Contemporary anthropology is done in a world where social and digital media are playing an increasingly significant role, where anthropological and arts practices are often intertwined in museum and public intervention contexts, and where anthropologists are encouraged to engage with mass media. Because anthropologists are often expected and inspired to ensure their work engages with public issues, these opportunities to disseminate work in new ways and to new publics simultaneously create challenges as anthropologists move their practice into unfamiliar collaborative domains and expose their research to new forms of scrutiny. In this volume, contributors question whether a fresh public anthropology is emerging through these new practices.

This book presents essays and scientific contributions examining the link between popular media and politics. The essays focus on the question of how political and social change, concepts of power, and utopian elements are reflected in selected films and television series. The book applies a political science perspective, covering theories from political philosophy, political sociology and international relations, and examines a wide range of movies and TV series, such as The Godfather, Fight Club, The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. It will appeal to anyone interested in studying how political ideas, concepts and messages can be illustrated and visualized using the complex media of movies and TV series.

Media and Gender Adaptation examines how fans and professionals change the gender of characters when they adapt existing work. Using research into fans, and case studies on Sherlock Holmes, Ghostbusters and Doctor Who, it illustrates the foundation of the process and ways the works engage with and critique media and gender at a political level. The default maleness of narratives in media are reworked to be inclusive of other points of view. Regendering as an adaptational technique relies on audience familiarity with existing works, however it also reveals an increasing trend in aggressive backlash against interpretations of media that include marginalised and minority communities. Combining analysis of fanfiction, television and big budget Hollywood productions, Media and Gender Adaptation also analyses fan responses to regendering in popular media. Through demographic surveys and interviews with fans, creators and broader audiences, a combination of playful and serious attitudes to gender are revealed to be part of how transformative fans (professional or not) adapt work. Specific fanfiction examples are analysed alongside professional works to reveal the depth and breadth of fannish play in regendered work and the constraints that professional adaptations are held to. It also reveals a schism in audiences, and those researching media, where the intersection of gender and race are sites of tension - nostalgia combining with expected representation of gender and race to create an aggressive defence of an original work that reiterates the mainstream hierarchies of gender and race.

The Chinese government has long kept tight control on both traditional and new media to prevent potential challenges to its authority. But, for better or worse, China has now reached a stage where it is difficult to exercise political hegemony through laws and regulations and the control of the mass media. China has become a global superpower and in 2011 surpassed Japan as the world's second largest economy, second only to the USA. China's entertainment industry is also flourishing, and the market is large enough to attract foreign investors that either view China as an important market or are interested in Chinese capital. Today, more children in China watch television than in any other country in the world, and Internet usage is also increasing, making the implementation of media literacy education an important issue. This book presents the prevailing perspectives on media literacy education in China and describes how the current curriculum reform for implementing media literacy education is being developed. It will not only stimulate debate and further research, but will also influence policy decisions regarding media literacy education in China.

Multiculturalism has become an ambiguous but potent battle cry in U.S. society, lauded by proponents as a call to tolerate different cultural traditions and values, and deplored by detractors as an attack on the highest standards of Western culture. This anthology explores this controversial social movement from various humanist perspectives.
Building on an Enlightenment cosmopolitanism, humanists have critically evaluated all cultures, especially their own. From this stance, contentions involving race, gender, sexual orientation, class, religion, ethnicity, and nation can be freshly assessed among the competing claims of the rapidly hybridizing yet polarizing world into which we are moving. Although any attempt to impose a specific vision on this multifarious global community will clearly fail, a noncritical relativism will just as certainly lead to anarchy. Humanism's combined use of critical reason in the developing sciences and an ethical wisdom that transcends past traditions points toward a way to live and learn together, while improving ourselves in the process.
Unfortunately, most nations and most religions persist in focusing on their own perceived superiority, relying on historical claims and traditional authorities. Humanists make no such claims but appeal to the potentialities of human values emerging in a post-traditional world. This volume provides the outlines of the directions such consensus-building might take. The distinguished contributors include Khoren Arisian, Vern L. Bullough, Howard Callaway, Paul Kurtz, Sarah W. Oelberg, Don Page, Howard Radest, Andreas Rosenberg, Harvey Sarles, Robert B. Tapp, Michael Werner, and Carol Wintermute.

History has always been a matter of arranging evidence into a narrative, but the public debate over the meanings we attach to a given history can seem particularly acute in our current age. Like all artistic mediums, comics possess the power to mold history into shapes that serve its prospective audience and creator both. It makes sense, then, that history, no stranger to the creation of hagiographies, particularly in the service of nationalism and other political ideologies, is so easily summoned to the panelled page. Comics, like statues, museums, and other vehicles for historical narrative, make both monsters and heroes of men while fuelling combative beliefs in personal versions of United States history. Drawing the Past, Volume 1: Comics and the Historical Imagination in the United States, the first book in a two-volume series, provides a map of current approaches to comics and their engagement with historical representation. The first section of the book on history and form explores the existence, shape, and influence of comics as a medium. The second section concerns the question of trauma, understood both as individual traumas that can shape the relationship between the narrator and object, and historical traumas that invite a reassessment of existing social, economic, and cultural assumptions. The final section on mythic histories delves into ways in which comics add to the mythology of the US. Together, both volumes bring together a range of different approaches to diverse material and feature remarkable scholars from all over the world. Contributions by Lawrence Abrams, Dorian Alexander, Max Bledstein, Peter Cullen Bryan, Stephen Connor, Matthew J. Costello, Martin Flanagan, Michael Fuchs, Michael Goodrum, Bridget Keown, Kaleb Knoblach, Christina M. Knopf, Martin Lund, Jordan Newton, Stefan Rabitsch, Maryanne Rhett, and Philip Smith.

Ben Light puts forward an alternative way of thinking about how we engage with social networking sites. He analyses our engagements social networking sites in public, at work, in our personal lives and as related to our health and wellbeing, emphasizing the importance of disconnection instead of connection.

This book is a unique contribution to both media studies and contemporary politics. It analyzes the American media's structure and its role in shaping perceptions of the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, and looks at the key issues involved, from self-determination to genocide. Sadkovich sees the failure of the U.S. media and the West as having prolonged and even aggravated the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. This work will prove useful to both the general reader and students of media and current affairs.

This edited volume documents the current reflections on the 'Right to be Forgotten' and the interplay between the value of memory and citizen rights about memory. It provides a comprehensive analysis of problems associated with persistence of memory, the definition of identities (legal and social) and the issues arising for data management.

This book intervenes in debates over the significance of Diana, Princess of Wales, by offering a critical account of her status as a media icon from 1981 to the present. It outlines the historical development of representations of Diana, analyzing the ways in which she has been understood via discourses of gender, sexuality, race, economic class, the royal, national identity, and the human. The book goes on to assess the issues at stake in debates over the "meaning" of Diana, such as the gender politics of cultural icon-making and deconstruction, and conflicting notions of cultural value.

Media pressure is often implicated in changes to foreign policy. It is at once hailed as a check on the abuse of power and then reviled for undermining the roles and responsibilities of democratic institutions. But we are still left to wonder what media pressure "is." This question is explicitly answered here, and in doing so it shows how the never-ending conversation between the media and executive creates social imperatives to which the executives "must" respond or else threaten their needed moral positions required to lead or act in international affairs.

Journalists have often lost constitutional rights for coverage and commentary during America's wars. Based on analysis of two hundred years of law and history, this study argues that press freedom cannot and should not be suspended during armed conflict. The military and the media must work together because neither has authority over the other.

With the emergence of popular culture phenomena, such as reality television, blogging, and social networking sites, it is important to examine the representation of Black women and the potential implications of those images, messages, and roles. Black Women and Popular Culture: The Conversation Continues provides such a comprehensive analysis. Using an array of theoretical frameworks and methodologies, this anthology features cutting edge research from several scholars interested in the relationship among media, society, perceptions, and Black women. The uniqueness of this book is that it serves as a compilation of hot topics such as ABC s Scandal, Beyonce s Visual Album, and Oprah s Instagram page. Other themes explored are rooted in reality television, film, and hip hop, as well as issues of gender politics, domestic violence, and colorism. The discussion also extends to the presentation and inclusion of Black women in advertising, print, and digital media."

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Across the life course, new forms of community, ways of keeping in contact, and practices for engaging in work, healthcare, retail, learning and leisure are evolving rapidly. Breaking new ground in the study of technology and aging, this book examines how developments in smart phones, the internet, cloud computing, and online social networking are redefining experiences and expectations around growing older in the twenty-first century. Drawing on contributions from leading commentators and researchers across the world, this book explores key themes such as caregiving, the use of social media, robotics, chronic disease and dementia management, gaming, migration, and data inheritance, to name a few.

The Soviet collapse of 1991 - the Great August liberation - demonstrated the total exhaustion of Marxist Leninist agitation and propaganda. It was no longer possible to live on slogans. The failure of Soviet agitprop is also the failure of Soviet censorship the latter being a unique institution in anti-thought. This volume analyzes the consequences of censorship, before tackling the media legislation of the Russian Federation and the dangers to the free flow of information emerging both within and outside the Russian Federation.

This book breaks new ground in providing an in-depth critical assessment of cyborg cinema, arguing that it remains one of the most intriguing and provocative cycles to have emerged in contemporary screen culture. Tracing the cinematic cyborg's transition over the last two decades and evaluating the theoretical significance attributed to this figure, it asks what relevance the cyborg continues to have in terms of understanding human identity, as well as our relationship to technology and to one another.

Television was one of the forces shaping the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when a blockbuster TV series could reach up to a third of a country's population. This book explores television's impact on social change by comparing three sitcoms and their audiences. The shows in focus - Till Death Us Do Part in Britain, All in the Family in the United States, and One Heart and One Soul in West Germany - centered on a bigoted anti-hero and his family. Between 1966 and 1979 they saturated popular culture, and managed to accelerate as well as deradicalize value changes and collective attitudes regarding gender roles, sexuality, religion, and race.

By using a wide diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches and by encompassing both cross-national and longitudinal analyses, this volume sheds new light on comparative political communication research, such as personalization, globalization, democratization, and the changing nature of journalism,

Malovic and Selnow examine the evolution of the press-government relationship in Croatia from the Tito era to the present. Their story is one of three interacting players: the Croatian government which until recently has sat firmly in control, the compliant press which seemed little motivated to change, and the largely quiescent public which demanded little from its press or its government. A provocative, often first-hand account that will be of interest to scholars and researchers involved with Balkan current affairs, journalism, and politics.

A historical survey of the Iraqi media from its beginning up to the present day, focusing on the post-2003 media scene and the political and societal divisions that occurred in Iraq after US-led occupation. Investigates the nature of the media outlets and offers an analysis of the way Iraqi satellite channels covered the 2010 general elections.

He left school at fifteen to work as a reporter and wound up, just a few years later, as associate editor at Newsweek. He helped William F. Buckley Jr. found the National Review, worked closely with Joseph McCarthy, and became chief speechwriter for Barry Goldwater.

But true to a conscience that caused him to question the claims and authority of others, Hess eventually rejected conservatism and embraced the libertarian politics of the New Left. He dabbled with drugs, rode motorcycles, worked with the Black Panthers, got arrested while protesting the war in Viet Nam, and published an article in Playboy that defined libertarianism and ignited a national debate. As an anti-Communist he cooperated with the FBI, but as a libertarian he fought the IRS until he was nearly destitute. Whatever his political leanings, he always despised conceit, exploded intolerance, and embraced life to the fullest. He was a man who traveled in influential circles, often close to power, but, in his own words, "mostly on the edge."

Karl Hess participated in many of the defining events of 20th-century America, a self-taught boy who became a self-made journalist. Mostly on the Edge chronicles the life education of Hess, who became a defiant tester of the prevailing ideas of each decade. He lived by trial and error, and was always willing to acknowledge his mistakes.

Like Franklin and Thoreau, Hess hoped to wake up America by questioning the moral majority, fighting the Kafkaesque intrusions of government, and encouraging his family, friends, and highly influential colleagues to think for themselves. Hess provides eyewitness accounts, unique personal observations, startling and valuable insights on leadership and dissent, and, in the end, leaves behind a clear path to realizing the dream of freedom.

A groundbreaking collection of essays looking at the concepts of 'intermediality' and 'multimodality' - the relationship between various forms of art and new media - and including case studies ranging from music, film and architecture to medieval ballads, biopoetry and Lettrism.

In many ways what is identified today as "cultural globalization" in Eastern Europe has its roots in the Cold War phenomena of samizdat ("do-it-yourself" underground publishing) and tamizdat (publishing abroad). This volume offers a new understanding of how information flowed between East and West during the Cold War, as well as the much broader circulation of cultural products instigated and sustained by these practices. By expanding the definitions of samizdat and tamizdat from explicitly political print publications to include other forms and genres, this volume investigates the wider cultural sphere of alternative and semi-official texts, broadcast media, reproductions of visual art and music, and, in the post-1989 period, new media. The underground circulation of uncensored texts in the Cold War era serves as a useful foundation for comparison when looking at current examples of censorship, independent media, and the use of new media in countries like China, Iran, and the former Yugoslavia.