The study of audience relations with star / celebrity culture has often been marginalised in Star/Celebrity Studies. This book brings together new research which explores a range of audience encounters with celebrities, moving across social media, royal weddings, national identity to questions of age, gender and class. In doing so, the essays illuminate the complex and negotiated nature of audience investments in celebrity culture, collectively questioning the often simplistic and dismissive judgements that are made about audience/ celebrity relationships in this regard. The book provides a dedicated space to showcase a range of current work in the field, seeking to both consolidate and stimulate what is a vibrant and crucial aspect of studying celebrity culture.

Contents:
Notes Introduction: From bad research to good - a guide for the perplexed 1.The Newson Report: a case study in 'commonsense' Martin Barker 2.The worrying influence of 'media effects' studies David Gauntlett 3.Electronic child abuse? Rethinking the media's effects on children David Buckingham 4.Living for a libido; or, Child's Play IV: the imagery of childhood and the call for censorship Patricia Holland 5.Just what the doctors ordered? - Media regulation, education and the 'problem' of media violence Sara Bragg 6.Once more with feeling: talking about the media violence debate in Australia Sue Turnbull 7.I was a teenage horror fan: or, 'How I learned to stop worrying and love Linda Blair' Mark Kermode 8.'Looks Like it Hurts': Women's Responses to Shocking Entertainment Annette Hill 9.Reservoirs of dogma: an archaeology of popular anxieties Graham Murdock 10.Us and them Julian Petley 11.Invasion of the Internet Abusers: Marketing Fears About the Information Superhighway Thomas Craig and Julian Petley 12.On the problems of being a 'trendy travesty' Martin Barker with Julian Petley Index

"Reading Into Cultural Studies" revisits a selection of key texts central to the formation of cultural studies as a discipline and as a project. These texts address questions of power, ideology and the possibilities and limits of resistance. Each of the eleven essays in the collection renews an early study in one area of cultural investigation, bringing such seminal texts as "Subculture" by Dick Hebdige, "Loving With a Vengeance" by Tania Modleski and "Bond and Beyond" by Tony Bennett back to the centre of attention, However the essays are not purely celebratory. Each study is critically examined in a number of ways - for its research strategy, its implicit theories of power and ideology, for the empirical evidence it draws on and its conceptual framework. Together, the essays provide an introduction to some of the central debates and issues in cultural studies.

"Reading Into Cultural Studies" revisits a selection of key texts central to the formation of cultural studies as a discipline and as a project. These texts address questions of power, ideology and the possibilities and limits of resistance. Each of the eleven essays in the collection renews an early study in one area of cultural investigation, bringing such seminal texts as "Subculture" by Dick Hebdige, "Loving With a Vengeance" by Tania Modleski and "Bond and Beyond" by Tony Bennett back to the centre of attention, However the essays are not purely celebratory. Each study is critically examined in a number of ways - for its research strategy, its implicit theories of power and ideology, for the empirical evidence it draws on and its conceptual framework. Together, the essays provide an introduction to some of the central debates and issues in cultural studies.

The study of audience relations with star / celebrity culture has often been marginalised in Star/Celebrity Studies. This book brings together new research which explores a range of audience encounters with celebrities, moving across social media, royal weddings, national identity to questions of age, gender and class. In doing so, the essays illuminate the complex and negotiated nature of audience investments in celebrity culture, collectively questioning the often simplistic and dismissive judgements that are made about audience/ celebrity relationships in this regard. The book provides a dedicated space to showcase a range of current work in the field, seeking to both consolidate and stimulate what is a vibrant and crucial aspect of studying celebrity culture.

Game of Thrones was an international sensation, and has been looked at from many different angles. But to date there has been little research into its audiences: who they were, how they engaged with and responded to it. This book presents the findings of a major international research project that garnered more than 10,000 responses to an innovative 'qualiquantitative' questionnaire. Among its findings are: a new way of understanding the place and role of favourite characters in audiences’ responses; new insights into the role of fantasy in encouraging thinking about our own world; and an account of two combined emotions – relish and anguish – which structure audiences’ reactions to controversial elements in the series. -- .

Ill Effects revisits the 'media effects' debate. It asks why, when a particularly high-profile crime of violence is committed, there are those who blame film, television, video, pop music, and more recently, the Internet.
Ill Effects considers how the 'media effects' controversy has developed and combines a discussion about the responses to the shootings at Columbine High School, an analysis of the 1998 Home Office report on video violence and an exploration of why the Internet is being demonised, along with an analysis of fans' responses to supposedly dangerous films such as Reservoir Dogs, Natural Born Killers and Man Bites Dog.
In this second edition, the authors question why the popular press continues to peddle a cruel caricature of the way in which the media supposedly affects behaviour. They argue that there needs to be a change in the very questions that are asked about the influence of the media; rather than fruitlessly searching for evidence of 'harm', there needs to be a better understanding of the ways in which people actually use and interact with so called 'violent' media. Exploring what 'violence' means to different audiences, Ill Effects includes a guide to the important new research which is beginning to make a difference to the controversial argument about the influence of the media.

Game of Thrones was an international sensation, and has been looked at from many different angles. But to date there has been little research into its audiences: who they were, how they engaged with and responded to it. This book presents the findings of a major international research project that garnered more than 10,000 responses to an innovative 'qualiquantitative' questionnaire. Among its findings are: a new way of understanding the place and role of favourite characters in audiences' responses; new insights into the role of fantasy in encouraging thinking about our own world; and an account of two combined emotions - relish and anguish - which structure audiences' reactions to controversial elements in the series. -- .

Between 1949 and 1955 Britain was swept by a rising tide of panic about "American-style" or "horror" comics. The British press cried out in alarm: "Now Ban This Filth That Poisons Our Children," "Drive Out the Horror Comics." As one frenzied columnist protested: "I feel as though I have been trudging through a sewer. Here is a terrible twilight zone between sanity and madness . . . peopled by monsters, grave robbers, human flesh eaters." A campaign against ghoulish comic books climaxed in an Act of Parliament making it illegal to publish or sell any material in comic form deemed to be "harmful to children."

But behind the facade of concern for the protection of children, another very different story lurked. This book explores the British campaign by asking some rather different questions. Who were the people at the heart of the anti-comics campaign? Why and how did the British Communist Party come to play a central role, and yet end up attacking a group of comics which were "on their side" in assaulting their rationality of McCarthyism?

The British "horror comics" campaign reveals the inadequacy of some conventional assessments of anti-media panics. In showing a curious gap between the private concerns of the campaigners and their public rhetoric, "A Haunt of Fears," originally published in Britain in 1983, raises serious questions about the state of British culture during this era.

Over the last five years, a cycle of films has emerged addressing the ongoing Iraq conflict. Some became well-known and one of them, " The Hurt Locker," won a string of Oscars. But many others disappeared into obscurity. What is it about these films that led "Variety "to dub them a "toxic genre"?Martin Barker analyses the production and reception of these recent Iraq war films. Among the issues he examines are the borrowing of soldiers' YouTube styles of self-representation to generate an "authentic" Iraq experience, and how they take refuge in "apolitical" post-traumatic stress disorder. Barker also looks afresh at some classic issues in film theory: the problems of accounting for film "failures"; the shaping role of production systems; the significance of genre-naming; and the impact of that "toxic" label. "A 'Toxic Genre'" is fascinating reading for film studies students and anyone with an interest in cinema's portrayal of modern warfare.

How media versions of Cooper's classic frontier novel have perpetuated the myth of "America."