Global Auteurs employs auteur theory to examine the work of three contemporary and innovative directors: Pedro Almodovar, Lars von Trier, and Michael Winterbottom. With extensive background information on the global film industry, and on auteur theory and its implications for ideological critique, this book's insightful case studies examine both ideologies the filmmakers re-circulate and ideologies that they confront in textual form. The discussion of Pedro Almodovar devotes particular attention to mass mediation, the family, and gender in the corpus of his films, while Lars von Trier's corpus is interpreted as driven by a motif that characterizes all of his films: the «failed idealist. Michael Winterbottom's body of work presents a genre-diverse, post-MTV style concerned with «outsiders and taboo, representation and truth, and human rights. Global Auteurs' sophisticated approach to decoding film is suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses on film, global mass media, and contemporary Europe.

Global Auteurs employs auteur theory to examine the work of three contemporary and innovative directors: Pedro Almodovar, Lars von Trier, and Michael Winterbottom. With extensive background information on the global film industry, and on auteur theory and its implications for ideological critique, this book's insightful case studies examine both ideologies the filmmakers re-circulate and ideologies that they confront in textual form. The discussion of Pedro Almodovar devotes particular attention to mass mediation, the family, and gender in the corpus of his films, while Lars von Trier's corpus is interpreted as driven by a motif that characterizes all of his films: the «failed idealist. Michael Winterbottom's body of work presents a genre-diverse, post-MTV style concerned with «outsiders and taboo, representation and truth, and human rights. Global Auteurs' sophisticated approach to decoding film is suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses on film, global mass media, and contemporary Europe.

Using the Herman & Chomsky "Propaganda Model" that was introduced in 1988, Goss offers a rigorous and accessible portrait of contemporary news media. Following a current survey of media ownership and news worker routines, in a series of case studies, he shows how recent news discourse has developed an Us/Them narrative. Cases include The New York Times' accounts of the Bush administration and United Nations in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and analysis of the 2011 riots in the United Kingdom in a comparison between two British broadsheets (The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph). Further case studies demonstrate important, if partial, new media discontinuities with respect to "old" news media. The book's international reach and sustained attention to new media indicate that it is not simply high-fidelity repetition of Herman & Chomsky, but re-engineers the model's architecture for the twenty-first century.

Globalization is one of the most widely circulated, high-stakes buzzwords of the past generation; yet discussion of the topic is often encased in paradox and contention over what globalization is, to whom and where it may (or may not) apply, and to what effect. In Talking Back to Globalization: Texts and Practices, contributors provide a series of case studies that stress the interplay between culture, politics, and commerce. Interviews with Natalie Fenton and Radha S. Hegde survey globalization and its interpenetration with the spheres of journalism, activism, social media, and identity. The overview furnished by the interviews is followed by the volume's two additional extended sections, "Texts" and "Practices." Chapters in the "Texts" section seek clues about globalization through its insinuation into mediated forms. The diverse selection of cases cover television, films, online travel web pages, blues music, and the political valences of Portuguese neo-fado. Chapters in the "Practices" section address more diffused cases than media texts. Their analyses largely orient toward institutional concomitants of globalization that precede the subject's experience of it. Chapters cover the trajectory of the European university, campaigns to shape journalistic practice during the Cold War, the posture of intellectuals vis-a-vis globalization, and the ideology that animates the Facebook experience.

Identity: Beyond Tradition and McWorld Neoliberalism refashions the frameworks of discussion of who we are. In the Introduction, co-editors Brian Michael Goss and Christopher Chavez's grand tour re-works previous concepts of identity in prelude to the volume's global reach. The first section examines the intersection of identity and mass media; to wit, non-ascriptive ideological interpolation in a right-wing British broadsheet (Goss), the rise of beur cinema as an organically European movement (Arne Saeys), and linguistic construction of foreigners in a Thai novel (Sompatu Vungthong). The second section orients to the nation and trans-nation. The discussion traverses the Global Latino in advertising discourse (Chavez), the (practical, theoretical) conundrums inscribed in the European Union (Francisco Seoane Perez), retorts to the global construction of Italianicity (Paul Venzo), implications of Spain's World Cup triumph in 2010 for the nation's unity (Mateo Szlapek-Sewillo), and activism of expatriate Iranian bloggers (Pardis Shafafi). The third section of the book addresses social approaches to identity. Matchmakers who coach Israeli daters (Ya'arit Bokek-Cohen) and linguistic analysis of female teen conflict on Facebook (Antonio Garcia Gomez) conclude the trajectory through global sites at which identity is animated in practice, within a volume of scholarly originality grounded in right now.