthetic divide between Israel and Palestine.
German Crime Dramas from Network Television to Netflix approaches
German television crime dramas to uncover the intersections between
the genre's media-specific network and post-network formats and how
these negotiate with and contribute to concepts of the regional,
national, and global. Part I concentrates on the ARD network's
long-running flagship series Tatort (Crime Scene 1970-). Because
the domestically produced crime drama succeeded in interacting with
and competing against dominant U.S. formats during 3 different
mediascapes, it offers strategic lessons for post-network
television. Situating 9 Tatort episodes in their televisual moment
within the Sunday evening flow over 38 years and 3 different German
regions reveals how producers, writers, directors, critics, and
audiences interacted not only with the cultural socio-political
context, but also responded to the challenges aesthetically,
narratively, and media-reflexively. Part II explores how post-2017
German crime dramas (Babylon Berlin, Dark, Perfume, and Dogs of
Berlin) rework the genre's formal and narrative conventions for
global circulation on Netflix. Each chapter concentrates on the
dynamic interplay between time-shifted viewing, transmedia
storytelling, genre hybridity, and how these interact with
projections of cultural specificity and continue or depart from
established network practices. The results offer crucial
information and inspiration for producers and executives, for
creative teams, program directors, and television scholars.
The presidency of Donald J. Trump, has had a considerable impacts
on American politics and society. One of these was his altering of
the comedic mood in America, taking comedy away from many of its
traditions. His presidency turned comedy into political weaponry,
as comedians on the liberal side of politics turned their efforts
to ridiculing Trump's buffoonish persona, while on the conservative
side, a Trump-supportive group of comedians mocked those very
comedians who opposed Trump. Trump himself emerged as a comedian,
performing his dark, caustic, comical routines with consummate
skill at his rallies. If comedy is a pulse for a country, then it
is legitimate to ask if that pulse still beating, even after Trump
lost reelection in 2020. This book will address this question,
examining how Trump's presidency interrupted the historical flow of
American comedic traditions, and how it spread a dark mood
throughout American society.
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