Hidden from public sight and mind today are invisible crises that threaten our democracy and existence more than the crises we know about?or think we know about. These invisible crises include the promotion of practices that drug, hurt, poison, and kill thousands every day; cults of violence that desensitize, terrorize, and brutalize; the growing s

Hidden from public sight and mind today are invisible crises that threaten our democracy and existence more than the crises we know about--or think we know about. These invisible crises include the promotion of practices that drug, hurt, poison, and kill thousands every day; cults of violence that desensitize, terrorize, and brutalize; the growing siege mentality of our cities; widening resource gaps and the most glaring inequalities in the industrial world; the costly neglect of vital institutions such as public education and the arts; and media-assisted make-believe image politics corrupting the electoral process.Deprived of sustained attention but bombarded by eruptions of surface consequences (often presented as unique events stripped of historical context), people ar bewildered, fearful, angry, and cynical.The contributors to this volume--exploring such unattended crises, analyzing why they are hidden, and focusing on the increasing concentration of culture-power that keeps them from view--maintain that a profound general crisis of social vision, public communication, and representative government underlies all of the invisible crises.

For over forty years, George Gerbner has been one of the world's most influential and prolific media scholars. His critical theories and long-running research projects have changed the way we think about media institutions, messages, and impacts. His work has helped shape the academic discipline of communication and has stimulated social movements to alter the cultural environment. This book brings together for the first time a broad-based collection of his writings on the role of media in terms of violence, eduction, women and minorities, drugs and alcohol, science, religion, and much more.

Originally a Unesco project, this annotate bibliography results from more than 4,600 requests to media scholars and researchers for research reports, publications, and other information relating to violence and terrorism. Although there is an international cast to the materials, most are from the U.S. Even though violence and terrorism permeate our myths and legends, there is increasing concern with their effect on viewers. This bibliography is particularly timely, with entries through spring 1987. The sections of the work (mass media content, mass media effects, pornography and the media, terrorism and the media) give a better idea of the work's scope than does the title. Choice [T]he annotations are clearly written, succinctly descriptive of the original work's research with test groups, and evaluative of research results. Reference Books Bulletin This bibliography focuses on research and scholarly works relating to violence and terror. Consisting primarily of articles published in scholarly journals and books, this comprehensive work examines major topics such as violence and mass media content, violence and mass media effects, terrorism and the mass media, and pornography. Also included are articles from popular journals, reports published by the United States and other governments, conference papers, and dissertations. Each entry consists of the bibliographic citation and a short abstract; many of the sources include studies from other countries where relevant research has been conducted. The compilers' introduction provides a clear definition of violence and terrorism as they are dealt with in this volume and offers an interesting overview of various aspects of the subject.