Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Media Studies

Wayne Munson examines the talkshow as a cultural form whose curious productivity has become vital to America's image economy. As the very name suggests, the talkshow is both interpersonal exchange and mediated spectacle. Its range of topics defies classification: from the sensational and bizarre, to the conventional and the advisory, to politics and world affairs. Munson grapples with the sense and nonsense of the talkshow, particularly its audience participation and its construction of knowledge.

This hybrid genre includes the news/talk "magazine," celebrity chat, sports talk,...

-The early history of New York is obscured in myth, - observed the pseudonymous author of -The Story of Manhattankind- in the first issue of The New Yorker (21 February 1925), -and to separate the purely historical from the purely hysterical is no easy task.-

The same must be said of the magazine itself. The purely historical remained hidden until The New Yorker's archives were opened to scholars in the mid-nineties, although the hysterical--pure and otherwise--dominates the anecdotes in memoirs of some of the magazine's original staff members.

Late in 1924 Harold Ross...

How midcentury periodicals that fostered an indelible middle-class ideal for American women also confronted the happy homemaker stereotype

Read by millions of women each month, such mainstream periodicals as Ladies' Home Journal and McCall's delivered powerful messages about women's roles and behavior. In 1963 Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique accused the genre of helping to create what Friedan termed -the problem that has no name- -- that is, presenting women as stereotypical happy homemakers with limited interests and abilities.

But this ideal of contented,...

The Beatles: Image and the Media charts the transformation of the Beatles from teen idols to leaders of the youth movement and powerful cultural agents. Drawing upon American mainstream print media, broadcasts, albums, films, and videos, the study covers the band's career in the United States. Michael R. Frontani explores how the Beatles' media image evolved and how this transformation related to cultural and historical events.

Upon their arrival in the U.S., the Beatles wore sharply tailored suits and cast themselves as adorable, accessible teen heartthrobs. By the end of the...

The symptoms of the crisis of the U.S. media are well-knowna decline in hard news, the growth of info-tainment and advertorials, staff cuts and concentration of ownership, increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. McChesney's new book, The Problem of the Media, gets to the roots of this crisis, explains it, and points a way forward for the growing media reform movement.

Moving consistently from critique to action, the book explores the political economy of the media, illuminating its major flashpoints and controversies by locating them in the political economy...

The symptoms of the crisis of the U.S. media are well-knowna decline in hard news, the growth of info-tainment and advertorials, staff cuts and concentration of ownership, increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. McChesney's new book, The Problem of the Media, gets to the roots of this crisis, explains it, and points a way forward for the growing media reform movement.

Moving consistently from critique to action, the book explores the political economy of the media, illuminating its major flashpoints and controversies by locating them in the political economy...