Media studies Books

Book SynopsisThe power of the moving image to conjure marvelous worlds has usually been to understand it in terms of move magic'. On film, a fascination for enchantment and wonder has transmuted older beliefs in the supernatural into secular attractions. But this study is not about the history of special effects or a history of magic. Rather, it attempts to determine the influence and status of secular magic on television within complex modes of delivery before discovering interstices with film. Historically, the overriding concern on television has been for secular magic that informs and empowers rather than a fairytale effect that deceives and mystifies. Yet, shifting notions of the real and the uncertainty associated with the contemporary world has led to television developing many different modes that have become capable of constant hybridization. The dynamic interplay between certainty and indeterminacy is the key to understanding secular magic on television and film and exploring the inTrade ReviewSexton’s incisive investigation into secular magic on television gives a valuable account of this often ignored popular entertainment. In doing so it provides a gateway to examine and re-evaluate key terms of television studies, including liveness and immediacy, quality, and realism. Going beyond televised magic as a genre, it raises crucial questions about the everyday and the role of mediation in our conception of truth, reality, and identity. Sexton revives neglected magicians like Chan Canasta and David Nixon, provides new insights into the famous work of David Copperfield, David Blaine and Derren Brown, and opens discussion of the next-generation magic of Criss Angel and Dynamo. A consideration of recent Hollywood magic films engages timely questions regarding computer graphics technology and illusion. The arguments made are supported by insightful close analyses of magic performances that reveal how changes in magic and its performance communicate developments film and television history. * Malcolm Cook, Lecturer in Film, University of Southampton, UK *Max Sexton’s book does more than analyse the representation of magic on television and film, it explores the essence of illusion and how this helps us understand the qualities of these media. This lucid work shows how the performance of magic in-front of the camera disrupts our understanding of the real, and guides us towards a new understanding of authenticity. A fascinating book that uses its focus on ‘secular magic’ to deliver a remarkable breadth of insight into major issues of television and film studies. * Dominic Lees, Senior Lecturer in Film, University for the Creative Arts, UK *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Magic, Mediation, and Television Form 2. Magic and Entertainment 3. Magic and Performance 4. Magic as a Game 5. The Magic Film Conclusion Filmography Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisDigital, visual media are found in most aspects of everyday life, from workplaces to household devices computer and digital television screens, appliances such as refrigerators and home assistants, and applications for social media and gaming. Each technologically enabled opportunity brings an increasingly sophisticated language with the act of pursuing the intrasensorial ways of perceiving the world around us through touch, movement, sound and vision that is the heart of screen media use and audience engagement with digital artifacts. Drawing on digital media's currently evolving transformation and transforming capacity this book builds a story of the multiple processes in robotics and AI, virtual reality, creative image and sound production, the representation of data and creative practice. Issues around commodification, identity, identification, and political economy are critically examined for the emerging and affecting encounters and perceptions thaTrade ReviewAn interesting collection of diverse reflections on sight, image, sound and movement in relation to digital media. * Amanda Third, Professor, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia *Its themes and concerns are very exciting and timely as we wrestle with big data, new concepts of the self, complex augmented-perception and AR devices and ever-increasing layers of surveillance and self-surveillance. While exploring the prosthetic joys of these new realms, it also helps explain how we grow trapped in our haptics and gamed by our games. * Amedeo D'Adamo, Faculty, American Film Institute, USA and Visiting Professor in the Department of Media, Universita Cattolica, Italy *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements and Dedications List of Contributors Introduction Contents page SECTION ONE: SOCIO-AESTHETICS OF SOUND AND SIGHT Chapter One: Virtual Reality, the Chiasm, and the Doubled Body Angela Ndalianis Chapter Two: Sensing Sims: Atmospheres, Aesthetics and the Cyborg Player Merlin Seller Chapter Three: Embodied Audiovisual Experience: The Role of Sound in Contemporary Screen and Digital Media Darrin Verhagan and Ben Byrne Chapter Four: Volumetric Black: Post-Cinematic Blackness Triton Mobley SECTION TWO: MEANING-MAKING IN THE DATA-DRIVEN ERA OF QUANTIFIED MEDIA Chapter Five: Quantified Me, Curatorial Lives and the Pixelated Spectre of Self Toija Cinque Chapter Six: Virtual Reality and Kinaesthetic Connection: Qualities of ‘Being There'. Kim Vincs Chapter Seven: Feminist Memes: Digital Communities, Identity Performance, and Resistance from the Shadows Shana MacDonald and Brianna I. Wiens Chapter Eight: The Infinite Portrait: A Case of Post-Human Authorship Andrew McIntyre SECTION THREE: TOUCH, BODY, METAL, SCREEN Chapter Nine: First Encounters with Robots Through Embodied Observation, Imagined Narrative, and Choreography Amy LaViers Chapter Ten: Physical Digitality: Making reality visible through multimodal digital affordances for Human Perception Luke Heemsbergen, Greg Bowtell and Jordan Beth Vincent Chapter Eleven: A True Feel: Re-Embodying the Touch Sense in the Digital Fashion Experience Michela Ornati Chapter Twelve: What Robots Learn from Performative Relationships and Interactive Performance Steph Hutchison and John McCormick SECTION FOUR: DIGITAL FUTURES Chapter Thirteen: Smart Home: Smart Devices and the Everyday Experiences of the Home Xi Cui Chapter Fourteen: Affect and the Digitalization of War John MacWillie Chapter Fifteen: Automation in a Myth Luke Munn Chapter Sixteen: A Triadic Typology of Material Mediation: Ontology, Intentionality and Vitalism Renata Morais

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Book SynopsisWith the advent of digital devices and software, self-tracking practices have gained new adherents and have spread into a wide array of social domains. The Quantified Self movement has emerged to promote 'self-knowledge through numbers'. In this groundbreaking book Deborah Lupton critically analyses the social, cultural and political dimensions of contemporary self-tracking and identifies the concepts of selfhood and human embodiment and the value of the data that underpin them. The book incorporates discussion of the consolations and frustrations of self-tracking, as well as about the proliferating ways in which people's personal data are now used beyond their private rationales. Lupton outlines how the information that is generated through self-tracking is taken up and repurposed for commercial, governmental, managerial and research purposes. In the relationship between personal data practices and big data politics, the implications of self-tracking are becoming ever more crucial.Trade ReviewShortlisted for the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize 2017 "Lupton's book is an excellent primer for readers interested in data surveillance, self-tracking cultures, and the increasing push to metricize aspects of personal experience that were previously not considered in statistical terms. Lupton's insight that no one alive today is exempt from becoming subjectedto digatization lends her project great immediate urgenc."The British Society for Literature and Science"The Quantified Self offers an excellent overview of the breadth and depth of issues related to self-tracking cultures. It is not only a useful resource for scholars and practitioners focusing on the value of quantified data with regard to health and bodily practices, but also an invitation to use self-tracking research in new kinds of political initiatives. Ultimately self-tracking is defined as a means of communicating and challenging dominant interests and aims." Minna Ruckenstein, University of Helsinki "Lupton's book is a fascinating read and I highly recommend it to researchers and practitioners who wish to gain a comprehensive account of self-tracking practices. Along with the commonly discussed topics of motivation and data representations, Lupton sheds light onto less explored topics, such as data-surveillance, while offering various theoretical foundations to support her arguments. Her writing is both visionary and provocative, and the book is a must read for researchers and practitioners of the Quantified Self movement." Florian 'Floyd' Mueller, Director, Exertion Games Lab, RMIT University"Impressive and comprehensive overview of the way in which people are tracking their lives using digital technologies"Times Higher Education"The Quantified Self is a careful, evenhanded survey of a trend that is on the cusp of seeming so ubiquitous that we'll soon forget how utterly specific the problems associated with this aspect of our sci-fi future are to the wealthy countries."Inside Higher EducationTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction1 ‘Know Thyself’: Self-tracking Practices and Technologies2 ‘New Hybrid Beings’: Theoretical Perspectives3 ‘An Optimal Human Being’: the Body and Self in Self-Tracking Cultures4 ‘You are Your Data’: Personal Data Meanings, Practices and Materialisations5 ‘Data’s Capacity for Betrayal’: Personal Data PoliticsConclusionReferencesIndex

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Book SynopsisStudies of race and media are dominated by textual approaches that explore the politics of representation. But there is little understanding of how and why representations of race in the media take the shape that they do. How, one might ask, is race created by cultural industries? In this important new book, Anamik Saha encourages readers to focus on the production of representations of racial and ethnic minorities in film, television, music and the arts. His interdisciplinary approach combines critical media studies and media industries research with postcolonial studies and critical race perspectives to reveal how political economic forces and legacies of empire shape industrial cultural production and, in turn, media discourses around race. Race and the Cultural Industries is required reading for students and scholars of media and cultural studies, as well as anyone interested in why historical representations of 'the Other' persist in the media and how they are to be challenged.Trade Review"I love this book. Alongside the justified, simmering rage concerning racism, there is careful and elegant analysis of the production systems behind the media's promotion and manifestations of racial inequality. This is a major contribution not only to media studies, but also to understandings of race and ethnicity in contemporary culture and society."David Hesmondhalgh, University of Leeds "In this carefully researched volume, Anamik Saha carves out an original and compelling approach for studying how the cultural industries shape the politics of race today, and how those industries need to change to allow more equitable societies to emerge. This book is required reading for every citizen, student, activist and scholar with a commitment to race and social justice."Timothy Havens, The University of IowaTable of Contents Contents Preface and Acknowledgements Part 1: Framework Chapter 1: Race and the cultural industries Chapter 2: Approaching race and cultural production Part 2: Media, race and power Chapter 3: Capitalism, race and the ambivalence of commodification Chapter 4: ‘Diversity’ in media and cultural policy Part 3: The cultural politics of production Chapter 5: The racialisation of the cultural commodity Chapter 6: Enabling race-making in the cultural industries Chapter 7: Conclusion References Index

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Book SynopsisFeminist Media Studies is a cutting-edge introduction to the core and emerging theories, methods, and approaches in a field that has blossomed over the past twenty-five years. Adopting an intersectional approach – a framework concerning the interconnected character of oppression based on gender, race, class, and other constructed identities – Alison Harvey takes a global view of gendered practices in and around the media. She provides an accessible overview of classical and contemporary issues in media culture by exploring the past, present, and future of feminist media studies, accounting for changes in the media landscape, from digital technologies and globalized media systems to emergent inequalities, discourses, and practices. By engaging with research from a diverse body of scholarship, this book situates feminist media studies as vital to researching and analysing a range of significant issues. The go-to textbook for a new generation of students, as well as an important resource for scholars, Feminist Media Studies is both an exciting invitation to the field and a passionate call to arms.Trade Review‘Alison Harvey offers an excellent introduction to contemporary gender-based media research while advocating an ethical, intersectional, and interdisciplinary approach that attends to possible sites for action. Clearly presenting the key concerns, methods, and theories at play in feminist media criticism, and insightfully revealing both the challenges of such work and the potential opportunities that arise from it, Harvey provides an informative, well-crafted roadmap for the newbie feminist media scholar as well as a refreshingly provocative update for those already working in this area.’Mary Celeste Kearney, University of Notre Dame ‘Drawing on diverse scholarship and emphasizing intersectionality, this is a timely and necessary book that demonstrates how feminist media studies should approach our rapidly changing media environments. Alison Harvey succinctly explicates methods committed to social justice, and signposts key concepts in a student-friendly way.’Aristea Fotopoulou, University of BrightonTable of ContentsAcknowledgements 1 Introduction to Intersectional Feminist Media Studies 2 Feminist Media Critique 3 Representing Gender 4 Transnational Feminist Media Studies 5 Feminist Digital Media Studies 6 Gendered Media Work 7 Conclusion: The Future of Feminist Media Studies and Action ReferencesIndex

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Book SynopsisIn the age of social media, fake news and data-driven capitalism, the need for critical understanding is more urgent than ever. Half-baked ideas about ‘media literacy’ will lead us nowhere: we need a comprehensive and coherent educational approach. We all need to think critically about how media work, how they represent the world, and how they are produced and used. In this manifesto, leading scholar David Buckingham makes a passionate case for media education. He outlines its key aims and principles, and explores how it can and should be updated to take account of the changing media environment. Concise, authoritative and forcefully argued, The Media Education Manifesto is essential reading for anyone involved in media and education, from scholars and practitioners to students and their parents.Trade Review‘With his characteristic clarity and wisdom, David Buckingham skilfully guides media teachers, students and researchers towards a critical media education suitable for digital times.’David Hesmondhalgh, University of Leeds ‘Buckingham positions media education as an expanded conceptualization of literacy and explains how it is essential for the ever-changing digital worlds we now inhabit.’Renee Hobbs, University of Rhode IslandTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgements 1 A Changing Media Environment 2 Beyond Benefit and Risk 3 The Limits of Media Literacy 4 The Bigger Picture 5 Going Critical 6 Pedagogy: Pitfalls and Principles 7 Conceptualising Social Media 8 Media Education in Practice 9 Making it Happen Conclusion Notes

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Book SynopsisFor every person who reads this text on the printed page, many more will read it on a computer screen or mobile device. It's a situation that we increasingly take for granted in our digital era, and while it is indicative of the novelty of twenty-first-century capitalism, it is also the key to understanding its driving force: the relentless impulse to commodify our lives in every aspect. Ursula Huws ties together disparate economic, cultural, and political phenomena of the last few decades to form a provocative narrative about the shape of the global capitalist economy at present. She examines the way that advanced information and communications technology has opened up new fields of capital accumulation: in culture and the arts, in the privatization of public services, and in the commodification of human sociality by way of mobile devices and social networking. These trends are in turn accompanied by the dramatic restructuring of work arrangements, opening the way for new contradictions and new forms of labor solidarity and struggle around the planet. Labor in the Global Digital Economy is a forceful critique of our dizzying contemporary moment, one that goes beyond notions of mere connectedness or free-flowing information to illuminate the entrenched mechanisms of exploitation and control at the core of capitalism.Trade Review"Ursula Huws is without peer as an analyst of life in contemporary capitalism." - Leo Panitch, York University; editor, Socialist Register

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Book SynopsisThis book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Software has replaced a diverse array of physical, mechanical, and electronic technologies used before 21st century to create, store, distribute and interact with cultural artifacts. It has become our interface to the world, to others, to our memory and our imagination - a universal language through which the world speaks, and a universal engine on which the world runs. What electricity and combustion engine were to the early 20th century, software is to the early 21st century. Offering the the first theoretical and historical account of software for media authoring and its effects on the practice and the very concept of 'media,' the author of The Language of New Media (2001) develops his own theory for this rapidly-growing, always-changing field. What was the thinking and motivations of people who in the 1960 and 1970s created concepts and practical techniques that underlie contemporary media software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya, Final Cut and After Effects? How do their interfaces and tools shape the visual aesthetics of contemporary media and design? What happens to the idea of a 'medium' after previously media-specific tools have been simulated and extended in software? Is it still meaningful to talk about different mediums at all? Lev Manovich answers these questions and supports his theoretical arguments by detailed analysis of key media applications such as Photoshop and After Effects, popular web services such as Google Earth, and the projects in motion graphics, interactive environments, graphic design and architecture. Software Takes Command is a must for all practicing designers and media artists and scholars concerned with contemporary media.Trade ReviewThe language of new media is embodied and expressed---lent visual and interactive form---through software. Software is the agent of our every digital experience. And software is a quintessentially human artifact. The fact that it is intangible---you can’t reach out and touch it---is the least interesting thing about it. This long-researched book, which synthesizes critical theory, human-computer interaction, and media history as well as newer approaches from the digital humanities, allows software to take its place as a commanding element in our conversations about computers, and how we work, play, learn, and create. -- Matthew Kirschenbaum, Associate Professor of English and Associate Director, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland, USWith Software Takes Command, Lev Manovich seeks to answer a central question: 'Why should humanists, social scientists, media scholars and cultural critics care about software?' His answer is a provocative, historically informed book that breaks new ground in digital humanities, in new media studies and in what Manovich defined in his earlier book The Language of New Media, as software studies. Through a theoretical analysis of the computer as cultural metamedium and a probing history of 'media software' such Photoshop and After Effects, among others, this is essential reading for anyone interested in how software has changed how we work, create, and perceive the world. -- Tanya Clement, Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas, Austin, USComputers haven't transformed media--they've shattered the very idea of a medium. Lev Manovich connects the dots of software society, from layers in Photoshop to layers of data, interpretation, and meaning. -- Martin Wattenberg, Software Artist and ScientistThe chapter on motion graphics is the best thing I’ve ever read on the subject, and the final version is copiously illustrated. * RoyChristopher.com *...a valuable resource for anyone interested in contemporary media theory or the humanist study of software. It collects both the history of media's softwarization in the 1960's and 1970's and the cultural development of a metalanguage of motion graphics in the 1990's. In addition, it provides the theoretical framework necessary for a discussion of these histories and for future developments in media software. If it does not provide a single final answer to its catalyzing question, it is only because the use of 'media after software' is a cultural phenomenon in which we are still neck deep. -- Patrick Davison, New York University * International Journal of Communication *Currently, too many of us in education lack sophisticated and critical ways to think and talk about the role of software in our lives. Unlike previous technologies, software can push back into our worlds in unprecedented ways. In education, the danger is that software will begin to dictate pedagogy rather than the other way around. Manovich’s book can help us avoid this pitfall. The greatest value of Software Takes Command is that it helps frame the history and nature of software in a way that makes me more confident in identifying how and when to take command of software myself. -- Tom Liam Lynch, Pace University * Research in Review *The proposal involves such strength and conviction from Manovich. You have to have balls to wonder about the intellectual, philosophical, epistemological and conceptual origins of the software we use every day…This work is thus a secret history (by neglect rather than conspiracy) of the culture of software. Por eso la propuesta de Manovich conlleva tanta fuerza y convicción. Hay que tener cojones para preguntarse acerca de los orígenes intelectuales, filosóficos, epistemologicos y conceptuales del software que usamos cada día… Esta obra es pues una historia secreta (por desatención mas que por conspiración) de la cultura del software. -- Alejandro Piscitelli * Conectar Igualdad *Manovich’s book studies this management of information not so much from the overused perspective of the ‘digital revolution’, but more specifically via the analysis of software…identifying software as the new ubiquitous technology that structures everyday contemporary life – a life which has, thanks to the rise of software, become global…As such, Software Takes Command is a contribution to the emerging discipline of ‘software studies’. -- Warren Buckland, Oxford Brookes University, UK * New Review of Film and Television Studies *Today Manovich - one of the foremost authorities in research software and massive digital cultures - it comes with an even more radical and powerful theory: the software is the message, now a category imperative for new approaches to analysis and understanding of the contemporary. Hoy Manovich – una de las máximas autoridades en estudios de software y culturas digitales masivas –, viene con una teoría aún más radical y contundente: el software es el mensaje, convertida en una categoría imprescindible para los nuevos criterios de análisis y comprensión de la contemporaneidad. -- Margarita D'Amico * Toques de Contemporaneidaed *With significant contributions like Software Takes Command, software studies is sure to flourish as an area of scholarship within media studies, if not as a replacement. -- Yanni Loukissas, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University * Journal of Design History *Through a series of theoretically informed and empirically rich chapters, Manovich reflects on how different media became thoroughly infused with software, how it altered different practices, and how to make sense of software’s effects. He persuasively argues that softwarization has led to the formation of a new ‘metamedium’ in which what were previously separate media, and already existing and not-yet-invented media, become fused. -- Rob Kitchin, National University of Ireland Maynooth * Information, Communication & Society *….Manovich's work contributes as it unveils some of the invisible labour involved in media production hidden in the softwarization process, and deepens our understanding of the changing practices and aesthetics. -- Lin Yuwei * Information, Communication and Society *Reading Manovich is indeed useful, and worth putting in your toolbox of concepts along with Donald Norman’s affordance and Bruno Latour’s agency. Per leggere Manovich risulta utile infatti mettere nella propria cassetta degli attrezzi concetti quali quelli di affordance di Donald Norman e di agency di Bruno Latour. -- Tatiana Mazali, Politecnico di Torino * Mediascapes Journal *Software Takes Command shows that technical expertise can indeed lead to more intelligible technical description…Manovich’s background allows him to set priorities that resonate with the situated hierarchies of relevance that exist in every professional practice…This book focuses on some of the most fundamental features of some of the most common programs in the cultural software space and remains resolutely analytical and formalistic. In that sense, it can be considered as uncritical. There is no variant of false consciousness to be found and no bureaucratization of the creative mind through formalization or standardization. Software Takes Command is trying to understand what is, not what ought or ought not to be… Given [software’s] enormous significance for contemporary visual culture, one would expect there to be a number of published volumes that discuss Photoshop and similar programs in some depth. But besides Manovich’s work, there is preciously little…One can therefore only hope that Software Takes Command inspires others to take the approach to new domains and different types of software…Lev Manovich shows us how this could be done – and this is why Software Takes Command is such an important book. -- Bernhard Rieder, University of Amsterdam * Information, Communication and Society *The intelligence and breadth of Manovich's approach makes this book relevant for all those who, in the fields of computer science, art, design, history and theory of new media, and related disciplines, wish to understand the multiple forms and structures of interaction and manipulation encoded in the software we use in many of our creative and communicative practices. Manovich beautifully synthesizes a significant part of his work as programmer, designer and digital animator, media artist, researcher and professor, helping to strengthen and expand the field of cultural studies of software, one of the corollaries of his previous systematic analysis of the language of new media. This is an essential book in the canon, still in formation, of software studies. -- Manuel Portela * MATLIT *A broad range of examples combined with the author's own experience as a media designer, as well as his many careful observations and provocative ideas make this book a compelling and insightful take on a central pillar of digital culture. -- Martin E. Roth, Leiden University, The Netherlands * Asiascape: Digital Asia *Software Takes Command is impeccably organized and thorough, meant to be exhaustive and complete in its topology of the practices of new media production and consumption, from taking an Instagram pic of your boyfriend on holiday to the most advanced modes of graphic design, film and speculative architecture. * Red-Assiniboine Research Unit *Table of ContentsIntroduction PART 1: Inventing Media Software Chapter 1. Alan Kay’s Universal Media Machine Chapter 2. Understanding Metamedia PART 2: Hybridization and Evolution Chapter 3: Hybridization Chapter 4. Soft Evolution PART 3: Software in Action Chapter 5. Media Design Conclusion Index

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Book SynopsisFor many years, the far right has sown public distrust in the media as a political strategy, weaponizing libel law in an effort to stifle free speech and silence African American dissent. In Sullivan's Shadow demonstrates that this strategy was pursued throughout the civil rights era and beyond, as southern officials continued to bring lawsuits in their attempts to intimidate journalists who published accounts of police brutality against protestors. Taking the Supreme Court's famous 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan as her starting point, Aimee Edmondson illuminates a series of fascinating and often astounding cases that preceded and followed this historic ruling.Drawing on archival research and scholarship in journalism, legal history, and African American studies, Edmondson offers a new narrative of brave activists, bold journalists and publishers, and hard­headed southern officials. These little-known courtroom dramas at the intersection of race, libel, and journalism go beyond the activism of the 1960s and span much of the country's history, beginning with lawsuits filed against abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and concluding with a suit spawned by the 1988 film Mississippi Burning.

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Drones are in the newspaper, on the TV screen, swarming through the networks, and soon, we're told, they'll be delivering our shopping. But what are drones? The word encompasses everything from toys to weapons. And yet, as broadly defined as they are, the word “drone” fills many of us with a sense of technological dread. Adam Rothstein cuts through the mystery, the unknown, and the political posturing, and talks about what drones really are: what technologies are out there, and what’s coming next; how drones are talked about, and how they are represented in popular culture. It turns out that drones are not as scary as they appear—but they are more complicated than you might expect. Drones reveal the strange relationships that humans are forming with their new technologies. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewAdam Rothstein’s primer on drones covers such themes … as the representation of drones in science fiction and popular culture. The technological aspects are covered in detail, and there is interesting discussion of the way in which our understanding of technology is grounded in historical narratives. As Rothstein writes, the attempt to draw a boundary between one technology and another often ignores the fact that new technologies are not quite as new as we think. * Times Literary Supplement (reviewed by Christopher Coker) *Readers interested in technology and/or warfare will very much enjoy reading Drone… Adam Rothstein did an admirable job, writing about every aspect of drones in detailed and organized fashion… [T]hose keenly interested in the subject will gobble this up. -- George Erdosh * San Francisco Book Review *[Rothstein's] book is a rich collection of vignettes about how to imagine and comprehend the drone ... [Drone] really excels in tackling the multiple meanings, symbols, and narratives attached to drones, all of which provide a bird’s eye view (drone’s eye view?) of the terrain of contemporary debate ... for those beginning a research project, or just the curious, this small book packs a big punch. -- Ian G. R. Shaw, University of Glasgow * Antipode *Adam Rothstein's Drone presents this iconic figure of contemporary warfare-the disconcertingly alluring autonomous airborne machine-through the lens of a different kind of history. Privacy and tracking algorithms run side by side with the ethics of self-guided munitions, activist political programs butt heads with emerging corporate business strategies, and all of it is tied back to the earliest experiments in driverless vehicles, quaint ancestors of today's over-mythologized UAVs. In the end, Rothstein's book is an exploration of technical agency: Where did drones come from-and what do they want? * Geoff Manaugh, Editor of Landscape Futures: Instruments, Devices and Architectural Inventions and Author of the website BLDGBLOG *This lucid, visionary work is as close as one can get to science fiction without the baggage of science and/or fiction. Adam Rothstein's Drone will be a wonderful cultural artifact in twenty years. It will be like a broken pomegranate of contemporary speculations and anxieties. * Bruce Sterling, Author of The Zenith Angle and Professor of Internet Studies and Science Fiction at the European Graduate School, Switzerland *Portland writer and artist Adam Rothstein’s contribution to Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series digs into the history and meaning of autonomous aircraft—the ways they work, the tasks they perform, where they come from, and how the way we talk about them reflects the priorities and anxieties of our age. -- Ben Waterhouse * Oregon Humanities *Adam Rothstein’s Drone test[s] the water on what this technology might yet prove to be as it is successively explored and its limits and possibilities (military and civilian) discovered. What shall drones be? -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: Four Technology Stories Chapter Two: The Military Drone Chapter Three: The Commercial Drone (or the hole where it ought to be) Chapter Four: Blinking Lights Chapter Five: Software and Hardware Chapter Six: The Non-Drone Chapter Seven: What the Drone is For Chapter Eight: The Drone in Discourse Chapter Nine: Drone Fiction Chapter Ten: Ourselves and the Drone Chapter Eleven: Aesthetics of the Drone Chapter Twelve: The Drone as Meme List of Images Bibliography Notes

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Book SynopsisThis timely volume brings together prominent sociologists from across the world to unravel the role played by contemporary "narrations" of the economic and refugee crisis as they have mobilized every aspect of social storytelling over the course of the last decade throughout Europe. Because the different (mass and social) media reflect the dominant ideas and representations, it becomes essential to analyze the meaning of their narratives to even begin to understand the relationship (or "inexistent dialogue") between official political discourses and popular myths—most notably the valuation of prosperity so actively promoted by the mass culture and the cultural industry's products. Time and again the pieces in Crisis' Representations find that, despite ongoing inequalities and other social difficulties, contemporary audiences seem to counterbalance their misery with the dreams of happiness provided by these dominant narratives. Contributors include: Christiana Constantopoulou, Amalia Frangiskou, Evangelia Kalerante, Laurence Larochelle, Debora Marcucci, Valentina Marinescu, Albertina Pretto, Maria Thanopoulou, Joanna Tsiganou, Vasilis Vamvakas, and Eleni Zyga.

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Book SynopsisThe book you didn’t know you needed about advocacy in the digital age​.On Digital Advocacy is an exploration of the intersection of advocacy, stewardship, social media, and our humanity. We all share a responsibility to protect our planet––especially those of us in the outdoor industry––and in the digital age, access to advocacy is abundant. Social media hands us the tools to get educated, gather resources, organize, and empower ourselves on whatever slice of the “save the planet” pie tickles your appetite to do good. The opportunity and potential for digital advocacy is dizzying––but what happens when we begin to tangle our personal identities with our pursuit of saving a dying earth? As users of public lands, we have an ethical responsibility to the planet. As inhabitants of our identities, we have an ethical responsibility to ourselves, too. Can we use the digital space to protect the outdoors while still protecting our human spirit?

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Book SynopsisIn the same way that Stallone and Schwarzenegger played film heroes who came to embody the values of Ronald Reagans aggressive conservative agenda in the 1980s, the 21st-century film narratives of Batman, Spider-Man and Superman reflect the policies of the Bush Doctrine after 9/11. This book offers a groundbreaking study of the relationship that exists between post-9/11 American politics and the contemporary superhero movie phenomenon. No other Hollywood subgenre was as consistently popular during the George W. Bush presidency, as films such as Spider-Man, Superman Returns, Iron Man, and The Dark Knight embodied the key contradictions that inform the cultural and political life of the post-9/11 years. By combining in-depth analyses of numerous major superhero films from this era with astute readings of contemporary critical theory, this book offers accessible and academically potent insight into the complex interplay between politics, ideology, and entertainment in the 21st century.

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Book SynopsisActivists use digital as well as mainstream media tools to attract supporters, advertise their campaigns, and raise awareness of issues in the broader community. Activism and Digital Culture in Australia examines the use of digital tools and culture by Australian and international activist organisations to facilitate public engagement, participation and deliberation in issues and advance social change. In particular the book engages media studies, cultural studies, social theory and various ethical and political philosophical perspectives to examine the use of digital multi-platform tools by activist organisations and advocates for social change to a) disseminate information and raise public awareness; b) invoke, inform and shape public debate through the provision of information and invocation of affect; and c) garner public support (including funding) for issues and for associated social change. Engaging both qualitative and quantitative approaches, these case studies will demonstrate the richness of digital culture for activism and advocacy, examining the use by activist organisations of such digital media tools as apps, blogging, Facebook, RSS, Twitter, and YouTube. The shows that digital culture offers productive mechanisms and spaces for the reshaping of society itself to take more of a participatory role in progressing social change.Trade ReviewThis timely and cutting-edge volume makes an invaluable contribution to understanding the opportunities and challenges of the digital age for activist groups. The book takes a strong stand against the all-to-easy allegations of clicktivism. It convincingly demonstrates that digital activism, through virality, positive campaigning, and the mobilisation of weak links, generates new and powerful forms of participation that can bring about social change. -- Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Director of Research Development and Environment, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff UniversityActivism and Digital Culture in Australia examines global debates about digital media activism, from the Arab Spring to Black Lives Matter and much besides. It adds to that a significant and valuable body of research specific to Australia. For example, the book explores the place of bloggers in supporting indigenous Australians’ rights, as well animal rights, environmental protection of the barrier reef - all within a nuanced reading of neoliberalism and the affordances of digital technology. The book argues that there is a powerful case that digital activism can be a progressive force for change - with its combination of narrative, connectivity and social action – and recognises that affect and deliberation are inseparable elements of digital activism. The book will no doubt become a major reference point in future discussions about digital activism in Australia. -- Joss Hands, Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Newcastle UniversityDoes “clicktivism” mobilize social change? Rodan and Mummery disclose Australia’s unique contributions to global social media activism. #Sosblakaustralia, the Indigenous sovereign nations movement, used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to motivate and organize a 60,000-person protest. Animals Australia’s “Make it Possible” campaign coaxed empathy for animals and sparked a backlash, which led to extensive public deliberation in social media. At its core, Activism and Digital Culture in Australia is about how we forge our identities and engage civic discourse in an always-on digital world, where the invisible tithes of data aggregation and surveillance put bodies at risk in different ways than in the days of protest leaflets and posters. This book is for anyone who wonders, “Do my social media posts make a difference?” -- Professor Kathi Inman Berens, Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and Publishing at Portland State University and U.S. Fulbright Scholar of Digital Culture at the University of BergenTable of Contents1.Digital Culture, Activism and Social Movements in Australia/ 2. Political Blogging: Can Public Deliberation Realize Activist Aims?/ 3. Animals Australia, Multi-Platform Campaigning and the Mobilisation of Affect/ 4.Social Networking and Direct Action in the Digital Age/ 5. GetUP! and Participatory Activism/ 6. Crowdfunding Initiatives for Social Movements/ 7. Future Possibilities/ Index

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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

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Book SynopsisDemocracy is not necessarily progressive, and will only be if we make it so. What Mondon and Winter call 'reactionary democracy' is the use of the concept of democracy and its associated understanding of the power to the people (demos cratos) for reactionary ends. The resurgence of racism, populism and the far right is not the result of popular demands, it is the logical conclusion of manipulation by the elite of the working class to push reactionary ideas. These narratives portray racism as a popular demand, rather than as something encouraged and perpetuated by elites, exonerating those with the means to influence and control public discourse through the media in particular. This has legitimised the far right, strengthened its hand and compounded inequalities.These actions divert us away from real concerns and radical alternatives to the current system. Through a careful and thorough deconstruction of the hegemonic discourse currently preventing us from thinking beyond the liberal vs populist dichotomy, this book develops a better understanding of the systemic forces underpinning our current model and its exploitative and discriminatory basis. The book shows us that the far right would not have been able to achieve such success, either electorally or ideologically, were it not for the help of elite actors like the media, politicians and academics. While the far right is a real threat and should not be left off the hook, the authors argue that we need to shift the responsibility of the situation towards those who too often claim to be objective bystanders despite their powerful standpoint and clear capacity to influence the agenda, public discourse, and narratives, particularly when they platform and legitimise racist and far right ideas and actors.Trade ReviewPraise for After Charlie Hebdo:A unique transnational take on the weaponization of liberal values after the Paris attacks. After Charlie Hebdo takes Islamophobia apart and equips us for the fight back. -- Liz Fekete, Director, Institute of Race RelationsPraise for After Charlie Hebdo:A bold, challenging and forthright collection that raises fundamental questions around issues of race and identity. -- Michael Cronin, Trinity College DublinPraise for After Charlie Hebdo:The attack on Charlie Hebdo has been a transformative event, one that presents particular challenges for freedom of speech. This insightful collection helps us to reflect on how we can develop an alternative narrative on violence, racism, and freedom of expression. -- Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale SuperiorePraise for After Charlie Hebdo:"These essays offer stimulating perspectives on the violent paradoxes of French liberalism. For English speakers, they give valuable context to the political dynamics behind the Charlie episode." -- Nick Riemer, University of SydneyPraise for After Charlie Hebdo:"An engaging contribution to our understanding of the 2015 attacks, examining the media framing of the event and the conflict of values it created in public debate." -- Romain Badouard, University of Cergy-PontoisePraise for The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia:Aurélien Mondon has written a brilliant and original book. It involves a comparative history of the French and Australian right in the longue durée and shows how the post-war extreme right parties - the Front National in France and One Nation in Australia - absorbed the inner-spirit of both nations' very different right-wing traditions and were then able to transform the rhetoric and the tone of politics, especially on questions connected to ethnicity and race, under Sarkozy in France and Howard in Australia. This work will change the way scholars view the significance of the resurgence of the populist right in Europe and beyond. -- Robert Manne, La Trobe University, AustraliaPraise for The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia:In spite of their different histories and political cultures, France and Australia have been prime examples of a broader trend: the 'mainstreaming' of far right discourses and previously taboo issues associated with them. Mondon's fascinating but also sobering book shows why the far right's electoral performance is a misleading indicator of its political influence; behind it lies a more complex dynamic of ideological normalisation, which may easily serve the far right in the longer term. -- Aristotle Kallis, Lancaster University, UKPraise for The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia:This book provides an original and informed study of the nature and narratives of the extreme right in two developed countries where questions of identity, immigration and the negotiation of change figure prominently in public debate. It makes a valuable contribution to comparative political analysis and will appeal to readers interested in how key populist extremist parties impact on contemporary politics and society. -- Paul Hainsworth, University of Ulster, UKFires a rescue flare warning that the threat to civil society, human rights, and democracy itself must not be ignored-before it is too late. -- Chip BerletA clever, timely interrogation of what racism truly means, and why it persists in modern liberal democracies. Everyone needs to read this. -- Angela SainiReactionary Democracy makes an important contribution to critical thought by mapping the complex ways in which racism has acquired renewed force in the contemporary conjuncture. Drawing expertly on developments in the US, UK and France, the entangled logics of liberal and illiberal racisms are carefully illuminated making transparent the complicity of liberalism with its so-called populist alternative. With liberalism's commitment to democracy compromised, Mondon and Winter boldly call for the construction of an emancipatory, transformative politics committed to ending all structures of oppression and thereby actualizing the promise of democracy for all. -- Satnam VirdeeMondon and Winter offer a razor sharp analysis of the relationship between racism and liberalism to rethink the resurgence of far right, populist politics. Ultimately, this is a hopeful book that demands more from democracy and from ourselves--only by resisting racism and other hierarchical exclusions can we hope to build egalitarian futures. -- Professor Akwugo Emejulu Department of Sociology University of WarwickA powerful account of how liberal media and political elites have colluded with far-right forces, fatally undermining the emancipatory potential of democratic systems of government. -- Imogen TylerAn impressively lucid and hard-hitting primer on some of the gravest dangers of the Western present. With unsparing clarity and nuance, Mondon and Winter delineate how vitiated and retrograde the practice of democracy is today, how it remains in thrall to elite manipulation, and how both racism and white supremacy are central to this project of control and consent. This book makes for uncomfortable reading--which is why it is so urgent and necessary. We can't afford not to hear what it has to say. -- Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent EmpireIt is hard to think of a more necessary and welcome intervention than Reactionary Democracy. The mantle of 'the market place of ideas' has emboldened racism and undermined democracy. The agents of this movement have their allies, and with this book democrats and anti-racists have theirs. A powerful and compelling contribution. -- Professor Nasar Meer, FAcSS; FRSE, University of EdinburghRadical Democracy offers a sustained critical reading of the recent platforming of the populist racist right. Aurelion Mondon and Aaron Winter trace the ways in which this focus on extreme expressions draws attention away from systemic racism and the inequalities capitalism licenses and reproduces. The result is a timely analysis of the the processes and narratives enabling the reproduction of systemic racism. -- David Theo GoldbergReactionary Democracy is an important and incisive contribution to the burgeoning literature on the rise of the far-right in the U.S., France, and the U.K. Challenging the popular narrative that these movements are an inevitability, Mondon and Winter show that the Right's new found power was hardly the will of the people. The right's mainstreaming relied upon a complicit media (unable to adapt to bad-faith and racist provocateurs) and politicians willing to adopt the right's rhetoric. If you want to know how we got into this mess, and are committed to a progressive path out of it, Reactionary Democracy helps to a critical roadmap. -- Victor RayIn elaborating their argument about the mainstreaming of racism, Mondon and Winter register shifts and divergences across different national contexts, providing a thoughtful response to excitable narratives about the global rise of 'populism'. Theirs is also a ferocious, mobilising critique, properly partisan while unsparing of progressive mythologies. They point us towards what's needed to defeat the far-right, not just by engaging with its contemporary complexity and affinities, but by demonstrating incisively how it benefits from wider social and political contradictions -- Gavan TitleyReactionary Democracy is a powerful analysis of how the 'respectable' centre ground is far from innocent in the rise of the far right. Mondon and Winter show how racist ideas have been promoted not just through far right activism but also through everyday language on immigration and identity in mainstream politics and media. Drawing on examples from the US, France and the UK, they argue that elite voices are responsible for normalising anti-immigrant views and facilitating conditions exploited by a resurgent right. The book provides a much-needed health warning against the notion that liberal democracy is a natural ally against racism. By insisting that we should stop 'hyping' the far right and start challenging it, the book eloquently promotes a full-throttle anti-racism when we need it most. -- Des FreedmanReactionary Democracy is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work drawing upon the enduring debate about the causes of systemic racism. Introducing readers to the entanglement of racism and liberal democracy, this co-authored book seeks to shed new light on how these forms of power interact and the possibilities emerging in the wake of this. -- Rahel Süß * LSE Review of Books *Mondon and Winter put forward an ideological analysis that helps explain how the far-right could claim to be championing the grievances of workers while at the same time defending the interests of the wealthy. -- Paolo Gerbaudo * Jacobin *Timely. -- Beatriz Buarque * International Affairs *

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Book SynopsisSome 22 years after its creation, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is still held in high critical regard as one of the finest examples of the video game medium. The same is true of the game’s music, whose superlative reception continues to be evident, whether in the context of the game or in orchestral concerts and recordings of the game’s music. Given music’s well-established significance for the video game form, it is no coincidence that music is placed at the forefront of this most lauded and loved of games. In Ocarina of Time, music connects and unifies all aspects of the game, from the narrative conceit to the interactive mechanics, from the characters to the virtual worlds, and even into the activity of legions of fans and gamers, who play, replay and reconfigure the music in an enduring cultural site that has Ocarina of Time at its centre. As video game music studies begins to mature into a coherent field, it is now possible to take the theoretical apparatus and critical approaches that have been developed in antecedent scholarship and put these into practice in the context of an extended concrete game example. The most extensive investigation into the music of a single game yet undertaken, this book serves three important primary purposes: first, it provides a historical-critical account of the music of an important video game text; second, it uses this investigation to explore wider issues in music and media studies (including interactivity, fan cultures, and music and technology); and third, it serves as a model for future in-depth studies of video game music.Trade Review'Summers does an excellent job of describing the soundscape of a video game within the confines of print, employing a variety of visual representations to support his prose arguments. [...] The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: A Game Music Companion offers many things to many people: it is an in-depth analysis of a beloved game, a primer on ludomusicological terminology and concepts, a model analysis, a demonstration of the different things video game music can do, and an explication of how it does them. Summers’s attention to detail, wide-ranging knowledge, and affection and respect for the subject matter are evident throughout, resulting in a superb book.' -- Sarah Pozderac-Chenevey, Journal of Sound and Music in GamesTable of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. The music of Ocarina of Time in context Nintendo’s game franchises The Legend of Zelda Kondo’s approach to music in The Legend of Zelda Music on the Nintendo 64 Music in Ocarina of Time Chapter 3. The ocarina and Link’s musical performances The ocarina Why an ocarina? Playing Link’s ocarina Beyond the four notes Learning the ocarina songs The songs Plot-advancing and assistance melodies Warp songs The Scarecrow’s song and other performances The Fabulous Five froggish tenors The Skull Kids Musical performance in Ocarina of Time The function of musical performance in games Chapter 4. Location cues Part I. Hyrule Field A familiar tune Introduction Day tags Reflective tags Battle tags Music, the player and geography Part II. Location cues featuring ocarina songs Epona’s song and Lon Lon Ranch – Associations of ranch life The Temple of Time and the Song of Time – Cathedral soundscape Windmill and the Song of Storms – Strange circularity Saria’s song and the Lost Woods – Jolly repetition and misdirection Part III. Dungeon cues Inside the Deku Tree – Organic timbres Dodongo’s Cavern – Audio textures of metal and stone Inside Jabu-Jabu’s belly – Fishy rumblings Forest Temple – Sounds of the forest Fire Temple – Voices heard and unheard Ice Cavern – Crystalline chimes Water Temple – A dungeon on the Danube? Shadow Temple and the bottom of the well – Voices and drums from the depths Spirit Temple Ganon’s Castle Part IV. Towns Kokiri Forest – Optimism and ornamentation Castle Town market – Evoking European traditions Kakariko Village – A wistful safe haven Goron City – Sounding the materials of the mountain Zora’s domain Gerudo Valley – Hispanic traditions in the desert Part V. Recurring types of location Shops – Hyrule’s consumer soundtrack Sideshow minigames – The fairground connection Houses – A musical starting point Potion shops, ghost shops and lakeside laboratory – Little shops of horrors? Fairy Fountain/start menu – Angelic harps Music for locations Chapter 5. Character themes and cutscenes Part I. Character themes Zelda’s theme – Lilting lullaby Ganondorf’s theme – Alarming chords and brooding sequences Sheik – Atypical warrior’s theme Kaepora Gaebora (the great wise owl) – Authority and levity Great Deku Tree – Ancient uncertainty Koume and Kotake A noticeable omission Part II. Other cutscenes Opening – An unexpected start Flying – Musical sequences for beating wings Legends, spirits and goddesses Rewards and milestones End credits – Finale ultimo Ocarina of Time 3D Music for cutscenes Chapter 6. Ludic cues Part I. Combat music Musical features of combat cues Implementation in the game Boss victory cue Part II. Cues for treasure and challenges Acquisition cues Music for puzzles Music for losing – Game over Minigames – Frivolous fun Special sequences Aestheticizing the Ludic Chapter 7: Interfaces and sound effects Earcons for interfaces Menus and dialogue Targeting system Musical sound for interfaces and information Musicality and magic Sound and motion Enemy sound effects Conclusions Chapter 8. Ocarina afterlives Later games Parallel world – Majora’s mask Selective franchise continuity Decontextualizing sound A multi-valent musical medium

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Book SynopsisThe book offers an introduction to adaptations between stage and screen, examining stage and screen works as texts but also as performances and cultural events. Case studies of distinct periods in British film and theatre history are used to illustrate the principle that adaptations can't be divorced from the historical and cultural moment in which they are produced and to look at issues around theatrical naturalism and cinematic realism. Written in a refreshingly accessible style, it offers an original analysis with emphasis on performance and event. It opens up new avenues of exploration to include non-literary issues such as the treatment of space and place, mise en scène, acting styles and star personas. The recent growth of digital theatre is examined to foreground the 'events' of theatre and cinema, with phenomena such as NT Live analysed for the different ways that 'liveness' is adapted. Adapting Performance Between Stage and Screen explores how cultural values can be articulated in the act of translating between mediums. The book takes as its subject the interaction between film and theatre and argues that, rather than emphasising differences between the two mediums, the emphasis should be placed on elements that they share, in particular the emphasis on performance and the participation in an event. It uses a number of case studies to show how this relationship is affected by changes in technology – the coming of film sound, the invention of live-casting – and in the nature of the event being offered to particular audiences. These examples, ranging from the well-known to the obscure, are all treated with relevant and knowledgeable analysis and a strong and appropriate sense of context. The book offers a welcome overview of previous work in this area and demonstrates the importance of basing analysis on historical context, as well as giving new insights into some familiar examples. Discussion ranges from Steven Spielberg and Alfred Hitchcock to Robert Lepage and Ivo van Hove. There are detailed analyses of Alfie, Gone Too Far and Festen as well as authoritative analyses of NT Live performances and British New Wave cinema. The book will be of primary interest to academics, researchers, teachers and students working in adaptation studies, film studies and theatre studies. Written in an accessible style it will appeal to teachers and students on A-level, undergraduate and postgraduate film, theatre, media and cultural studies courses. The chapter on digital theatres will add to the growing body of literature in this area and appeal to students and academics working on digital cultures and new media. Live screenings of theatre events are becoming more widely available and increasingly popular, including some of the productions discussed. There is potential interest for a general audience interested in British films, theatre and actors.Trade Review'Building productively on previous scholarship while also taking adaptation studies in fruitful new directions, Adapting Performance between Stage and Screen offers an accessible and incisive consideration of its topic. Lowe confidently navigates the many permutations of the relationship between cinema and theatre and meticulously explores how this has played out in the particularly intertwined British variation on the theme. Very worthwhile reading for anyone interested in British film, British theatre and their deep interconnectivity, this is a performance that definitely deserves its own round of applause.' -- Melanie Williams, Journal of British Cinema and Television'As an introduction to this new approach, Lowe leaves us with a number of potential avenues for future exploration and academic research. Although there are a few suggestions listed in the book, such as a re-examination of the films of Basil Dean, further analysis of the theatre-to-cinema live broadcast and the investigation of stage productions of British film, this method will provide the inspiration for further academic analysis in both theatre and film studies. Lowe’s accessible writing style makes this not only an informative but also a pleasurable read for everyone with an interest in performances on either stage or screen.' -- Georgia Brown, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and TelevisionThe author offers very good readings and analysis of a wide range of texts from well-known classics to more obscure works, spanning the popular, the populist and the avant-garde. It is thrilling to read a book that can discuss Steven Spielberg or Alfred Hitchcock in one place and Robert Lepage or Ivo van Hove in another ... It is an exciting volume that plugs an important gap in current cross-media scholarship. -- Richard Hand, Professor of Media Practice at the University of East Anglia and Editor of the Journal of Adaptation in Film & PerformanceThis book offers an original analysis which emphasizes performance and event (rather than literary texts) as the basis for analyzing different examples of adaptation. In terms of case studies, it offers interesting and worthwhile insights into some quite familiar material but also takes on relatively new examples of the exchange between theatre and film in its discussion of live-casting and the recent dominance of staged films in British theatre … an excellent account of an important topic. -- Christine Geraghty, Professor of Film and Television, University of Glasgow,Table of ContentsIntroduction Part One: Practices Chapter 1: Stage to Screen Adaptation and Performance/Production: Space, Design, Acting, Sound Chapter 2: Screen to Stage Adaptation: Theatre as Medium/Hyper-Medium Chapter 3: Stage to Screen Adaptation and the Performance Event: Live Broadcast as Adaptation Part Two: Histories Chapter 4: The Introduction of Sound and ‘Canned’ Theatre Chapter 5: The British New Wave on Stage and Screen Chapter 6: Staging ‘British Cinema’ Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThe importance of communication in health-related matters cannot be overemphasized. Despite modern global advancements, indigenous communication methods assume a large part of health practices in rural regions throughout the world, including areas in Africa and Asia. Indigenous language remains one of the strongest means of communication and a vital function in local communities across the globe.Emerging Trends in Indigenous Language Media, Communication, Gender, and Health is a collection of innovative research that vitalizes, directs, and shapes scholarship and global understanding in the aforementioned areas and provides sustainable policy trajectory measures for indigenous language media and health advocacy. This book will provide a better global understanding of the significance indigenous language still has in modern society. While highlighting topics including digitalization, sustainability, and health education, this book is ideally designed for researchers, anthropologists, sociologists, advocates, medical practitioners, world health organizations, media professionals, government officials, policymakers, practitioners, academicians, and students.

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Book SynopsisWhat political power do videos have on social media? And how can democratic activists on the Internet assert themselves against propaganda, disinformation and the entertainment industry? Understanding video activism is becoming ever more important at a time when moving images on platforms are increasingly influencing political processes. 22 illus.

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Book SynopsisAfter the feminist art collective LASTESIS created their performance "A Rapist in Your Path" in their native Chile, it went viral across the globe, becoming the anthem of the grassroots feminist movements in South America and around the world. This is their manifesto, an angry, unrepentant tour-de-force that moves through rage, femicide, abortion, homophobia, feminist art, and the oppression of the state to argue for a feminist world based on collective struggle and a visionary political art. Translated by Camila Valle.Trade ReviewLASTESIS, the Chilean feminist performance collective, shows today how popular art can be about changing the world, not entertaining. -- Nadya Tolokonnikova * Time Magazine *This book is poetry, manifesto, collective knowledge, rage, and action. LASTESIS demonstrates that the feminist movement is not anti-intellectual, but rather redefines concepts and political theses: theory is a chant, a performance, a language embedded in bodies, and a way of collective existence. -- Verónica Gago, author of Feminist InternationalIntroduces LASTESIS'S angry, galvanising and feminist vision to the Global North...Set Fear on Fire transforms the readers' own patriarchal terror into feminist rage. -- Naomi Larsson Piñeda * ArtReview *Poignant ... Set Fear On Fire is both its own powerful thing and part of something wider. -- Eilidh Akilade * The List *

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisYou've got TV, internet, phone, radio, movies, music, magazines and newspapers - and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Unless we live on a desert island, there is no escape from media communications of one sort or another. So how do we begin to understand today's all-embracing media culture? In this book, all the key issues and debates in media studies are covered in a lively and accessible style. You will learn about the main features of global media corporations, and approaches to the study of media effects, consumer power, celebrity, journalism and new media. From surveillance to simulation, genre to gender, political economy to the postmodern, the reader will be guided through a matrix of intellectual endeavour on all media matters. Whether you are a student, researcher, practitioner or just someone with a general interest, Media Studies will serve as a handy reference guide on your journey through this complex but fascinating subject.

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Book SynopsisAwkwardness has been one of the defining traits of the awkwardly unnamed first decade of our young century, dominating comedy on both the big and small screens. Could this trend point toward something deeper? In Awkwardness, Adam Kotsko answers that question with a resounding yes. Drawing on key insights of cultural theory, he argues that awkwardness is a structuring principle of human experience, something that the particular conditions of our time allow us to see with greater clarity than ever before. In an analysis that begins with the difference between the US and UK versions of Ricky Gervais's The Office, passes through the films of Judd Apatow, and culminates in the apotheosis of awkwardness, Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, Kotsko looks at the ways we cope with our awkwardness and the unexpected opportunities awkwardness opens up when we stop resisting it and learn to enjoy it.

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Book SynopsisPost-Cinematic Affect is about what it feels like to live in the affluent West in the early 21st century. Specifically, it explores the structure of feeling that is emerging today in tandem with new digital technologies, together with economic globalization and the financialization of more and more human activities. The 20th century was the age of film and television; these dominant media shaped and reflected our cultural sensibilities. In the 21st century, new digital media help to shape and reflect new forms of sensibility. Movies (moving image and sound works) continue to be made, but they have adopted new formal strategies, they are viewed under massively changed conditions, and they address their spectators in different ways than was the case in the 20th century. The book traces these changes, focusing on four recent moving-image works: Nick Hooker's music video for Grace Jones' song Corporate Cannibal; Olivier Assayas' movie Boarding Gate, starring Asia Argento; Richard Kelly's movie Southland Tales, featuring Justin Timberlake, Dwayne Johnson, and other pop culture celebrities; and Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor's Gamer.

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Book SynopsisIs today's changing media landscape in the Middle East empowering women? This is the first book to address the dynamics of media ecology and women's advancement in the contemporary Middle East. The book spans both the region and media forms, from Iran's women's press, via Maghrebi women filmmakers and Egyptian political films, Palestinian TV and Hezbollah's TV station, Al-Manar. It takes as its starting point the diverse experiencees and multi-layered identities of women and treats media institutions and practices as part of wider power relations in society. By analysing media production, consumption and texts, it reveals where and how gender boundaries have been erected or crossed.Trade ReviewAS SEEN ON AL-JAZEERA'S 'AL-KITAB' The Middle East in London Magazine: "admirable and timely study" "a telling commentary on the forces at work behind each successful media enterprise" The Middle East Magazine: "Rich and illuminating"

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Book SynopsisFilling The Void is a book about how the cultures and psychology of social media use fit within a broader landscape of life under capitalism. It argues that social media use is often a psychological response to the need for pleasure and comfort that results from the stresses of life under postmodern capitalism, rather than being a driver of new behaviours as newer technologies are often said to be. Both the explosive growth of social media and the corresponding reconfiguration of the web from an information-based platform into an entertainment-based one are far more easily explained in terms of the subjective psychological experience of their users as capitalist subjects seeking 'depressive hedonia, ' the book argues. Filling the Void also interrogates the role of social media networks, designed for private commercial gain, as part of a de-facto public sphere.Both the decreasing subjective importance of factual media and the ways in which the content of the timeline are quietly manipulated--often using labour in the developing world and secret algorithms--have potentially serious implications for the capacity of social media users to query or challenge the seeming reality offered by the established hegemonic order

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Book SynopsisSuper Mad at Everything All the Time explores the polarization of American politics through the collapse of the space between politics and culture, as bolstered by omnipresent media. It seeks to explain this perfect storm of money, technology, and partisanship that has created two entirely separate news spheres: a small, enclosed circle for the right wing and a sprawling expanse for everyone else. This leads to two sets of facts, two narratives, and two loudly divergent political sides with extraordinary anger all around. Based on extensive interviews with leading media figures and politicos, this book traces the development of the media machine, giving suggestions on how to restore our national dialogue while defending our right to disagree agreeably. Table of Contents1. Two Truths.- 2. Upping the Antis: 50 Years of Vilifying Intellectuals, the Government, & the Media.- 3. Money + Tech = Problems: Technological Development, Financial Imperatives, and The Ensuing Media Landscape.- 4. Us vs. Them: Political Polarization and the Politicization of Everything.- 5. Negative Objectives: The Right Wing Media Circle and Everyone Else.- 6. Consequential, Problematic and Perhaps Resolvable

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Book SynopsisThe Semiotics of Love brings together work on early symbolism, literary practices, and contemporary communication on the theme of romance and the idea of love to forge an understanding of the semiotic-cultural side of romance. Moving beyond psychological and neuroscientific scholarly analyses of love, Marcel Danesi works to interrogate the cultural constructions of love across societies. This book analyzes romantic love from the general perspective of semiotics—that is, from its more generic interpretive angle, rather than its more technical one. The specific analytical lens used is based on the notion that we convert our feeling structures into sign structures (words, symbols) and sign-based constructions (texts, rituals, etc.), which then allow us to reflect upon something cognitively, rather than just experience it physically and emotionally.Table of Contents1. XOXO: The Religious Origins of Romantic Symbols2. The Language of Love3. Love and Sex: Are the Two Connected?4. Writing Love: The Literature of Romance5. Love in Images6. Love Rituals7. Love and Marriage: Do They Go Together Lie a Horse and Carriage?

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Book SynopsisThis book introduces a new form of documentary film: the Geo-Doc, designed to maximize the influential power of the documentary film as an agent of social change. By combining the proven methods and approaches as evidenced through historical, theoretical, digital, and ecocritical investigations with the unique affordances of Geographic Information System technology, a dynamic new documentary form emerges, one tested in the field with the United Nations. This book begins with an overview of the history of the documentary film with attention given to how it evolved as an instrument of social change. It examines theories surrounding mobilizing the documentary film as a communication tool between filmmakers and policymakers. Ecocinema and its semiotic storytelling techniques are also explored for their unique approaches in audience engagement. The proven methods identified throughout the book are combined with the spatial and temporal affordances provided by GIS technology to create the Geo-Doc, a new tool for the activist documentarian.Table of Contents1. Introduction.- 2. Farming the Tools of Persuasion.-3. Methods and Approaches to Documentary Influence.- 4. Ecocinema and Semiotic Storytelling.- 5. The Documentary’s Digital Turn.- 6. Visible Volume: The Multilinear and Database Documentary.- 7. The Geo-Doc: A Locative Approach to Remediating the Genre.- 8. Conclusion.

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Book SynopsisThis book examines the reasons behind the declining fortunes of public access channels. Public access, which provided perhaps the boldest experiment in popular media democracy, is in steep decline. While some have argued it is technologically outmoded, Caterino argues that the real reason lies with the rise of a neo-liberal media regime. This regime creates a climate in which we can understand these changes. This book considers the role of neo-liberalism in transforming notions of public obligations and regulation of media that have impacted non-profit media, specifically public access. Neo-liberalism has tried to eliminate public forums and public discourse and weakens institutions of civil society. Though social media is often championed as an arena of communicative freedom, Caterino argues that neo-liberalism has created a colonized social media environment that severely limits popular democracy. Table of Contents1. Public Access in Decline.- 2. The Frankfurt School and its Aftermath.- 3. Public Interest Standards from Radio to Public Television.- 4. The Emergence of Public Access Television.- 5. Neo-liberalism the Public Sphere and the Decline of Public Obligation.- 6. Access Under Attack: Some Examples.- 7. Looking Through the Wrong End of the Telescope: Internet Democracy vs Public Access.- 8. A Future for Public Access?.

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Book SynopsisThis Open Access book tracks the latest trends in the theory, research, and practice of entertainment-education, the field of communication that incorporates social change messaging into entertaining media. Sometimes called edutainment, social impact television, narrative persuasion, or cultural strategy, this approach to social and behavior change communication offers new opportunities including transmedia and digital formats. However, making media can be a chaotic process. The realities of working in the field and the rigid structures of scholarly evaluation often act as barriers to honest accounts of entertainment-education practice. In this collection of essays, experienced practitioners offer unique insight into how entertainment-education works and present a balanced view of its potential pitfalls. This book gives readers an opportunity to learn from the successes and mistakes of the experts, taking a behind-the-scenes look at the business of making entertainment-education media.Table of ContentsPart I.From Then to Now: Historical Perspectives 1.Introduction: Entertainment-Education Behind the Scenes 2.Miguel Sabido’s Entertainment-Education 3.The Impact of Social Change Communication: Lessons Learned from Decades of Media Outreach 4.Entertainment-Education as Social Justice Activism in the United States: Narrative Strategy in the Participatory Media Era 5.A Strange Kind of Marriage: The Challenging Journey of Entertainment-Education Collaboration Part II .From Theory to Practice 6.Transportation into Narrative Worlds 7.The Emotional Flow Hypothesis in Entertainment-Education Narratives: Theory, Empirical Evidence, and Open Questions 8.Music and Culture in Entertainment-Education 9.Strengthening Integration of Communication Theory into Entertainment-Education Practice: Reflections from the La Peor Novela Case Study Part III.From Research to Impact 10.Using Audience Research to Understand and Refine a Radio Drama in Myanmar Tackling Social Cohesion 11.Social Norms Theory and Measurement in Entertainment-Education: Insights from Case Studies in Four Countries 12.In Search of Entertainment-Education’s Effects on Attitudes and Behaviors 13.When Life Gives You Lemons: What to Do When Something Goes Wrong in Your Carefully Planned Research and How to Avoid Disasters in the First Place 14.Mind the Gap! Confronting the Challenges of Translational Communication Research in Entertainment-Education Part IV .From Concept to Implementation 15.Entertainment-Education, American Style: Informing and Studying Hollywood’s Portrayals of Social Issues 16.Challenging the Forcefield: Crafting Entertainment-Education Transmedia Campaigns 17.Youth and Entertainment-Education 18.How to Make a Living Legend: Bibliobandido as Literacy Movement Building 19.When Your Audience Is Your Channel: Facebook for Behavior Change 20.Last Mile Media: A How-To Guide 21.Epilogue: The Next Reel for Entertainment-Education

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Book SynopsisThis open access book provides researchers and professionals with a foundational understanding of online privacy as well as insight into the socio-technical privacy issues that are most pertinent to modern information systems, covering several modern topics (e.g., privacy in social media, IoT) and underexplored areas (e.g., privacy accessibility, privacy for vulnerable populations, cross-cultural privacy). The book is structured in four parts, which follow after an introduction to privacy on both a technical and social level: Privacy Theory and Methods covers a range of theoretical lenses through which one can view the concept of privacy. The chapters in this part relate to modern privacy phenomena, thus emphasizing its relevance to our digital, networked lives. Next, Domains covers a number of areas in which privacy concerns and implications are particularly salient, including among others social media, healthcare, smart cities, wearable IT, and trackers. The Audiences section then highlights audiences that have traditionally been ignored when creating privacy-preserving experiences: people from other (non-Western) cultures, people with accessibility needs, adolescents, and people who are underrepresented in terms of their race, class, gender or sexual identity, religion or some combination. Finally, the chapters in Moving Forward outline approaches to privacy that move beyond one-size-fits-all solutions, explore ethical considerations, and describe the regulatory landscape that governs privacy through laws and policies. Perhaps even more so than the other chapters in this book, these chapters are forward-looking by using current personalized, ethical and legal approaches as a starting point for re-conceptualizations of privacy to serve the modern technological landscape. The book’s primary goal is to inform IT students, researchers, and professionals about both the fundamentals of online privacy and the issues that are most pertinent to modern information systems. Lecturers or teachers can assign (parts of) the book for a “professional issues” course. IT professionals may select chapters covering domains and audiences relevant to their field of work, as well as the Moving Forward chapters that cover ethical and legal aspects. Academics who are interested in studying privacy or privacy-related topics will find a broad introduction in both technical and social aspects.Table of Contents1. Introduction and Overview.- Part I: Privacy Theory and Methods.- 2. Privacy Theories and Frameworks.- 3. Revisiting APCO.- 4. Privacy and Behavioral Economics.- 5. The Development of Privacy Norms.- 6. Privacy Beyond the Individual Level.- Part II: Domains.- 7. Social Media and Privacy.- 8. Privacy-Enhancing Technologies.- 9. Tracking and Personalization.- 10. Healthcare Privacy.- 11. Privacy and the Internet of Things.- Part III: Audiences.- 12. Cross-Cultural Privacy Differences.- 13. Accessible Privacy.- 14. Privacy in Adolescence.- 15. Privacy and Vulnerable Populations.- Part IV: Moving Forward.- 16. User-Tailored Privacy.- 17. The Ethics of Privacy in Research and Design: Principles, Practices, and Potential.- 18. EU GDPR: Toward a Regulatory Initiative for Deploying a Private Digital Era.- 19. Reflections: Bringing Privacy to Practice.

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Book SynopsisThis highly-readable book addresses how to teach effective communication in science. The first part of the book provides accessible context and theory about communicating science well, and is written by experts. The second part focuses on the practice of teaching communication in science, with ‘nuts and bolts’ lesson plans direct from the pens of practitioners. The book includes over 50 practice chapters, each focusing on one or more short teaching activities to target a specific aspect of communication, such as writing, speaking and listening. Implementing the activities is made easy with class run sheets, tips and tricks for instructors, signposts to related exercises and theory chapters, and further resources. Theory chapters help build instructor confidence and knowledge on the topic of communicating science. The teaching exercises can be used with science students at all levels of education in any discipline and curriculum – the only limitation is a wish to learn to communicate better! Targeted at science faculty members, this book aims to improve and enrich communication teaching within the science curriculum, so that science graduates can communicate better as professionals in their discipline and future workplace.Table of Contents

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Book SynopsisThis book advances social scientific interest in a field long dominated by the humanities: stories, and storytelling. Stories are a whole lot more than entertainment; oral narratives, novels, films and immersive video games all form part of the sociocultural discourses which we are enmeshed in, and use to co-construct our beliefs about the world around us. Young children use them to learn about the world beyond their immediate sensory experience and, even in an era of interactive electronic media, the bedtime story remains a cherished part of most children’s daily routine. Storytelling is thus the first abstract formal learning method we encounter as human beings. It is also probably transcultural; perhaps even an immanent part of the human condition. Narratives are, at heart, sequences of events and presuppose and reinforce particular cause-and-effect relationships. Inevitably, they also construct unconscious biases, prejudices, and discriminatory attitudes. Storying (a term we use in this book to encompass stories, storytellers and storytelling) is complex, and this book seeks to make sense of it. Table of Contents1: Introduction.- 2: Narratives in (in)authenticity: The Early Career Academic.- 3: Women, bullying and the construction industry: A story of veiled gender dynamics.-4: Clinical advance through ethnographic storytelling: Towards an enacted organizational role for the hospital visitor.- 5: Two-and-One: Discovering my story in participants' pregnancy narratives.- 6: Exploring polyvocal stories of space, place, movement and migration.- 7: Whose story is it anyway? Hashtag campaigns and digital abortion storytelling.- 8: Storytime in the Craft Beer Bar: narratives, gobbets and segments.- 9: Arbitrage and Autopoiesis in Police Sergeants’ Stories: more than “canteen culture”.- 10: Restorying Trauma: Child Sexual Abuse.- 11: Personal and Ethnic Bildungen: Cross-cultural Storytelling in Singaporean-British Writer PP Wong’s The Life of a Banana.- 12: Telling stories, building bridges, and constructing Milton Keynes: Storytelling practice and research working together.- 13: The personal statement: a tool for developing the pedagogical potential of storytelling in business management education?.

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Book SynopsisInterdisciplinary studies that combine the current of materialist thinking with discussions of ecologies and environmentalization. Placed at the intersection of art, media, and cultural studies as well as economic theory, Liquidity, Flows, Circulation investigates the cultural logic of environmentalization. As flows, circulations, and liquidity resurface in all aspects of recent culture and contemporary art, this volume investigates the hypothesis of a genuine cultural logic of environmentalization through these three concepts. It thus brings together two areas of research that have been largely separate. On the one hand, this volume takes up discussions about ecologies with and without nature and environmentalization as a contemporary form of power and capital. On the other hand, it takes its cue from Fredric Jameson’s notion that each stage of capitalism is accompanied by a genuine cultural logic. The volume introduces this current of materialist thinking into the ongoing discussions of ecologies and environmentalization. By analyzing contemporary art, architecture, theater, films, and literature, the fifteen contributions by scholars and artists explore different fields where liquid forms, semantics flow, or processes of circulation emerge as a contemporary cultural logic.

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Book SynopsisThis undergraduate textbook adopts the perspective of organizations - not individuals - and clarifies the impact of social media on their different departments or disciplines, while also exploring how organizations use social media to create business value. To do so, the book pursues a uniquely multi-disciplinary approach, embracing IT, marketing, HR and many other fields. Readers will benefit from a comprehensive selection of current topics, including: tools, tactics and strategies for social media, internal and external communication, viral marketing campaigns, social CRM, employer branding, e-recruiting, search engine optimization, social mining, sentiment analysis, crowdfunding, and legal and ethical issues.

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Book SynopsisBeing a successful manager or entrepreneur in the media and digital sector requires creativity, innovation, and performance. It also requires an understanding of the principles and tools of management. Aimed at the college market, this book is a short, foundational volume on media management. It summarizes the major dimensions of a business school curriculum and applies them to the entire media, media-tech, and digital sector. Its chapters cover—in a jargonless, non-technical way—the major functions of management. First, creating a media product: the financing of projects, and the management of technology, HR, production operations, intellectual assets, and government relations. Second, harvesting the product created: market research, marketing, pricing, and distribution. And third, the control loop: media accounting and strategy planning. In the process, this book becomes an indispensable resource for those aiming for a career in the media and digital field, both in startups and established organizations. This book is designed to help those aiming to join the media and digital sector to become creative managers and managerial creatives. It aims to make them more knowledgeable, less blinded by hype, more effective, and more responsible.Trade Review Table of Contents1. Introduction2. The Information Environment3. Production Management in Media and Information4. Technology Management in Media and Information Firms5. Human Resource Management for Media and Information Firms6. Financing Media, Information, and Communication7. Intellectual Asset Management8. Managing Law and Regulation9. Demand and Market Research for Media and Information Products10. Marketing of Media and Information11. Pricing of Media and Information12. Distribution of Media and Information13. Accounting in Media and Information Firms14. Strategy Planning in Media and Information Firms15. Concluding Observations

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