Media studies Books

Book SynopsisExplores the ways in which Muslims relate various forms of religious oratory to authoritative tradition in 21st-century Islamic practice, while striving to adapt to local contexts and the changing circumstances of politics, media and society.

Read more less

Book SynopsisExplores the ways in which Muslims relate various forms of religious oratory to authoritative tradition in 21st-century Islamic practice, while striving to adapt to local contexts and the changing circumstances of politics, media and society.

Read more less

Book SynopsisGodwin and the Book explores a network of controversies concerning the relationship of media form to social futurity in Romantic-period Britain through the writing of the notorious philosopher-novelist William Godwin (17561836).

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis edited collection examines how fantasy sports play has established a prominent and promising foothold in the larger sports ecology. Often considered an isolated activity for the hardcore sports fan, fantasy sports play have since been incorporated into sports broadcasting and editorial coverage, sports marketing and promotions, and even into the very sports themselves with athletes and teams using the activities to draw fans further into the sports experience. This edited collection invites leading scholars and sports professionals from several different fields to share historical and emerging perspectives on the importance of fantasy sports as an artifact of theoretical and empirical importance to larger issues of sport and society. 496Trade ReviewThe book Fantasy Sports and the Changing Sports Media Industry, by Nicholas Bowman, John Spinda, and Jimmy Sanderson, provides a timely and detailed examination of fantasy sports and how the sports-media industry has changed to accommodate the expanding appetite for media surrounding players and teams that affect an owner’s fantasy team…. Overall, the collection of work on fantasy sports compiled by the editors is very timely and thorough. The book could be used in a sport communication course as a supplementary text to attract students into exploring how communication plays into fantasy sports. Fantasy sports are complex, and this book is a large step toward educating many on fantasy sport and the impact it has on its participants. The book is full of interesting content that will leave readers with an increased understanding of fantasy sports and could even help them manage fantasy-sport teams of their own. * International Journal of Sport Communication *For those trying to understand why fan engagement with sports is increasingly dominated by the playing of fantasy sport and how new industries aim to monetize that engagement, Fantasy Sports and the Changing Sports Media Industry provides a vivid and comprehensive look at the 'realities' and dynamics of a new form of fanship set in an age of digital and social media. In this essential collection, the editors—all leaders in studying how mediated sport is played in a quickly changing media environment—have organized key scholars from across the globe in assessing how and why fantasy sports are played, not only for fans, but as a lucrative business enterprise. Here we see what underlies the roots of fantasy sports, the 'stimulations' and 'simulations' they provide, what drives the 'fanaticism' of fantasy sport fanship, how sports media are being changed by the rise of fantasy sports, and how new industries are 're-capitalizing' sports and challenging its legal terrain. For students of this 'new game,' those increasingly preoccupied by playing it, and those who are puzzled by its pull, this collection is essential reading. -- Lawrence A. Wenner, Loyola Marymount UniversityIf I were constructing a fantasy line-up of sports communication, Bowman, Spinda, and Sanderson would be my top picks. This collection provides the first comprehensive look at the fantasy sports phenomenon that grew from a hobby into a multimillion dollar industry. -- Adam C. Earnheardt, Youngstown State UniversityFantasy Sports and the Changing Sports Media Industry provides an interesting and informative view into the rapidly evolving realm of fantasy sports. Nicholas Bowman, John Spinda, and James Sanderson have skillfully organized an edited collection which provides readers with a working knowledge of the historical and industry driven components of fantasy sports and forecasts the future implications and possibilities of fantasy sports. This book is a thought provoking and valuable resource for everyone in the sport industry. -- Andy Gillentine, University of South CarolinaTable of ContentsSection 1: Roots of Fantasy Sports Chapter 1: The Origin of Fantasy Sports Shaun M. Anderson and Nicholas David Bowman Chapter 2: Simulations and Fantasy Sports: The Forgotten Element? John S. W. Spinda Chapter 3: Fantasy Sports across the Pond Nicholas M. Watanabe, Grace Yan, and Pamela Wicker Section 2: Fans and Fandom Chapter 4: “I wouldn’t pick them to save my season:” The impact of rivalry on fantasy football John S. W. Spinda and Cody Havard Chapter 5: Rooting With Your Rivals: Social Presence in Fantasy Sports Andy Boyan, David Westerman, and Emory S. Daniel Chapter 6: Draft Day: Risk, responsibility, and fantasy football Andrew Baerg Chapter 7: A Cluster Criticism of Justifications of Fantasy Sports for Women Katherine Lavelle Chapter 8: The Role of Self-Disclosure in Fantasy Sport League Satisfaction Christopher C. Gearhart, Shaughan A. Keaton and, Brody Ruihley Section 3: Fantasy and Sports Media Chapter 9: Legacy Media and Fantasy Sports Steve Bien-Aimé and Marie Hardin Chapter 10: Fantasy Sports and Mediated Fandom Brendan Dwyer, Stephen L. Shapiro, and Joris Drayer Chapter 11:“It Was All Your Fault”: Identity and Fan Messaging to Athletes at the Intersection of Fantasy Sport and Social Media James Sanderson Section 4: The Institutional Perspective Chapter 12: Fantasy Sport and World Cup Viewership Pamela Wicker, Nicholas M. Watanabe, and Grace Yan Chapter 13: Fantasy Sports Law: A Primer Mark Grabowski Section 5: For the Love of the Fantasy Game Chapter 14: Exploring the Braintrust: The Evolution and Impact of the Fantasy Sport Trade Association Brody J. Ruihley and Andrew C. Billings Chapter 15: Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS): The Future of Fantasy Games Renee Miller

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Smokers, survivalists, teenagers, collectors. The cigarette lighter is a charged, complex, yet often entirely disposable object that moves across these various groups of people, acquiring and emitting different meanings while always supplying its primary function, that of ignition. While the lighter may seem at first a niche objectonly for old fashioned cigarette smokersin this book Jack Pendarvis explodes the lighter as something with deep history, as something with quirky episodes in cultural contexts, and as something that dances with wide ranging taboos and traditions. Pendarvis shows how the lighter tarries with the cheapest ends of consumer culture as much as it displays more profound dramas of human survival, technological advances, and aesthetics.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewI didn’t realize how much I needed this book. It brought back terrible memories of an uncle dead in Vietnam, nothing but his Zippos to imagine him by, and the beautiful boy who broke my heart, leaving me with a carpenter pencil and a tiny lighter I could hang from my keychain (though I never did; that would have been much too painful). And that’s just the start! Cigarette Lighter is worth it for the index alone, but there's so much more. Like this gem: 'Your cigarette lighter represents your soul, so you get drunk and give it away to your pal, or your pal steals it without compunction. Either way, you can’t hang onto it forever.' Ah, such is life. * Mary Miller, author of The Last Days of California *This book is a Zippo fueled by the remarkable mind of Jack Pendarvis. A blend of histories—movies and TV, war and cars—Cigarette Lighter is so good I took up smoking. * Chris Offutt, author of My Father, the Pornographer *Cleverly disguising itself as a Rabelaisian account of the cigarette lighter in our films and in our lives, this raucous object lesson takes as its real subject, the indefatigable Ted Ballard—octogenarian, curator of the former National Lighter Museum in Guthrie, Oklahoma, collector, misanthrope, raconteur, and consummate charmer—and becomes, in the end, a sly meditation on impermanence, wherein, in the words of Jack Pendarvis, the lighter finds out what the match already knows. * Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted *Table of ContentsPrologue 1. Taming Fire 2. Age of the Lighter 3. Lighter vs. Match 4. Cars 5. The Lighter in Literature and Popular Culture 6. Romance and Death: Cigarette Lighters Today Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Desert nomads tested their vision by distinguishing a pair of stars. But we have since created more disquieting ways to test the strength of the eyes.Reading the eye chart is an exercise in failure, since it only gets interesting when you cannot read any further. It is the opposite of interpretative reading, like one does with literature. When you have finished reading an eye chart, what exactly have you even read? From a Spanish cleric's Renaissance guide to testing vision, to a Dutch ophthalmologist's innovation in optical tech, to the witty subversion of the eye chart in advertising and popular culture, William Germano's Eye Chart lets people see the eye chart at last.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewGermano’s style is conversational yet also deeply informative. He manages to turn font design and typography into a fascinating history about the diagnosis of vision. * Times Higher Education *I can see people in the ocular industry finding much that's new on these pages, and as for the average reader ... they have a veritable bijou box of delights ... It's a great little read about something you wouldn't expect to find fun in the exploration of. * The Bookbag *William Germano’s Eye Chart is a surprisingly compelling and at times quite poetic examination of this now ubiquitous technological innovation … Germano begins his exploration of the eye chart with a simple question: “What can you see?” Soon, though, the reader understands that things are more complex than simply providing a concrete response to a clear question. It’s not just about identifying objects near and far. It’s also about why we see, when we see, how clearly we see, and what we understand about the things we see … If this medical innovation has ever been intimidating, or a measure of increasing failure as you slip into your final years, Germano’s Eye Chart should be a graceful reminder that the art of vision has many levels. * PopMatters *As one who has failed countless eye tests, I had no idea that my condition was metaphysical. Then I read William Germano’s comprehensive and witty history of this amazing object. There it is, at the crossroads of vision and blindness, clarity and obscurity, scientific objectivity and subjectivity. Germano shows that the humble eye chart is everywhere, a central object, image, and text in the world of visual culture. His book is a feast of learning, precision, and humor. * W. J. T. Mitchell, Professor of English and Art History, University of Chicago, USA, and author of What Do Pictures Want? *Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgments 1. What can you see? 2. Reading stars, reading stones 3. How to choose eyeglasses (circa 1623) 4. The persistence of memory 5. Eleven lines, nine letters 6. Reading close up 7. Looking for trouble 8. Eye terror 9. Eye poetry 10. Optical allusions 11. The bottom line Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.The mall near Mat thew Newton's childhood home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was one of the state's first enclosed shopping malls. Like all malls in their heyday, this one was a climate-controlled pleasuredome where strangers converged. It boasted waterfalls, fish ponds, an indoor ice skating rink larger than Rockefeller Center's, and a monolithic clock tower illuminated year-round beneath a canopy of interconnected skylights. It also became the backdrop for filmmaker George A. Romero's zombie opus Dawn of the Dead. Part memoir and part case study, Shopping Mall examines the modern mythology of the mall and shows that, more than a collection of stores, it is a place of curiosity, ritual, and fantasy.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewA smart and empathetic look at this waning icon of 20th-century American consumer culture. * Pittsburgh City Paper *Matthew Newton evokes the American mall as symbol of white flight, aspirational fantasy, and shop-till-you-drop consumerism of the late 1980s. These are striking tales of suburban isolation in which Newton reveals life from the employee side of the counter to the idealistic architects' designs. Above all, he takes an aging mainstream phenomenon and makes it personal and present. * Yona Harvey, author of Hemming the Water *The best passages are those about the actual idea of the mall, designed by figures such as the Viennese Victor Gruen as a new sort of civic space that could replace the lost town square in a post-WWII America reshaped by the rise of suburbia. Newton wraps up with evocative reflections on instances of violence in shopping malls and questions about a possible renewal for these spaces, the popularity of which has flagged since their heyday nearly 30 years ago. To put it into the vernacular, this book about the mall is at its best when it’s, like, totally about the mall. * Publishers Weekly *Shopping Mall is for anyone who enjoys intelligent, thoughtful writing. It is surprisingly emotional for a book nominally about an impersonal space. It’s safe to say this is the very best book I have ever read about a mall. * Pittsburgh Magazine *This series really gets better and better. Newton linking his own life to the malls he knew growing up, and telling not only his story, but the fall of a very American institution, is engaging and profound. * Jason Diamond, author of Searching for John Hughes *Newton explores the life of the shopping mall from the first ground-breaking, in the 1950s, through the chaos and excess of the 1980s to the present, including the death rattle of many malls … In exploring a personal connection to the mall, he reveals a good bit about himself. The memoir elements of the book are eloquent and intimate, detailing his struggles with depression and anxiety. They also provide a reader with a walking bridge, an avenue for connection to the mall itself. * Pittsburgh City Paper *Newton succeeds in parsing out the different histories of the mall, from both personal and societal perspectives … The mall, like so many other taken-for-granted parts of the built environment, holds memory and nostalgia for millions of suburbanites and shoppers. By leaving a trail of bittersweet crumbs of nostalgia, Newton spares the reader from the doom that others have cast over this cultural change. Rather than focusing on a dystopia of self-absorbed individuals doing their shopping and finding entertainment online, we are able to warmly recall the shopping mall and the lifeways in which it played a central roll [sic], not only for consumption but also for construction of self and community. * PopMatters *Shopping Mall is both history of and paean to the once-ubiquitous American shopping centers. Essayist Matthew Newton combines his fond memories of his local mall, outside Pittsburgh, with anecdotes about the first one built in the United States, the Mall of America and others, using the specific to pull out the larger story of late-20th-century suburban commercialism that these edifices represent … He isn't interested in defending shopping malls, but in showing how his--and many other people's--lives would be entirely different without them. * Shelf Awareness *Matthew Newton lets you know by Page 10 that he was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder as a teenager. These days, he’s a productive and well-adjusted married man and dad, doing great work at the Carnegie Museum of Art, and his skills as an inquisitive writer and thinker are evident from his latest work. But knowing that part of his makeup helps the reader accept his obsessive compulsion with shopping malls — particularly Monroeville Mall, the Valhalla of his childhood — and appreciate the insights that spill forth in this brief cultural study/memoir … Newton is the person to write this book because “the shopping mall, more than any other place, electrified my imagination” as a kid. His readers are beneficiaries of his experience seeing the mall “as a sacred place of curiosity and wonder. * Pittsburgh Quarterly *Table of ContentsPrologue Part One: Childhood 1. Eternal Spring 2. Paradise Unknown 3. Spaces Between 4. Shopping is a Feeling Part Two: Adolescence 5. Little Boxes 6. White Denim 7. Mall Madness 8. Neon Hallways 9. Young Love Part Three: Adulthood 10. Homecoming 11. Ghost Malls 12. Utopia Interrupted 13. New Futures Acknowledgments Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. One in two men and one in three women will develop invasive cancer. Tumors have the power to redefine identities and change how people live with one another.Tumor takes readers on an intellectual adventure around the attitudes that shape how humans do scientific research, treat cancer, and talk about disease, treatment, and death. With poetic verve and acuity, Anna Leahy explores why and how tumors happen, how we think and talk about them, and how we try to rid ourselves of them. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewLeahy looks a tough subject right in the eyes, and tells its story with grace, insight, alacrity, and wit. * David Eagleman, Stanford neuroscientist, New York Times bestselling author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, and host of the PBS series The Brain with David Eagleman *In clear, compelling language, Anna Leahy writes with insight and empathy about cancer and the social and cultural dimensions of one of our greatest fears. A blend of science, journalism, and deeply personal storytelling, this book takes a lyrical approach to a complex subject we all face in some way. * Kristen Iversen, Professor of English & Comparative Literature, University of Cincinnati, USA, and author of Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats (2012) *Table of Contents1. Tumor in the Family 2. Terms & Conditions 3. Self/Other(s) 4. Part & Parcel 5. Inside/Outside Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisDieter Daniels is Professor in Media Theory and Art History at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig, Germany.Jan Thoben is Lecturer and Program Coordinator in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the University of the Arts Berlin, Germany.Trade ReviewThe book by Daniels and Thoben is a game-changer both for Media Studies and for Art History, making available an important body of texts which have so far been either unknown, or inaccessible. The editors' knowledgeable selection and their intellectually rich proposal for ordering the historical discourses about the medium of video should raise objections and debate, but what will prevail is the phenomenal achievement of this publication that makes such debate possible in the first place. An essential source for anybody interested in visual media. * Andreas Broeckmann, Art Historian, Leuphana University, Germany *This book is a long overdue must-read primer for anyone thinking about and teaching the many meanings and epistemes of video. Read this book and you will find a compellingly structured overview of video theories and histories covering a wide range of discursive fields. * Hanna B. Hölling, Associate Professor, University College London, UK and Research Professor, Bern University of the Arts, Switzerland *This exiting and much-needed volume brings together an impressive array of voices on video. Its interdisciplinary, transhistorical, and intercultural scope offers a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of the discursive field of video theories–a field that is as multifaceted and everchanging as the medium of video itself. The most laudable accomplishment of the book is that it celebrates the “hydra-headedness” of video without falling prey to it: the volume doesn’t lose sight of the main (t)h(r)eads of the medium, nor does it attempt to silence any perspectives on video at the benefit of a singular canonical viewpoint. Instead, by structuring the volume around themes and by providing insightful introductions to each chapter, the volume manages to interconnect not only a multitude of heterogenous video theories, but also to critically relate artistic practices to written reflections, as well as the past, present and future of video. * Janna Houwen, Assistant Professor in the Department of Film and Literary Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands and author of Film and Video Intermediality: The Question of Medium Specificity in Contemporary Moving Images (2017) *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Preface Dieter Daniels and Jan Thoben I Foundations 1 Formations | Exemplary Discourses Introduction Dieter Daniels Draft for Gutenberg Video (1960). Facsimile Marshall McLuhan Biennale Seminar on Video, Venice 1977 Marshall McLuhan Videotape: Thinking about a Medium (1968) Paul Ryan Gestures on Videotapes (1973) Vilém Flusser Video (1973–1974) Vilém Flusser 2 Medium Specificity and Hybridity: The Materiality of the Electronic Image Introduction Jan Thoben Video: From Technology to Medium (2006) Yvonne Spielmann Surrealism without the Unconscious (1991) Fredric Jameson Between-the-Images (1990) Raymond Bellour Video as Dispositif (1988) Anne-Marie Duguet Video Media (1993) Sean Cubitt Is There a Specific Videocity? (2002) Wolfgang Ernst Video Intimus (2010) Siegfried Zielinski Toward an Autobiography of Video (2016) Ina Blom Video, Flows, and Real Time (1996) Maurizio Lazzarato 3 Video and the Self: Closed Circuit | Feedback | Narcissism Introduction Peter Sachs Collopy (guest editor) Some Aspects of the Significance to Psychoanalysis of the Exposure of a Patient to the Televised Audiovisual Reproduction of His Activities (1969) Lawrence S. Kubie Self-Processing (1970) Paul Ryan Two Consciousness Projection(s) (1972) Dan Graham Essay on Video, Architecture, and Television (1979) Dan Graham Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism (1976) Rosalind Krauss Video Art, the Imaginary and the Parole Vide (1976) Stuart Marshall Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained (1977) Martha Rosler Narcissism, Feminism, and Video Art: Some Solutions to a Problem in Representation (1981) Micki McGee Discover European Video: For a Catalogue of an Exhibition (1990) Vilém Flusser Prismatic Media, Transnational Circuits (2012) Krista Geneviève Lynes Screen Births: Trans Vlogs as a Transformative Media for Self-Representation (2016) Tobias Raun II Relations 4 Video | Film Introduction Marc Ries Filmgoing/Videogoing: Making Distinctions (1973) Douglas Davis Video in the Work of Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews and Statements (1969–2001) Jean-Luc Godard (compiled and introduced by Thomas Helbig) The Withering Away of the State of the Art (1977) Hollis Frampton Video and Film (1987) Gábor Bódy On Video (1988) Roy Armes Video: The Access Medium (1996) Tetsuo Kogawa Interface (1995) Harun Farocki Penultimate Pictures (2018) Marc Ries 5 Video | Television Introduction Dieter Daniels The Politics of Timeshifting (2011) Dylan Mulvin Global Groove and Video Common Market (1970) Nam June Paik Television: Video’s Frightful Parent (1975) David Antin Talking Back to the Media (1985) Dara Birnbaum [Portable Video] (1995) John Thornton Caldwell [The Videographic] (2002) John Ellis 6 Video | Sound and Synthesis Introduction Jan Thoben The Sound of One Line Scanning (1986/1990) Bill Viola AFTERLUDE to the Exposition of EXPERIMENTAL TELEVISION (1964). Facsimile Nam June Paik Versatile Color TV Synthesizer (1969) Nam June Paik Video-Synthesizer (1969). Facsimile Nam June Paik Soundings (1979) Gary Hill Light and Darkness in the Electronic Landscape (1978) Barbara Buckner 7 Video | Performance and Theater Introduction Barbara Büscher (guest editor) Transmission (1998) Joan Jonas Moving Target: General Intentions (1996) Diller + Scofidio Studio Azzurro: Re-Inventing the Medium of Theater (2012) Valentina Valentini Intermedial Interplay between Real-time Videos, Film, and Theatrical Scenes: Bert Neumann’s Spaces for Frank Castorf’s Dostoevsky project Erniedrigte und Beleidigte (2014) Birgit Wiens Multiplication. The Wooster Group (2007) Nick Kaye 8 Video | Internet: Online Video and the Consumer as Producer Introduction Martha Buskirk (guest editor) Do It 2 (2009) Cory Arcangel and Dara Birnbaum In Defense of the Poor Image (2009) Hito Steyerl Shiny Things So Bright (2017) Andreas Treske YouTube and the Syrian Revolution: On the Impact of Video Recording on Social Protests (2017) Cécile Boëx Nothing Is Unwatchable for All (2019) Alexandra Juhasz The Dangers of Ubiquitous Video (2020) Siva Vaidhyanathan III Repercussions 9 Sociality | Participation | Utopias Introduction Dieter Daniels Videotopia (1972) Alfred Willener, Guy Milliard, Alex Ganty Guerrilla Television (1971) Michael Shamberg Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited (1985) Deirdre Boyle Women’s Video (1981) Anne-Marie Duguet 10 Communities | Amateurism | Ethnographies | Participation Introduction Dieter Daniels [Wedding Videos] (1993) Sean Cubitt [Bootlegging Video] (2009) Lucas Hilderbrand [Splatter Videos, Scene Selection, and the Video Store] (2014) Tobias Haupts Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds: Nigerian Video and the Infrastructure of Piracy (2004) Brian Larkin The Other Within (1989) Juan Downey Defiant Images: The Kayapo Appropriation of Video (1992) Terence Turner Decolonizing the Technologies of Knowledge: Video and Indigenous Epistemology (2003) Freya Schiwy 11 Surveillance | Exposure | Testimony | Forensics Introduction Dieter Daniels Photographesomenon: Video Surveillance as a Paradoxical Image-Making Machine (2005) Winfried Pauleit CCTV. The Stealthy Emergence of a Fifth Utility? (2002) Stephen Graham The Cultural Labor of Surveillance. Video Forensics, Computational Objectivity, and the Production of Visual Evidence (2013) Kelly Gates Drone Warfare at the Threshold of Detectability (2015) Eyal Weizman Webcams, or Democratizing Publicity (2006) Wendy Hui Kyong Chun “The Woman in the Blue Bra”: Follow the Video (2015/2017) Kathrin Peters IV Dialogues 12 Artistic Practice and Video Theory Introduction Dieter Daniels and Jan Thoben Video 1965: Andy Warhol and Nam June Paik. A Specific Moment of Unspecificity (2018/2021) Dieter Daniels Pop Goes the Videotape (1965) Andy Warhol Electronic Video Recorder (1965). Facsimile Nam June Paik Before the Cinematic Turn: Video Projection in the 1970s (2015) Erika Balsom Video as a Function of Reality (1974) Peter Campus Videor (1990) Jacques Derrida [Processual Video] (1980) Gary Hill Compulsive Categorizations: Gender and Heritage in Video Art (2015) Malin Hedlin Hayden Video as a Medium of Emancipation (1982) Ulrike Rosenbach Video in the Time of a Double, Political and Technological, Transition in the Former Eastern European Context (2009/2020) Marina Gržinic [Video Direction Theory] (1989) Boris Yukhananov (edited and annotated by Andreas Schmiedecker) Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisIf there is anything close to a universal game, it is association football, also known as soccer, football, fussball, fútbol, fitba, and futebol. The game has now moved from the physical to the digital - EA's football simulation series FIFA - with profound impacts on the multibillion sports and digital game industries, their cultures and players. Throughout its development history, EA's FIFA has managed to adapt to and adopt almost all video game industry trends, becoming an assemblage of game types and technologies that is in itself a multi-faceted probe of the medium's culture, history, and technology. EA Sports FIFA: Feeling the Game is the first scholarly book to address the importance of EA's FIFA. From looking at the cultures of fandom to analyzing the technical elements of the sports simulation, and covering the complicated relations that EA's FIFA has with gender, embodiment, and masculinity, this collection provides a comprehensive understandTrade ReviewIn this timely and much needed book, leading and emerging scholars provide new and necessary insights into a cultural phenomenon, that has always been more than just a game. By critically considering different aspects, and from perspectives, EA Sports FIFA: Feeling the Game provides a detailed and thought-provoking consideration of the impact this game series has had on the nature of video games, sport, and wider cultural life. * Garry Crawford, Professor of Sociology, University of Salford, UK *This is a book whose time has come. Through a careful multidisciplinary focus on the FIFA video game franchise, the authors take up issues that range from the aesthetic complexities of digital play to forms of fandom, as well paying important attention to inclusion and gender. This collection offers a wonderfully rich engagement with one of the most popular titles around and is a must read for both sports and game scholars alike. * T.L. Taylor, Professor of Comparative Media Studies, MIT, USA *This innovative and original collection of essays on the cultural significance of the videogame FIFA emphasises the blurring of our digital and material worlds. This book helps explain why, for millions of people around the world, the simulated experience of EA Sports FIFA series endures as a central aspect of diverse football and gaming cultures. For anyone interested in understanding the interplay between sport and videogames, and how this has transformed the mediatisation of sport more widely, this is an important collection. * Richard Haynes, Professor of Media Sport, University of Stirling, UK *A much-needed multidisciplinary contribution * American Journal of Play! *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Dedication List of Contributors Warm-Up: "Football is Life" John Markoff (Journalist, USA) Pre-Game Raiford Guins (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA), Henry Lowood (Stanford University, USA), and Carlin Wing (Scripps College, USA) I. Attack 1. Ritualized Exclusion, Limited Inclusion: Virtual Representations of Women’s Football Michael Pennington (Bath Spa University, UK) 2. Fine-Tuning Feel Carlin Wing (Scripps College, USA) 3. Avatar Bodies That Matter: The Work of "Realism" in Gendered Representation Mel Stanfill (University of Central Florida, USA) and Anastasia Salter (University of Central Florida, USA) II. Midfield 4. Microtransaction Politics in FIFA Ultimate Team: Game Fans, Twitch Streamers, and Electronic Arts Piotr Siuda (Kazimierz Wielki University, Poland) and Mark R. Johnson (University of Sydney, Australia) 5. “Where There is Smoke, There is Fire …": The FIFA Engine and Its Discontents” Henry Lowood (Stanford University, USA) 6. What the FUT? Abe Stein (Sports Innovation Lab, MIT, USA) III. Defense 7. Playing with Oneself: Six Notes on Fantasies and Frustrations of Famous Footballers Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal (University of Notre Dame, USA) 8. Under Control: The Experience of Progressive Play in the Management Simulations of EA’s FIFA Series Matt Bouchard (University of Toronto and University of Alberta, Canada) 9. “Let's Take a FIFA!": Football and the Free-time Practices of At-risk Youth Under Remand Emma Witkowski (RMIT University, Australia) and Rune K.L. Nielsen (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark) 10. Playing To Win Christopher A. Paul (Seattle University, USA) 11. Playing Games with my Feelings or, Musing on Leeds United Football Club's FIFA 20 Decides! Raiford Guins (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA) Post-Game Analysis Mia Consalvo (Concordia University, Canada) Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisWill we ever be able to see the brain at work? Could it be possible to observe thinking and feeling as if watching a live broadcast from within the human head? Brainmedia uncovers past and present examples of scientists and science educators who conceptualize and demonstrate the active human brain guided by new media technologies: from exhibitions of giant illuminated brain models and staged projections of brainwave recordings to live televised brain broadcasts, brains hooked up to computers and experiments with brain-to-brain synchronization.Drawing on archival material, Brainmedia outlines a new history of live brains, arguing that practices ofand ideas aboutmediation impacted the imagination of seeing the brain at work. By combining accounts of scientists examining brains in laboratories with examples of public demonstrations and exhibitions of brain research, Brainmedia casts new light on popularization practices, placing them at the heart of scientific work.Trade ReviewWith Brainmedia Flora Lysen offers fascinating insights on the interplay of technology and experience, mediation and presence, discourse and politics that go far beyond the history of neuroscience: In pursuit of a critical understanding of the phenomena, Flora Lysen engages with brain research as current predicament and provides her readers with an engaging media-philosophical perspective. * Cornelius Borck, Institute for History of Medicine and Science Studies, University of Lübeck, Germany, and author of Brainwaves: A Cultural History of Electroencephalography *Combining media and science studies, this brilliant book shows how the 20th century turned the brain into an epistemic spectacle. It reconstructs the curves, projectors and screen technologies that were used for publicly displaying the living brain at work. By the same token, it critically questions our drive to create and consume “time images” of the cerebral that highlight liveliness, transparency and immediacy. The result is a compelling account of the brain as a medium and message firmly tied to the power and time relations of modern culture. * Henning Schmidgen, Professor of Media Studies, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany *Table of ContentsTable of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The Birth of the Live Brain, 1820-1920 2. Displaying Dynamic Brains: Illuminated Brain Models and the Enchanted Loom, 1928-1938 3. Demonstrating Brainwaves Beyond the Laboratory: EEG as White Magic and Dark Media, 1934-1941 4. Broadcasting Live Brains: The Brain on Television and as Television, 1949-1957 5. Interfacing the Real-Time Brain: EEG Feedback in Art and Science, 1964-1977 6. Synchronizing Two Dynamic Brains: Art-Science Experiments and Neuroscience in the Wild, 2013-2019 Conclusion Bibliography List of Sources of Figures Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisKatie Warfield is a lecturer in the Department of Journalism and Communication at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada, and Director of the Visual Media Workshop. Her recent writings have appeared in Social Media + Society, Feminist Media Studies, Language and Literacy, and Feminist Issues, 6th ed. Crystal Abidin is Postdoctoral Fellow with the Media Management and Transformation Centre (MMTC) at Jönköping University, Sweden, Researcher with Handelsrådet (Swedish Retail and Wholesale Development Council), and Adjunct Researcher with the Centre for Culture and Technology (CCAT) at Curtin University, Australia. Carolina Cambre is Assistant Professor of Education at Concordia University, Canada. Her interests include the politics of communication, the issue of representation, critical policy analysis & critical visual sociology and anthropology, all with an eye to social justice issues as well as community and identity broadly speaking.Trade ReviewThis book brings together powerful essays by both established and emerging researchers of digital media, corporeality and embodiment. International and interdisciplinary in scope, Mediated Interfaces works through the political, cultural and social ways we can begin to understand how bodies are represented online, how our sense of embodiment is now shaped in conjunction with our digital experiences and how digital media intersects with the politicisation of gendered, raced, sexualised and aged bodies. From naked bodies online to the body of the child as a gaming influencer, this collection covers the broadest range of approaches to thinking through our new digital corporealities. Warfield, Cambre and Abidin have provided us with a thoughtful arrangement of original work that will help us navigate the growing scholarship on bodies and social media. For scholars, students and the public who wish to make sense of new ways in which we can think about bodies and media in the 2020s, this should be the first stop and will provide the best possible roadmap for an increasingly complex scholarly terrain. * Rob Cover, Professor of Digital Communication, RMIT University, Australia *Mediated Interfaces presents key concepts from some of the most innovative social media researchers working today. With its truly international, interdisciplinary, and multi-platform scope, this curated collection reaffirms the importance of the body as a site of analysis for understanding digital practices. In clear and accessible prose, this volume’s contributors recognize the complexities of embodied technological performances on sites that run the gamut from BaiduBBS to YouTube. As they curate a wide variety of scholarly voices, the editors have created a rich interpretive apparatus with which to question naïve assumptions about how bodies are constituted as essential entities, metaphysical beings, tool users, or media interfaces. Anyone interested in the politics, material conditions, or affective investments of social media should consider this book required reading. * Elizabeth Losh, Gale and Steve Kohlhagen Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies, College of William & Mary, USA *This edited collection presents a wealth of insights into diverse social histories and digitally-mediated practices. The chapters draw a bow of emerging social practices across different ways of reading the body becoming in social media. The book is at times feisty, conceptual and diverse, offering crunchy nuggets for the contemplative reader. You will not be left empty handed. * Alexia Maddox, Lecturer in Communications, Deakin University, Australia *Combining the theoretical with the ethnographic, the serious and the playful, the multi-disciplinary and the multi-sited, Mediated Interfaces takes us on an exciting journey into digital lives and affective relations with social media technologies, which are as embodied as they are political. * Adi Kuntsman, Lecturer in Digital Media, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK *Accessibly written with a playful yet serious tone that allows the thinking through of the multiple kinds of “inter”faces that we encounter in contemporary daily life. The socio-political implications are engaged effectively in this quick overview of how mediated interfaces are “smart objects” are “automated connections between everyday physical objects to the Internet.” This book is a must for anyone researching online social media or contemporary youth and media or most anything to do with media. Kudos to the authors! * Radhika Gajjala, Professor of American Culture Studies, Bowling Green State University, USA *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part One: The Body Mediated 1. ‘Find love in Canada’: Distributed selves, abstraction, and the problem of privacy and autonomy Vincent Miller, University of Kent, UK 2. Embodied Verification: Linking Identities and Bodies on NSFW Reddit Emily van der Nagel, Monash University, Australia 3. #ILYSM*: Instagram as Fan Practice, Hattie Liew, National University of Singapore, Singapore 4. Ethan’s Golden YouTube Play Button: The evolution of a child influencer Carolina Cambre and Maha Abdul Ghani, Concordia University, Canada Part Two: The Body Politicized 5. Performing Visibility: Representing the Palestinian Freedom Riders through Non-Violent Protest and Visual Activism Gary Bratchford, University of Central Lancashire, UK 6. #WhoNeedsFeminism? Mapping Leaky, Networked Affective Feminist Resistance Jessica Ringrose, UCL London, UK and Kaity Mendes, University of Leicester, UK 7. ‘Smart is the Nü (boshi) Sexy’: How China’s PhD women are fighting stereotypes using social media Jing Zeng, IKMZ Zurich, Switzerland 8. Online Ajumma: Self-presentations of contemporary elderly women via digital media in Korea Jung Moon, Seoul Women's University, South Korea and Crystal Abidin, Curtin University, Australia Part Three: The Body Felt 9. Naked and Unafraid: Nudity in Reclaiming Witchcraft Rituals Emma Quilty, University of Newcastle, Australia 10. “It’s like a rush of ‘man’ feeling”: Analyzing sexuality and felt-sense in men’s digital media communications Kaye Hare, University of British Columbia, Canada 11. Agential hysterias: a practice approach to embodiment on social media Katrin Tiidenberg, Lea Muldtofte, and Ane Katherine Gammelby, Talinn University, Estonia 12. Picture Me Naked. Embodying Images On Screen and Off Tobias Bol, Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany Work Cited List of Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn the world of online dating, race-based discrimination is not only tolerated, but encouraged as part of a pervasive belief that it is simply a neutral, personal choice about one's romantic partner. Indeed, it is so much a part of our inherited wisdom about dating and romance that it actually directs the algorithmic infrastructures of most major online dating platforms, such that they openly reproduce racist and sexist hierarchies. In Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating, Apryl Williams presents a socio-technical exploration of dating platforms' algorithms, their lack of transparency, the legal and ethical discourse in these companies' community guidelines, and accounts from individual users in order to argue that sexual racism is a central feature of today's online dating culture. She discusses this reality in the context of facial recognition and sorting software as well as user experiences, drawing parallels to the long history of eugenics and banned interracial partnerships. Ultimately, Williams calls for, both a reconceptualization of the technology and policies that govern dating agencies, and also a reexamination of sociocultural beliefs about attraction, beauty, and desirability.Trade Review"[A] troubling investigation of structural racism in online dating platforms.... Williams's highly accessible narrative is made extra intriguing by the liberal inclusion of users' own words sharing their intimate thoughts."—Publishers Weekly"From the automation of white beauty standards to the chilling prevalence of racist abuse in private messages, Williams reveals the harms created when racism, technology, and romance interact."—Angéle Christin, author of Metrics at Work"This book changes how we think about the sociology of the 'real world' in dating by taking seriously the online world where so many of us find love forever or just right now. Apryl Williams shows us a new, better way to do digital sociology, and her writing makes for a compelling read."—Jessie Daniels, author of Nice White LadiesTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. A New Sexual Racism? 2. Automating Sexual Racism 3. I'm Just Not Comfortable with Them: The Myth of Neutral Personal Preference 4. I've Always Wanted to Fuck a Black or Asian Woman: Being Racially Curated in the Sexual Marketplace 5. Safety Thirst: Who Gets to Be Safe While Dating Online? Conclusion: All You Need Is Love (and Transparency, Trust, and Safety)

Read more less

Book SynopsisMedia Imperialism: Continuity and Change advances applied theoretical research on 21st century media imperialism. The volume includes established and emerging researchers in international communications who examine the geopolitical, economic, technological and cultural dimensions of 21st century media imperialism. The volume highlights and challenges how news, entertainment and social media uphold unequal power relations in the world. Written in an accessible style, this volume marries conceptual, theoretical sophistication, and concrete illustration with rich case studies and global examples. Chapters cover the complete media spectrum, from social media to Hollywood, to news and national propaganda in national and transnational analyses. Readers will find discussions that range from soft power and China to the USA’s empire of the internet to the rise of “Chindia” in a post-American media world. The volume is essential reading for upper level undergraduate, postgraduate and research communities across a wide range disciplines in the social science and the humanities.Trade ReviewHere readers can encounter the variety and vigor of media/cultural imperialism approaches to the ever-evolving global mediascape. In a single reference work, seasoned researchers from across the planet sharply challenge enduring myopias of much conventional media research. A vital contribution to debate and analysis. -- John D.H. Downing, Director Emeritus, Global Media Research Center, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleTable of ContentsMedia Imperialism: Continuity and Change, an Introduction Oliver Boyd-Barrett and Tanner Mirrlees Part 1 – Contextualizing and Conceptualizing Empire and Media imperialism Chapter 1 - Media and Cultural Imperialism: Genealogy of an Idea Oliver Boyd-Barrett Chapter 2 - Historicizing and Theorizing Media and Cultural Imperialism Kaarle Nordenstreng, Marko Ampuja & Juha Koivisto Chapter 3 – The US Empire and Cultural Imperialism: A Reconceptualization and 20th Century Retrospective Tanner Mirrlees Part 2 –The News, War and Propaganda Chapter 4 - Western News Media, Propaganda and Pretexts for Neoliberal War Oliver Boyd-Barrett Chapter 5 – “RussiaGate”: The Construction of the Enemy Gerald Sussman Chapter 6 – The Great Game for EurAsia and the Skripal Affair Oliver Boyd-Barrett Chapter 7 - Propaganda, Manipulation and the Exercise of Imperial Power: From Media Imperialism to Informational Imperialism Piers Robinson Part 3 – Hollywood, War and Militainment Chapter 8 - Socialism by Stealth? Governmental Subvention and Hollywood Toby Miller Chapter 9 - The US Embassy-Hollywood Complex: The Sony Pictures Hack and 21st century media Imperialism Paul Moody Chapter 10 – Dispatches from the Militainment Empire Roger Stahl Chapter 11 - Global Executioner: Legitimizing Drone Warfare through Hollywood Movies Erin Steuter and Geoff Martin Part 4 –The Internet, Social Media and Platform Imperialism Chapter 12 – Guarding Public Values in a Connective World: Challenges for Europe. José van Dijck Chapter 13 - Facebook’s Platform Imperialism: The Economics and Geopolitics of Social Media Dal Yong Jin Chapter 14 - New Global Music Distribution System, Same Old Linguistic Hegemony? Analyzing English on Spotify Christof Demont-Heinrich Chapter 15 – “Weaponizing” the Internet and World Wide Web, for Empire: Platforming Capitalism, Data-Veillance, Public Diplomacy and Cyber-Warfare Tanner Mirrlees Part 5 – Development Communication, Global Divides and Cultural Imperialism Chapter 16 - Cultural Autonomy in the 1970s and Beyond: Toward Cultural Justice Cees Hamelink Chapter 17 - Cultural Imperialism and Development Communication for Social Change Mohan Dutta Chapter 18 - Mapping Power in Women’s Empowerment Projects in Global Development Karin Gwinn Wilkins Part 6 - Rising Media Empires: The Case of China Chapter 19 – China: An Emerging Cultural Imperialist Colin Sparks Chapter 20 – The Empire’s New Clothes: Political Priorities and Corporate Ambitions in China’s Drive for Global Ascendency Graham Murdoch Chapter 21 – Not (yet) The Chinese Century: The Endurance of the US Empire and its Cultural Industries Tanner Mirrlees Contributor Bios

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThere's never been a more important time for students to develop media literacy competencies. When students ask critical questions about the media they consume, they develop fundamental knowledge and critical thinking skills that prepare them for life, work, and meaningful citizenship. Media Literacy in Action addresses learners who are simultaneously active as both creators and consumers of media messages. At the same time, the book recognizes that everyone is vulnerable to media influence because of our dependence on the instant gratification and feelings of connectedness that digital platforms provide. To thrive in a media-saturated society, people need to ask critical questions about what we watch, see, listen to, read, and use. This book gives students those tools.Key features of the second edition: Critical examination of AI technologies, algorithmic personalization, data privacy and surveillance, and the increased global regulation of digital platforms Attention to media literacy for empowerment and protection Inquiry-oriented approach to learning that cultivates intellectual curiosity and creative expression Full-color presentation with figures and photos to increase student engagement Each chapter includes: Media Literacy Trailblazers: Profiles of key thinkers and their theories connect students with the discipline of media literacy Media Literacy DISCourse (NEW): Visual representations of media literacy theoretical principles help learners internalize the practice of asking critical questions as they respond to specific media examples Learning in Action (NEW): Summary and vocabulary sections combine with Analyze, Create, Reflect, and Act activities to empower students to apply ideas from each chapter. Supplemental Materials available at www.mlaction.com: Students can review key ideas, learn about more Media Literacy Trailblazers, and watch videos aligned with each chapter Instructors can access a Teacher's Guide of best practices, in-class activities, homework, and projects. Also available are chapter summaries, lecture slides, YouTube playlists, and test materials.

Read more less

Book SynopsisRevealing the powerful ways that media shapes us and the world around us, this text challenges students to be active curators of their own media lives. The second edition of this full-color interdisciplinary book uses contemporary examples as entry points for history and theory and includes new chapters on representation in media and on video games.

Read more less

Book Synopsis"Steve Krakauer's new book, Uncovered, is vital reading. It's the best and most perceptive deep dive into legacy media bias out there, from someone who knows where all the bodies are buried." Ben Shapiro"One of the most insightful critiques that has been published on this topic in years." Glenn GreenwaldIn Uncovered, media critic and former CNN executive Steve Krakauer reveals exactly what went wrong -- and why the media went off the rails. The fourth estate is supposed to be a conduit to the people and a check on power. But as Krakauer convincingly argues, we have a bunch of geographically isolated, introspection-free, cozy-with-power, egomaniacal journalists thirsty for elite approval. Krakauer dives deep into some of the most important and egregious examples of the elite censorship collusion racket, like how tech suppression and media fear led to the New York Post-Hunter Biden email debacle before the 2020 election. Krakauer takes readers inside CNN after the shock Trump election, inside the New York Times after the Tom Cotton op-ed backlash, inside ESPN after the shift away from sports-only coverage, and more--revealing never-before-seen details about the press over the past five years.Krakauer pulls from his own insider experience as a former CNN executive and through dozens of exclusive on-the-record interviews with media members in and around the industry--from Tucker Carlson and others at Fox News, to journalists at the New York Times, MSNBC, and CNN.No one understands these problems (and people) better than Krakauer, one of America's sharpest media critics. He has spent years getting to know the most influential players in the industry. This fascinating book is what he's learned. But most importantly, Krakauer equips readers with the crucial tools to sniff out when the press is lying or misleading the people of America in the future -- so together, we can bypass them altogether.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisCarefully detailed screenshots and step-by-step directions illustrate how to use Sony's new consumer-level video and audio editing applications, in a concise, time-efficient way. Readers learn the rudiments of navigating Vegas Movie Studio and the companion audio applications, Sound Forge Audio Studio and ACID Music Studio, to perform a complete range of tasks, from editing video and audio, to compositing and outputting their final project. This is the eighth book in the new VASST Instant Series produced in cooperation with the Sundance Media Group.Table of ContentsIntroduction; What you can do with all this cool technology; How the products form a team; Chapter One: Media Basics; Media formats; Shooting DV; Delivery formats; Chapter Two: Up and Running; Computer requirements; Tweaking your computer for the best editing experience; HUI's; Things that make editing easier; Analog to digital converters; Getting great sound; Software Installation and registration; Chapter Three: Navigation, features, buttons, preferences, and more; Vegas; Acid; Sound Forge; Chapter Four: Vegas file import and organization; Stills; Graphics; Animation; Audio files; CD extraction; Video capture; Media Pool; Chapter Five: Vegas editing; Timeline; Trim and Split; Move and arrange; Ripple editing; Transitions; Event envelopes; Markers and regions; Chapter Six: Vegas creative techniques; Crop, rotate, and reverse; Picture-in-picture effects; Video effects; Opacity; Chromakey; Key frames and audio/video automation; Fixing video mistakes; Cool video effects and techniques; Chapter Seven: Vegas titling and audio; Generated media. Titles; Text animation; Credit roll; Lower-thirds; Recording audio; Audio effects; Chapter Eight: Finishing the movie; Hard drive; DVD; Video CD (VCD) or CD-ROM; Web; DV tape (PTT); Chapter Nine: Sound Forge recording and editing; Sound card issues; Mic, line, and turntable; Recording; Editing and fixing; Saving; Chapter Ten: Sound Forge advanced techniques; Effects; Restoration; Finishing and sweetening; Interfacing with Vegas; Working with Acid; Chapter Eleven: Acid: Making music; Loops, one-shots, and beatmaps; Tempo and key; Preview, pick, paint, and play; Loop sources; Creating solos, melodies, and themes; Recording in Acid; Scoring to video; Chapter Twelve: Acid to the Nth degree; Using FX; Arranging parts; Changing tempo and key; Mixing (level, EQ, pan, FX); Export finished songs; Chapter Thirteen: Moving beyond Studio; Vegas 5; Sound Forge 7; Acid Pro 5; AcidPlanet.com; Additional resources for media.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisPublic expression in the United States has become increasingly coarse. Whether it’s stupid, rude, base, or anti-intellectual talk, it surrounds us. Popular television, film, music, art, and even some elements of religion have become as coarse, we argue, as our often-disparaged political dialogue. This book’s contention is that the U.S. semantic environment is governed by tactics, not tact. We craft messages that work—that perform their desired function. We are instrumental, strategic communicators. As such, entertainment and journalism that draw an audience, for instance, are “good.” This follows the logic that the marketplace, an aggregate of hedonically motivated individuals, decides what’s good. Market logic, when unencumbered by what some characterize as quaint human sentimentalities, liberates us to cynically communicate whatever and however we want. Whatever improves ratings, web traffic, ticket sales, concession sales, repeat purchases, and earnings is good. Embracing this communicative paradigm more fully necessitates the culture’s abandonment of collective notions of both taste and veracity, thus weakening the forces that keep individual desires in check. Our present communication environment is one that invites the hypertrophic expression of the ego, enabling elites to erode public communication standards and repeal laws and regulations resulting in immeasurable individual fortunes. Meanwhile, perpetual plutocratic rule is made even more certain by the cacophonous public noise the rest of us are busy making, leaving us incapable, disinterested, and unwilling to listen to one another.Trade ReviewDalton and Kramer argue that public discourse in the United States has become increasingly and dangerously coarser, due to market logic that "has us communicating instrumentally, modeling computers, seeking efficacy and efficiency, all at the expense of both the relationships of which we are aware and the neglected binds we have with strangers." After a theoretical overview, more specific topics are examined, including the role of opinion leaders in fomenting anti-intellectualism, the growing coarseness in US politics, Western art in crisis, postdenominational megachurches fostering selfishness, and the entertainment industry's enculturation of marketplace ideology. All chapters relate to the central thesis that "capitalism, as it manifests in the United States today, has helped foster and encourage a gross form of individualism, what we term 'hypertrophic individualism.'" The communication environment, Dalton and Kramer argue, contributes significantly to the growing "public's use of and acquiescence to vulgar, aggressive, and unreasonable messages." Some readers may want more discussion of cooperation and altruism that is also seen in the world, facilitated by new technologies, for example. Overall, an interesting and thought-provoking argument. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections. * CHOICE *Dalton and Kramer’s book goes beyond arguing that we live in a less civil communication environment. Anyone observing the tenor of today’s national political discussion can see that. Instead, this book examines why public communication is coarser and what this coarseness means for our society and our democracy. . . . Dalton and Kramer’s book is a warning that we are headed in a dangerous direction. For our public communication to help build the communities we desire, then our attitudes must reflect an appreciation for the humanity in others – even those with whom we disagree. We must recognize that our messages are more than reflections of the communities we want. Our messages actually constitute the communities in which we live. -- Howard Dean, Former Vermont Governor and former Chairman of the DNCTable of ContentsContents Introduction: Atlas Slouched Chapter 1: Noise, Fragmentation, and Absurdity in U.S. Public Communication Chapter 2: Coarseness in the Public Sphere Chapter 3: Coarseness in U.S. Politics Chapter 4: Coarseness and Reason Chapter 5: Art and Cultivated Vulgarity Chapter 6: Post-Denominational Christianity and Coarseness Chapter 7: Entertainment and the Entertainment Market-as-Democracy Meme Conclusion: Our Age of Cynicism About the Authors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisMuch history and theory is uncovered here in the first comprehensive study of zine publishing.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Death and Life of the Music Industry in the Digital Age challenges the conventional wisdom that the internet is 'killing' the music industry. While technological innovations (primarily in the form of peer-to-peer file-sharing) have evolved to threaten the economic health of major transnational music companies, Rogers illustrates how those same companies have themselves formulated highly innovative response strategies to negate the harmful effects of the internet. In short, it documents how the radical transformative potential of the internet is being suppressed by legal and organisational innovations. Grounded in a social shaping perspective, The Death and Life of the Music Industry in the Digital Age contends that the internet has not altered pre-existing power relations in the music industry where a small handful of very large corporations have long since established an oligopolistic dominance. Furthermore, the book contends that widespread acceptance of the idea that online piracy is rampant, and music largely 'free' actually helps these major music companies in their quest to bolster their power. In doing this, the study serves to deflate much of the transformative hype and digital 'deliria' that has accompanied the internet's evolution as a medium for mass communication.Trade ReviewRogers’s evidence is convincing and his method of incorporating 30 industry interviews with recent investment data provides a useful balance of insight into insider views with recent statistics. The book is clear, interesting, focused and well researched. … The Death & Life of the Music Industry in the Digital Age is an impressive and important book for anyone interested in how the Internet and digitization are affecting the music industry. -- David J Park, Florida International University, USA * new media & society *The cries of distress are incessant, the doom-sayers never silent: ‘the internet is killing the music industry’. Well, no! Here is a bucket of scholarly, brilliantly researched water to douse this particular hyperbolic claim of destruction-by-technology. Using Ireland as a case study, Jim Rogers carefully demonstrates how the music industry is successfully coping with its changed circumstances – as it has done, after all, for a century past. The Death and Life of the Music Industry in the digital age is a crucial (and welcome) antidote to received opinion. We need more like it. -- Brian Winston, Professor, University of Lincoln, UKJim Rogers' carefully documented analysis is a welcome relief from the "digital deliria" often associated with discussions of the music industry. A welcome contribution to the growing literature on the political economy of the evolving media industries. -- Janet Wasko, Professor and Knight Chair for Communication Research, University of Oregon, USMediocre academics and journalists have been claiming for years that digitalisation has killed off the music industry. This knowledgeable and intelligent survey provides a much needed counterblast against such nonsense. Rogers shows that the music business is mutating, not disappearing, and that it's as strange, contradictory and interesting as it's always been. -- David Hesmondhalgh, Professor, Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds, UK, and author of Why Music Matters

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe reactions evoked by images of and stories about Brad Pitt are many and wide-ranging: while one person might swoon or exclaim, another rolls his eyes or groans. How a single figure provokes such strong, often opposing emotions is a puzzle, one elegantly explored and perhaps even solved by Deconstructing Brad Pitt. Co-editors Christopher Schaberg and Robert Bennett have shaped a book that is not simply a multifaceted analysis of Brad Pitt as an actor and as a celebrity, but which is also a personal inquiry into how we are drawn to, turned on, or otherwise piqued by Pitt’s performances and personae. Written in accessible prose and culled from the expertise of scholars across different fields, Deconstructing Brad Pitt lingers on this iconic actor and elucidates his powerful influence on contemporary culture. The editors will be donating a portion of their royalties to Pitt's Make It Right foundation.Trade ReviewWith just the right mix of wit, self-awareness, and critical passion, the authors subject the curious case of brand Pitt--artist and star, boy toy and generational icon, Redford scion and Ninth Ward architect, Chanel shill and co-proprietor of the going concern known as Brangelina--to edifying and satisfying scrutiny. * Eric Lott, City University of New York, The Graduate Center, USA *Deconstructing Brad Pitt will shock you the moment you find out it exists. The instinctive reaction to such a work is that academic analysis and Hollywood stardom do not to make good bedfellows. This is exactly why you open the first page, and you find yourself hooked ... It is a highly readable book, full of personal insights, first-person narratives and analyses based on the cultural studies literature. -- Helena Vieira * LSE Review of Books *In this exciting anthology, Schaberg and Bennett continue the work of DeAngelis, Negra, and Pomerance, once again demonstrating that an intensive study of a popular Hollywood film star will reveal not the margins, but the center of how American culture functions. The path charted by Richard Dyer 35 years ago has led to a flourishing of analyses of stardom, wonderfully executed here by Schaberg, Bennett, and their collaborators, who skillfully interrogate Brad Pitt's cinematic, popular, and political image. The first rule of Brad Pitt Studies is you MUST read and talk about _Deconstructing Brad Pitt! * Walter Metz, Southern Illinois University, USA *_Deconstructing Brad Pitt, edited by Robert Bennett and Christopher Schaberg, is an anthology of multi-disciplinary, multi-perspectival engagements with the figure of Brad Pitt. The book is a strange and compelling meshwork of affect, memory and desire, as each author/artist follows a richly surprising line that leads readers to places they might never have found on their own. Some of these places are whimsical while others are more perilous and reverberate with disaster, crises, madness, and failure. It would quite miss the point to say that this collection is a celebrity study – it transverses multiple disciplines from cultural studies to psychoanalysis to new materialist feminism and queer theory. Yet, it is not bound by any of these approaches. Ranging from visual essays to personal accounts, the collection articulates “Brad Pitt” as an event that is proximate to place, industry, nature, ruin, representation, and resilience. Moving into and away from the performative features of Brad Pitt, as celebrity and as citizen who could be considered the unofficial mayor of New Orleans, _Deconstructing Brad Pitt invites us to imagine what it might be like to theorize engagement as entanglement, as a productive crash into the objects that surround us. It invites us to take seriously what others too quickly ignore or leave behind. * Joy V. Fuqua, Associate Professor of Media Studies, Queens College/CUNY, USA, and author of Prescription TV: Therapeutic Discourse in the Hospital and at Home (2012) *An in-depth look into the cultural phenomenon called Brad Pitt, this book is for both fans and detractors of the actor. If you are expecting tabloid fodder and TMZ-like stories, don’t pick up this book because Deconstructing Brad Pitt by Christopher Schaberg and Robert Bennett is a serious academic treatise which happens to be an easy and fun read. -- Mari Davis * Marienela.net *Deconstructing Brad Pitt is an ambitious exploration of Brad Pitt as a man, actor and celebrity. ...a fascinating exploration of Brad Pitt as an icon, the roles he has played and the impact of his celebrity status on contemporary life. * Celebrity Studies *Overall Deconstructing Brad Pitt is a compelling read, most suitable for a scholarly audience though accessible to well-read mass audience that seeks thoughtful commentary on American popular culture. Pitt as actor, celebrity, philanthropist, father, partner, environmentalist, liberal activist, man, tabloid fodder, artist sheds light on many aspects of American popular culture and society. * American Studies *Christopher Schaberg and Robert Bennett’s edited collection Deconstructing Brad Pitt is an extremely remarkable volume and honest to the core ... It is the first academic study focused on the superstar, and it helps introduce Brad in newer ways to his readers as well as his fans. * Journal of Film and Video *Table of ContentsACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOREWORD Robert Bennett, Montana State University-Bozeman, USA PREFACE Christopher Schaberg, Loyola University New Orleans, USA INTRODUCTION 1. Making Montana Ben Leubner, Montana State University-Bozeman, USA 2. Romantic Hero Elizabeth Abele, SUNY Nassau Community College, USA 3. On Crashing Christopher Schaberg, Loyola University New Orleans, USA 4. Suburban Rage Robert Bennett, Montana State University-Bozeman, USA 5. Abyss of Simulation Randy Laist, Goodwin College, USA 6. Brangelina Blend Michele White, Tulane University, USA 7. Art Muse Sarah Juliet Lauro, Clemson University, USA 8. Oedipus Cop Fran Pheasant-Kelly, University of Wolverhampton, UK 9. Anger of Achilles Rick Hudson, Bath Spa University, UK 10. Becoming Brad Bob Batchelor, Thiel College, USA 11. A Star is Born Andy Horton, University of Oklahoma, USA 12. Brad Pitt for Mayor Thomas Bayer, Tulane University, USA 13. Gay for Brad Edmond Y. Chang, Drew University, USA CODA: FAILURE Brian A. Sullivan, Loyola University New Orleans, USA POSTSCRIPT? MADNESS Robert Bennett, Montana State University-Bozeman, USA BIBLIOGRAPHY CONTRIBUTORS INDEX Susan Clements, USA ARTWORK Nancy Bernardo, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Harry Brown explores the composition, history, kinetic life, and the long deterioration of golf balls, which as it turns out may outlive their hitters by a thousand years, in places far beyond our reach. Golf balls embody our efforts to impose our will on the land, whether the local golf course or the Moon, but their unpredictable spin, bounce, and roll often defy our control. Despite their considerable technical refinements, golf balls reveal the futility of control. They inevitably disappear in plain sight and find their way into hazards. Golf balls play with people. Harry Brown's short treatise on the golf ball serves up surprising lessons about the human desire to tame and control the landscape through technology. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewGolf Ball is a funny, smart, and charming meditation on an unlikely subject. Who knew that the story of this humble little white sphere could tell us so much about our history and culture? Brown weaves cultural history, literary criticism, physics, and philosophy into this wonderful book. His meditation on the golf ball deserves a place on the reading list of the curious golfer and cultural critic alike. * Orin Starn, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, USA, and author of The Passion of Tiger Woods *Brown starts where the curious amongst us always seem to—by taking things apart. Departing from the physical dissection of a single ball, performed as a boy, Brown rollicks through a detailed and highly entertaining exploration of the history of the game of golf. Golf Ball will fill the air of the 19th Hole with questions answered and stories told. * Tom Chiarella, Visiting Writer, Esquire Magazine, and Award-Winning Member of the Golf Writers Association of America *An intriguing mix of history, personal anecdote and cutting-edge philosophy, carrying the reader aloft over a range of courses and discourses past and present … In Golf Ball, Brown has some fun with contemporary thinking whilst never getting too bogged down in the sand trap of theory … leaving us with some intriguing questions to ponder about the objects we use, lose and overlook every day. * Neil Fitzgerald, LapsedHermit.com *Golf Ball… begins with Harry Brown explaining how his object chose him. As an eight-year-old homegrown Heideggerian of a boy, he claims, he sliced a golf ball in two to inquire into its hardness. The book derives from this severing. It inhabits the ‘glimpse of internal structure’ that it offered, unfolding in two parts: ‘Out: Thing,’ and ‘In: Phenomenon.' -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Part One: Out: Thing 1. How I cut a golf ball in half, and found a lot of things inside 2. How the golf ball keeps holy the Lord's day 3. How an empire made the golf ball, and the golf ball made an empire 4. How the golf ball blew up America and made golf more fun 5. How the golf ball went ballistic 6. How the golf ball reached détente 7. How the court decided custody of the golf ball 8. How the golf ball became the #1 ball in golf 9. How the golf ball got so cool Part Two: In: Phenomenon 10. How the golf ball vanishes before your eyes 11. How the golf ball makes us feel fulfilled, for a millisecond 12. How to control the unruly golf ball 13. How to hit the golf ball by not hitting it 14. How the golf ball looks into the abyss, and the abyss looks back 15. How the golf ball won the Golden Fleece 16. How the golf ball went to the moon 17. How the golf ball makes friends with animals 18. How the golf ball prepares for doomsday Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. We are born into blankets. They keep us alive and they cover us in death. We pull and tug on blankets to see us through the night or an illness. They shield us in mourning and witness our most intimate pleasures. Curious, fearless, vulnerable, and critical, Blanket interweaves cultural critique with memoir to cast new light on a ubiquitous object. Kara Thompson reveals blankets everywhere--film, art, geology, disasters, battlefields, resistance, home--and transforms an ordinary thing into a vibrant and vital carrier of stories and secrets, an object of inheritance and belonging, a companion to uncover. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewThere is nothing trivial about this little book. It addresses one ostensibly ordinary object – a blanket – but quickly turns your ideas on their heads … Author Kara Thompson traverses a continent of meanings and implications, focusing on various artworks that use some type of blanket motif, or actual blankets, to illustrate metaphorical blankets, especially ones that deal with death. You will appreciate her brilliant analysis of these artworks and their synthesis with themes of colonialism, subjugation, memory, and survival, which is sensitive and detailed. Entwined through the story is a very personal and vulnerable story, in which Thompson wraps these blankets’ abstraction into her individual experience. The book will stay with you for a long time. * Seattle Book Review *Thompson has contributed a fine addition to the Object Lessons series and provided some interesting starting points from which scores of other ideas can be explored. * PopMatters *The gift of these volumes is how they tease out the unexpected associations and implications of their subjects, and Kara Thompson’s Blanket is no exception … Thompson weaves together in her Blanket dichotomous ideas about blankets—art versus utility, hard shells versus soft wraps, infection versus protection—to illuminate the ways in which these may all be different sides of the same thing … Kara Thompson continues through her “unfoldings” to educate and surprise readers with new threads to follow and contemplate long after the small, but densely woven Blanket ends. * New York Journal of Books *Liquid brilliance blankets this book, making its forays endlessly moving—and often surprising. Simply exquisite in all its folds. * Kathryn Bond Stockton, Distinguished Professor of English, University of Utah, USA, and author of The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century (2009) *Kara Thompson’s Blanket is an elegant, nearly seamless weaving through Native politics and histories, American violence, personal loss and remembrance, psychoanalysis and healing, geology, artworks and literature--varied stitches and detail toward the greater themes and design of comfort, protection, trauma, loss, and the disparate turnings of human living. Kara Thompson has stirred a deep desire in me to understand. . . to understand what? I ask myself. It is not the what, so much as the what is not: What is not seen, but within the folds. What is not often considered, but like a blanket, felt with 'a kind of muscle memory [. . .] the trace of habitation.' What is rarely accounted for in language, signifiers and terms, such as the 'affect, kinship, ceremony, inheritance, story' that imbue anything with real meaning. This book draws unexpected connections and links from one subject to the next. And in the spaces between those connections, there is a magic I have, until now, only known to exist in poetry. From one paragraph to the next, I discover something more of myself, hidden or maybe even protected, both grieving and comforted, tightly threaded within all these blankets. * Layli Long Soldier, author of Whereas (2017), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry *Table of ContentsA Note to the Reader Preface: Convolute Unfold 1 1. Witness Unfold 2 2. Folds Unfold 3 3. Transmission, Extraction Unfold 4 4. Security Unfold 5 5. Under Cover Unfold 6 6. Carriers Unfold 7 Acknowledgments Bibliography List of Figures Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisSteve Tomasula's work exists at the cutting edges of scientific knowledge and literary techniques. As such, it demands consideration from multiple perspectives and from critics who can guide the reader through the formal innovations and multimedia involutions while providing critical scientific, aesthetic, historical, and technical contexts. This book, the first of its kind, provides this framework, showing readers the richness and relevance of the worlds Tomasula constructs. Steve Tomasula's work is redefining the form of the novel, reinventing the practice of reading, and wrestling with the most urgent questions raised by massive transformations of media and biotechnologies. His work not only charts these changes, it formulates the problems that we have making meaning in our radically changing technological contexts. Vast in scope, inventive in form, and intimate in voice, his novels, short stories, and essays are read and taught by a surprisingly diverse array of scholars in fields ranging from contemporary experimental writing and literary criticism to the history of science, biotechnology and bioart, book studies, and digital humanities.Trade ReviewDavid Banash and this excellent collection do more than bring Steve Tomasula’s astounding work to a wider audience. This book reveals the multiform layers of interlacing aesthetics that, like a tumor, a clock, a biological accident, and the birth of the alphabet, assemble into patterns that are playful, enigmatic, and wondrous. Tomasula was once the best-kept secret in contemporary narrative. Now, his work is suitably viral. * Davis Schneiderman, Associate Dean of the Faculty and Professor of English, Lake Forest College, USA, and &NOW Board Member *A groundbreaking collection of essays on an author who is at the cutting edge of experimental fiction in the twenty-first century. * Marcus Boon, Professor of English, York University, Canada, and author of In Praise of Copying (2010) *Steve Tomasula’s eco-hybrid, post-cyber, transmedia fiction works are as hard to characterize as they are engaging. Only a genetically engineered polydactyl would have enough thumbs to signal the enthusiasm generated by the digerati-literati lucky enough to have encountered them in the first decade of the new millennium. Varied and eclectic, sui generis and virtuosic, Tomasula’s major works get their due in this volume as a wide range of authors, eager and equal to the task, position his activities within the critical discourses proliferating at the intersection of creative thought and literary philosophy. * Johanna Drucker, Professor of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, USA *What is a work that arrives before it is written? What is a work that emerges from the soft tissue of the body at different points in a given era? How do make a new kind of writing derived from the oscillation between two rectangles of light; frames that might include surveillance, animal ethologies and anatomies, as much as a philosophy of the book-to-be? This extraordinary anthology constellates readings of Tomasula novels and intermedia projects that offer us a glimpse of the novel as installation, as 'nature opening out to culture.' As someone interested in what happens at the intersection of narrative and biology, the instance of mutation as a trait transmitted between and across texts of different kinds, I was very inspired by the essays in this remarkable collection. David Banash has curated something that makes it possible to come to writing again, differently. The introduction, co-written with Andrea Spain, was, itself, a fierce and brilliant consideration of 'composition, emergence, sensation': the intense, unpredictable and sometimes violent energies that underlie Tomasula’s work in its incipient stages, but also carry it through a duration. Which is prose. Which is this other kind of radical art. An art or novel that appears only when we orient towards it. In this way. * Bhanu Kapil, Associate Professor of Writing, Naropa University, USA, and author of Ban en Banlieue (2015) *Table of Contents1. “Variations on a Theme”: the (re)Invention of the Human in Vas: An Opera in Flatland Sylvie Bauer (Université Rennes 2, France) 2. The Great American Novel: System Update Kathi Inman Berens (University of Southern California, Annenberg School of Communication, USA) 3. Tomasula's Book R. M. Berry (Florida State University, USA) 4. Fabrications in a Complex Mirror: Steve Tomasula's Turbulent Fiction Gerald Bruns (University of Notre Dame, USA) 5. Literary Archaeologies in The Book of Portraiture Flore Chevaillier (Central State University, USA) 6. The Material Is the Message: Body as Text/Text as Body in Steve Tomasula's VAS: An Opera in Flatland Anthony Enns (Dalhousie University, Canada) 7. A Book, an Atlas, and an Opera: Steve Tomasula's Fictions of Science as Science Fiction Pawel Frelik (Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland) 8. Spatiality and Print, Temporality and Digital Media: Media-Specific Strategies in Steve Tomasula's The Book of Portraiture and TOC N. Katherine Hayles (Duke University, USA) 9. The Work of Art After the Mechanical Age Mary Holland (SUNY, New Paltz, USA) 10. Intermediality in Steve Tomasula's TOC: A New Media Novel: A Semiological Analysis Anne Hurault-Paupe (Paris 13 University, France) 11. Exploration and Discovery Through Visuality in Steve Tomasula's The Book of Portraiture Pelin Iscan (University of Strasbourg, France) 12. Do We Not Bleed? The Color of Flesh in a Cyborg World Anne Larue (University Paris 13-Sorbonne Paris Cité, France) 13. Ontological Metalepses, Unnatural Narratology, & Locality: A Politics of the [[page]] in Tomasula's VAS & TOC Lance Olsen (University of Utah, USA) 14. 'Still, It Moves' : The Subreal Fiction of Steve Tomasula Jackie Orr (Syracuse University, USA) 15. Enumeration in Steve Tomasula's Short Stories Françoise Palleau-Papin (University of Paris 13-Sorbonne Paris Cité, France) 16. Encoding the Body, Questioning Legacy: Reflections on Intersemiotic Experiments in Steve Tomasula's VAS: An Opera in Flatland Françoise Sammarcelli (University of Paris Sorbonne, France) 17. Steve Tomasula's Work of Wonder Anne-Laure Tissut (Rouen University, France) Afterword—An Interview with Steve Tomasula Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. A classic teenage fetish object, the American driver’s license has long symbolized freedom and mobility in a nation whose design assumes car travel and whose vastness rivals continents. It is youth’s pass to regulated vice—cigarettes, bars, tattoo parlors, casinos, strip joints, music venues, guns. In its more recent history, the license has become increasingly associated with freedom’s flipside: screening. The airport’s heightened security checkpoint. Controversial ID voting laws. Federally mandated, anti-terrorist driver’s license re-designs. The driver’s license encapsulates the contradictory values and practices of contemporary American culture—freedom and security, mobility and checkpoints, self-definition and standardization, democracy and exclusion, superficiality and intimacy, the stable self and the self in flux. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewRanging across the 20th century and between continents, Castile teaches a fundamental 'lesson' about the license: what's meant to fix an identity in fact generates competing meanings and values. Freedom and control, security and vulnerability, authenticity and fakery, youth and maturity. The book's Kerouacian opening and mix of pop culture references, personal anecdote, and philosophical musings invite attention to this overlooked but ever-present object. * Heather Houser, Assistant Professor of English, University of Texas at Austin, USA, and author of Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction *In Driver’s License, Meredith Castile… draws six lessons: on national identity, on the culture of faked documents, on design, teen culture, identity, and civics. -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *Driver’s License is almost two short books in one. One part contains several personal stories, which evoke the much-mythologized independence of American teenagers now free to drive themselves. The other part becomes, like Hood, a condemnation of racial injustice. This section describes the de facto disenfranchisement of minority groups in the U.S. It explains how this disenfranchisement – not only when it comes to voting, but also for accessing basic social services – depends on the bureaucratic mechanics of the driver’s license and other forms of ID. Being undocumented or unable to afford driving lessons are just two of the obstacles to exercising full citizenship, and Driver’s License takes some interesting left turns to arrive at this message. Verdict: Buy. American culture so heavily fetishizes the car, yet the driver’s license is also hugely important to a sense of identity and possibility. * Book Riot *Table of ContentsAmerica Fake Design Teen Identity Civics

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn exploration of the role the USA's most-listened-to radio host played in the election of Donald Trump.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Art of the Creative Commons is a book about peer-to-peer production, providing a unique model of commons from the creative industries. The book expands the knowledge about the role in which an alternative framework of copyright protection (Creative Commons) regulates and establishes norms and conventions within the commons. The book gives insight into a vibrant community that fosters creative projects and a variety of works, from elementary school plays to exhibitions in the Smithsonian or multimillion-dollar Hollywood films. Taking up the perspective of the creative workforce involved in production and collaboration allows us to understand the rules of production that follow an alternative model of production. By analyzing issues of media production, this book engages with current scholarship on critical management, political economy and cultural studies.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction: The Art of the Creative Commons  1 Creative Industries: Opening Copyright with Open Licensing  2 Creative Commoning: Commons-Based Peer Production and Networked Value of Objects  3 Sound Industry and FreeSound.org  4 Studying the Art of the Creative Commons  5 The Structure of the Book 1 Managing and Organizing Openness in the Digital Economy  1 Openness in Business Strategy and Operations  1.1 Open Innovation  1.2 Open Business  2 Participatory Cultures  2.1 Open Capital  2.2 Open Production  3 Openness in Public Policy  3.1 Open Data Movement  3.2 Open Scholarship  3.3 Open Government 2 Cultural, Legal and Organisational Foundations of Digital Commons and Peer-Production  1 Culture of Resistance and the Roots of the Digital Commons  2 Open Licensing: The Legal Foundations of Digital Commoning  3 Principles of Digital Peer Production 3 Creative Commons: Political Economy of Creative Peer-to-Peer Production  1 The Basic Framework of Copyright in Creative Industries  2 Creative Industries’ Crisis in the Digital Era  3 Opening Creative Industries: Creative Commons as a Remedy to Restrictiveness of Copyright  4 Creative Commons: Alternative Production and Distribution in Sound Industry 4 Creative Commons: Peer-Production and the Quest for Networked Value  1 Metadata and Content Annotation  2 Sound Scenes and Their Cross-Fertilisation  3 Growing Commons: Providing Representation for Underrepresented Sound  4 Sharing Building Blocks: On a Search for Use Value of Content 5 The Art of Commoning and Content in Context  1 Technical Quality and Context  2 Openness and Artistic Experimentation  3 Sound Commoning and a Sense of Community 6 Acknowledging Authorship: Attribution in the Market Context  1 Attribution and Reputation  2 Waiving Attribution  3 Violation of Creative Commons License  4 Public Domain (cc-0) as a Response to Limitations of Protection  5 Conclusion 7 Art for Art’s Sake?: Commodifying the Commons  1 Symbolic Unity of Creative Commons and Creative Industries  2 Multiple Channel Content Sales  3 Freemium Mode of Sound and Related Products  4 Exclusivity of Access and Intermediation  5 Curation and Automated Integration  6 Conclusions Conclusion The Art of the Creative Commons  1 Creative Commons and the Opening of the Creative Industries  2 Networked Value and the Commons  3 Artistic Work through Commons-Based Production  4 Creative Commons in the Political Economy of the Creative Industries  5 Future Research on the Art of the Commons Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Sudan Media Makers: Writings from the Diaspora, Mohamed A. Satti identifies and interviews six prominent Sudanese media personalities in the diaspora to tell their stories and examine their contributions to Sudanese media. The media and communication professionals are from a variety of backgrounds including print and television journalists, a political cartoonist, and a novelist. Throughout the book, Satti connects the lives of these media makers to the history of Sudan from the last three decades to the present, providing provides insights on Sudan, Sudanese media, and the Sudanese people. Trade Review"Mohamed Satti grants the world the unique opportunity to listen to Sudan's story of struggle and resilience through the authentic voices of its diasporic media makers. This timely and captivating book is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the role of the media in advancing freedom struggles in the Arab world and Africa." -- Sahar Khamis, University of Maryland, College ParkTable of ContentsList of FiguresForeword by Steve HowardAcknowledgementsChapter 1: Introduction: The 1989 Coup and the Administration of Omar al-BashirChapter 2: Isma’il KushkushChapter 3: Khalid Albaih Chapter 4: Abdullahi GallabChapter 5: Nima ElbagirChapter 6: Yousra ElbagirChapter 7: Leila AboulelaChapter 8: Sudan Now: 2019 and BeyondBibliographyAbout the Author

Read more less

Book SynopsisAs Canada was in the grips of the worst pandemic in a century, Canadian media struggled to tell the story. Newsrooms, already run on threadbare budgets, struggled to make broader connections that could allow their audience to better understand what was really happening, and why. Politicians and public health officials were mostly given the benefit of the doubt that what they said was true and that they acted in good faith.This book documents each month of the first year of the pandemic and examines the issues that emerged, from racialized workers to residential care to policing. It demonstrates how politicians and uncritical media shaped the popular understanding of these issues and helped to justify the maintenance of a status quo that created the worst ravages of the crisis. Spin Doctors argues alternative ways in which Canadians should understand the big themes of the crisis and create the necessary knowledge to demand large-scale change.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis compelling account of a turbulent period in the history of the BBC opens at a time of national decline under the Labour governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, and ends during Margaret Thatcher's iconoclastic Conservative premiership. The intervening years saw mass unemployment, trade union strikes and war in Northern Ireland and the Falklands - as well as legendary BBC programmes such as Live Aid, Fawlty Towers and Dad's Army, The Singing Detective and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and David Attenborough's Life on Earth. Comprehensively revised and expanded for this new edition, Jean Seaton's perceptive study presents an absorbing analysis of an institution that both reflects Britain and has helped to define it.Trade ReviewNot the least of this very readable book's main virtues is that it tells us so much about the country that created the BBC as well as the public service broadcaster itself ... a book that is both hugely entertaining and wise. -- Chris Patten * Financial Times *The best argument I have read in favour of the BBC. -- Nick Fraser * Observer *This is a rich and essential history. -- Peter J. Conradi * Spectator *Essential reading for anyone concerned, in any way, about the future of the BBC. -- Graham McCann * TLS *[Seaton] writes in prose that would have impressed Orwell himself. Unsentimental, robust, devoid of jargon, and clear as hell, Pinkoes and Traitors demands what Orwell himself asks of us: to stand outside. Look around. Assess. And tell it like it is in an English as direct as you can. Like Orwell's work, Pinkoes and Traitors makes you walk out into the world and see the familiar anew. -- Bonnie Greer * The Independent *

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow do the media cover the Middle East? Through a country-by-country approach, this book provides detailed analysis of the complexities of reporting from the Arab World. Each chapter provides an overview of a country, including the political context, relationships to international politics and the key elements relating to the place as covered in Western media. The authors explore how the media can be used to serve particular political agendas on both a regional and international level. They also consider the changes to the media landscape following the growth of digital and social media, showing how access to the media is no longer restricted to state or elite actors. By studying coverage of the Middle East from a whole range of news providers, this book shows how news formats and practices may be defined and shaped differently by different nations. It will be essential reading for scholars and practitioners of journalism, especially those focusing on the Arab World.Table of ContentsIntroduction Reporting Lebanon Reporting Palestine/Israel Reporting Gaza Reporting Jordan Reporting Iraq Reporting Saudi Arabia Reporting Turkey Reporting Iran Reporting Egypt Reporting Syria Conclusion: Thoughts on Reporting the Middle East

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe BBC is one of the most important institutions in Britain; it is also one of the most misunderstood. Despite its claim to be independent and impartial, and the constant accusations of a liberal bias, from its Reithian origins to its coverage of the 2019 General Election: the BBC has always sided with the elite. As Tom Mills demonstrates, we are only getting the news that the Establishment wants aired in public. And yet in the current age of multi-platform news, this bias is increasingly exposed. Mills asks if the institution is fit for purpose? And can it even be reformed? The BBC is an important and timely examination of a crucial public institution that may threaten the very thing it was meant to uphold: democracy.Trade Review"Impressive ... a direct challenge to the notion of the BBC as a pillar of liberalism and social democracy * Times Higher Education *A brilliant corrective to mainstream histories of the BBC and a valuable reminder of the need to build a democratic media that is free from vested interests -- Des Freedman, Professor of Media and Communications, GoldsmithsRequired reading for those who want to understand Britain, and an invaluable resource for those who want to change it for the better. -- Daniel Hind, author of The Return of the Public: Democracy, Power and the Case for Media ReformAn excellent critique of the history of the BBC . . an important and readable book. -- David Boyle, author of The Death of Liberal Britain

Read more less