Electric Dreams turns to the past to trace the cultural history of computers. Ted Friedman charts the struggles to define the meanings of these powerful machines over more than a century, from the failure of Charles Babbage's "difference engine" in the nineteenth century to contemporary struggles over file swapping, open source software, and the future of online journalism. To reveal the hopes and fears inspired by computers, Electric Dreams examines a wide range of texts, including films, advertisements, novels, magazines, computer games, blogs, and even operating systems.

Electric Dreams argues that the debates over computers are critically important because they are how Americans talk about the future. In a society that in so many ways has given up on imagining anything better than multinational capitalism, cyberculture offers room to dream of different kinds of tomorrow.

Violence and Understanding in Gaza is the first comprehensive investigation of the British broadsheets' coverage of the Gaza War. Written in accessible language and engaging style, it critiques the newspapers' output, which it is argued replicates the black and white logic of war instead of focusing on negotiations and peace.

This is an important study of the publishing of contemporary writing in Britain. It analyzes the changing social, economic and cultural environment of the publishing industry in the 1990s-2000s, and investigates its impact on genre, authorship and reading. It includes case studies of Trainspotting and the His Dark Materials trilogy.

This lively, entertaining, and often funny history of America's supermarket tabloids is the first book to offer a behind-the-scene's look at the intriguing world of tabloid journalism, and especially the unique personalities that made it such a tremendously successful and influential force in today's media. Perhaps no one is more qualified to give the complete insider's account of the tabs than Bill Sloan, who helped guide the destinies of three major tabloids in their heyday. Sloan profiles the publishing eccentrics who conceived the first national tabloids, the greedy owners and screwball executives who called the shots, the ruthless underworld manipulators who fed off of the tabloids' phenomenal success, and the money-driven journalists who did the dirty work. I Watched a Wild Hog Ate My Baby reveals the whole sometimes-sordid, often-silly, but always-amazing story behind the multibillion-dollar industry these characters spawned.
Based on candid interviews with the author, the fascinating personalities who created the tabloids explain in their own words how and why they built these notorious rags into powerful and often feared journalistic empires. The late, legendary Enquirer founder Generoso (Gene) Pope, former Enquirer president Iain Calder, Globe cocreator and longtime editor John Vader, and many others offer hundreds of funny, juicy, irresistible glimpses into their zany business. Sloan traces the development of the tabs from their beginnings in sleazy, gore-filled sensationalism or soft-core smut and sex scandals, through the celebrity crazes of Jackie O. and Princess Di. He also discusses the widespread influence of the tabloids today on television journalism and the Internet, where the distinction between news and entertainment is quickly vanishing.
This enjoyable, eye-opening account is must reading for anyone interested in the people and the trends that shape our popular culture.

Opportunities to "have your say," "get involved," and "join the conversation" are everywhere in public life. From crowdsourcing and town hall meetings to government experiments with social media, participatory politics increasingly seem like a revolutionary antidote to the decline of civic engagement and the thinning of the contemporary public sphere. Many argue that, with new technologies, flexible organizational cultures, and a supportive policymaking context, we now hold the keys to large-scale democratic revitalization. Democratizing Inequalities shows that the equation may not be so simple. Modern societies face a variety of structural problems that limit potentials for true democratization, as well as vast inequalities in political action and voice that are not easily resolved by participatory solutions. Popular participation may even reinforce elite power in unexpected ways. Resisting an oversimplified account of participation as empowerment, this collection of essays brings together a diverse range of leading scholars to reveal surprising insights into how dilemmas of the new public participation play out in politics and organizations. Through investigations including fights over the authenticity of business-sponsored public participation, the surge of the Tea Party, the role of corporations in electoral campaigns, and participatory budgeting practices in Brazil, Democratizing Inequalities seeks to refresh our understanding of public participation and trace the reshaping of authority in today's political environment.

In what ways have social movements attracted the attention of the mass media since the sixties? How have activists influenced public attention via visual symbols, images, and protest performances in that period? And how do mass media cover and frame specific protest issues? Drawing on contributions from media scholars, historians, and sociologists, this volume explores the dynamic interplay between social movements, activists, and mass media from the 1960s to the present. It introduces the most relevant theoretical approaches to such issues and offers a variety of case studies ranging from print media, film, and television to Internet and social media.

In Cold War historiography, the 1960s are often described as a decade of mounting diplomatic tensions and international social unrest. At the same time, they were a period of global media revolution: communication satellites compressed time and space, television spread around the world, and images circulated through print media in expanding ways. Examining how U.S. policymakers exploited these changes, this book offers groundbreaking international research into the visual media battles that shaped America's Cold War from West Germany and India to Tanzania and Argentina.

This study explores Hollywood's invention of Britain through the adaptation of its literature. Utilizing Derrida's Margins of Philosophy , texts by Gilles Deleuze and his work with Felix Guattari, this text identifies the future of British and Anglophone literary and cultural studies as a group of citations appropriated for American ends.

This book opens up a new field at the intersections of transnational, feminist, and media studies. The collection brings feminist theories to bear on the discourses of transnationality embedded in a range of recent films and video art from diverse locations in North Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. Paying particular attention to new frontiers of migration, an increasing vigilance vis-a-vis the foreign, and the gendered and racialized representations of mobility, the book charts innovative feminist strategies for the interpretation of contemporary visual cultures. This ambitious volume will be an important guide for scholars and students interested in approaching global media cultures from transnational feminist perspectives

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.

Fifteen thought-provoking essays engage in an innovative dialogue between cultural studies of affect, feelings and emotions, and digital cultures, new media and technology. The volume provides a fascinating dialogue that cuts across disciplines, media platforms and geographic and linguistic boundaries.

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.

The church struggles with media. Whether it is a denomination negotiating the 24 hour news cycle or a church evaluating how Facebook or online games are influencing the youth group, media is raising questions and placing demands on communities of faith in ways that could not have been imagined just 20 years ago. Thus the importance of understanding media for the church has never been greater.In Mediating Faith, church leaders of all kinds will find Clint Schnekloth an engaging and insightful guide to this new and sometimes wondrous world. In doing so he offers an evaluation and theological response to the trans-media era that highlights its potential to transform our work and world.Far from frightening, Schnekloth highlights the opportunities and the riches of this fascinating time.

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.

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.

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 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.

An analysis of divergent online news preferences of journalists and consumers and what this means for media and democracy in the digital age. The websites of major media organizations-CNN, USA Today, the Guardian, and others-provide the public with much of the online news they consume. But although a large proportion of the top stories these sites disseminate cover politics, international relations, and economics, users of these sites show a preference (as evidenced by the most viewed stories) for news about sports, crime, entertainment, and weather. In this book, Pablo Boczkowski and Eugenia Mitchelstein examine the divergence in preferences and consider its implications for the media industry and democratic life in the digital age. Drawing on analyses of more than 50,000 stories posted on twenty news sites in seven countries in North and South America and Western Europe, Boczkowski and Mitchelstein find that the gap in news preferences exists regardless of ideological orientation or national media culture, and that it is not affected by innovations in forms of storytelling, such as blogs and user-generated content on mainstream news sites. Drawing upon these findings, they explore the news gap's troubling consequences for the matrix that connects communication, technology, and politics in the digital age.

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.

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