Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Media Studies

"This is an important book for all students of literature and history." American Studies International

..". thoughtful and provocative.... the essays... grant complexity and contradiction to mass culture, while interrogating its objects from positions that explicitly or implicitly derive from the left and from feminism." The Independent

These innovative and politically engaged essays reflect the paradox inherent in taking a critical approach to mass culture.

The contributors, in many cases pioneers in their particular area of inquiry, include: Tania Modleski, Raymond...

"This intellectually sexy collection features some of the best and brightest academic media analysts from Britain and the United States." --Voice Literary Supplement

"The essays in this volume rigorously engage the challenges of postmodern cultural criticism and theory, the central contemporary debate in the humanities." --Communication Abstracts

"Mellencamp has produced a challenging and an invigorating text.... It should provide much inspiration." --Journal of Communication

"This is a particularly good collection of thirteen papers with, overall, much more theoretically...

"The author s capacity to grasp and interpret these world media] events is astounding, and her ability to provide insights into a world where unbounded information is circling the earth with the speed of light is startling." Choice

..". a wide-ranging, quirky and dextrous mix of description, theory and analysis, that documents the perils of the global telecommunications network... " Times Literary Supplement

..". this is a stimulating, even moving, book, dense with ideas and with many quotable lines." The New Statesman

"Wark is one of the most original and interesting...

..". an important collective work for communication practitioners, students, and scholars who want to have a deeper understanding of film making in Asia and of the promotion of nationalism through communication." --Media Asia

..". a momentous contribution to the study of colonialism and postcoloniality in Asia... " --The Journal of Asian Studies

"This is an excellent model for studies in how the popular, art, and experimental cinemas function in the consideration of nationhood as a configuration of symbols.... This anthology provides an interesting discussion by offering a...

Arguing that "first encounters" have already applied traditional theoretical and conceptual frameworks to digital media, the contributors to this book call for "second encounters," or a revisiting. Digital media are not only objects of analysis but also instruments for the development of innovative perspectives on both media and culture. Drawing on insights from literary theory, semiotics, philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, media studies, sociology, and education, the contributors construct new positions from which to observe digital media in fresh and meaningful ways. Throughout they explore...

The essays in Rethinking Media Change center on a variety of media forms at moments of disruption and cultural transformation. The editors' introduction sketches an aesthetics of media transition -- patterns of development and social dispersion that operate across eras, media forms, and cultures. The book includes case studies of such earlier media as the book, the phonograph, early cinema, and television. It also examines contemporary digital forms, exploring their promise and strangeness. A final section probes aspects of visual culture in such environments as the evolving museum, movie...

In the Year of Simpson, the country was caught in the throes of the biggest story ever. No other single news event in our history could match the sheer scope and intensity of coverage given to the O. J. Simpson murder case. But the media did not just report the Simpson case, they were instrumental in creating it--a spectacle of such stupendous proportions that it hijacked American culture. In this critical expos DEGREESD'e of American media, Thaler presents a riveting narrative about the men and women who gave us the story of the century. It is a sprawling tale of the media grappling with...

In the Year of Simpson, the country was caught in the throes of the biggest story ever. No other single news event in our history could match the sheer scope and intensity of coverage given to the O. J. Simpson murder case. But the media did not just report the Simpson case, they were instrumental in creating it--a spectacle of such stupendous proportions that it hijacked American culture. In this critical expos DEGREESD'e of American media, Thaler presents a riveting narrative about the men and women who gave us the story of the century. It is a sprawling tale of the media grappling with...

As one of our country's major social problems, homelessness is often in the news. The media tend to portray the homeless as drunk, stoned, crazy, or sick individuals--a portrayal that is only partly accurate and represents an obstacle to our understanding of the wider social implications of this complex issue. This edited collection examines the various ways--both verbal and visual--in which the homeless have been portrayed by the media from the 1980s to the present day. The contributors apply different frameworks, ranging from phenomenology to culture studies, to analyze the...

Addressing the controversial issues of the blurring boundaries between news and entertainment and the movement toward sensationalism in broadcast journalism, this study examines these distinctions: how boundaries are constructed and by whom; how they are enforced or broken and why. Rather than reflecting essential attributes by which news can be distinguished from other kinds of communication, boundary setting is viewed as a social construction, determined and changed by journalists wishing to assert their jurisdiction and authority and the prestige of the profession. Four instances of...

Television is a unique medium in that both its dramas and its comedies have the ability to tell their stories over real time, with characters developing over years rather than just the two hours allowed in a movie or the few hundred pages of a book. Despite this, very few authors have attempted to look at television from this vantage point. Prime-Time Television provides an essential resource for anyone interested in the history of television. The focus here is on programming: the shows, the producers, the genres, the trends, and the influences. Everyone interested in the questions...

This work is the fifth volume in the series, The History of American Journalism. By 1906, the nation included 45 states connected by railroads, steamships, wagon trails, the postal system, the telegraph, and the press. The continuing trends of migration and immigration into the cities supported the publication of more newspapers than at any time in the history of the country. From coast to coast, newsgathering agencies knit thousands of local newspapers into the fabric of the nation and larger metropolitan papers routinely considered the relevancy of distant news.

Since September 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many television viewers in the United States have become familiar with Al Jazeera as offering an alternative take on events from that presented by mainstream U.S. media, as well as disseminating anti-American invective. Westerners have tended toward simplistic views of Arab newspapers, radio, and television, assuming that they are all under government control and that freedom of press is non-existent. William A. Rugh, a long time observer of the Arab mass media, offers a more nuanced picture of the Arab press as it relates to...

The history of Latin American journalism is ultimately the story of a people who have been silenced over the centuries, primarily Native Americans, women, peasants, and the urban poor. This book seeks to correct the record propounded by most English-language surveys of Latin American journalism, which tend to neglect pre-Columbian forms of reporting, the ways in which technology has been used as a tool of colonization, and the Latin American conceptual foundations of a free press.

Challenging the conventional notion of a free marketplace of ideas in a region plagued with serious...

The history of Latin American journalism is ultimately the story of a people who have been silenced over the centuries, primarily Native Americans, women, peasants, and the urban poor. This book seeks to correct the record propounded by most English-language surveys of Latin American journalism, which tend to neglect pre-Columbian forms of reporting, the ways in which technology has been used as a tool of colonization, and the Latin American conceptual foundations of a free press.

Challenging the conventional notion of a free marketplace of ideas in a region plagued with...

Polls show that a sizeable portion of the American population believes that troops found WMD in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein was somehow responsible for the attacks of September 11. Even after the 9/11 Commission Report and numerous other reports have concluded that our intelligence was flawed, people in the freest nation on earth continue to be misinformed about something that could not be more vital to understand--the reasons for sending troops into harm's way. This insightful analysis argues that the media should have done a better job of performing its traditional role of skeptic and...

In this timely examination of television and American identity, Cummins and Gordon take readers on an informed walk through the changes that TV has already wrought-and those still likely to confront us.

Commercial television in America is less than 60 years old, yet it has had an enormous impact on what we like, what we do, what we know, and how we think. A family transplanted from the 1940s to the present day would certainly be stunned by a fundamentally different world: instead of gathering in the living room for a shared evening of radio, they would be scattered around the house...

The Axman of New Orleans specialized in killing grocers of Italian descent in the 1910s, apparently to promote jazz music. Dorothea Puente was a little old landlady who murdered her tenants, but kept cashing their government checks. The Manson Family terrorized California in the 1960s, as did the Hillside Stranglers a decade later. Twelve serial murder cases, occurring in eight decades between the 1890s and 1990s, had one thing in common: significant presence of the mass media. This book examines these specific cases of serial murder, and the way the media became involved in the...