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Media and culture

Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World

In this classic work, now updated, the author of Culture and Imperialism reveals the hidden agendas and distortions of fact that underlie even the most "objective" coverage of the Islamic world.

From the Iranian hostage crisis through the Gulf War and the bombing of the World Trade Center, the American news media have portrayed "Islam" as a monolithic entity, synonymous with terrorism and religious hysteria. At the same time, Islamic countries use "Islam" to justify unrepresentative and often repressive regimes. Combining political commentary with literary criticism, Covering Islam continues Edward Said's lifelong investigation of the ways in which language not only describes but also defines political reality.

Why Are We The Good Guys?: Reclaiming Your Mind From The Delusions Of Propaganda

David Cromwell

One of the unspoken assumptions of the Western world is that we are great defenders of human rights,
a free press and the benefits of market economics. Mistakes might be made along the way, perhaps even
tragic errors of judgement such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But the prevailing view is that the West is
essentially a force for good in the wider world. Why Are We The Good Guys? is a provocative challenge
of this false ideology. David Cromwell digs beneath standard accounts of crucial issues such as foreign
policy, climate change and the constant struggle between state-corporate power and genuine democracy.
The powerful evidence-based analysis of current affairs is leavened by some of the formative experiences
that led the author to question the basic myth of Western benevolence: from schoolroom
experiments in democracy, exposure to radical ideas at home, and a mercy mission while at sea;
to an unexpected encounter with former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, the struggles to publish
hard-hitting journalism, and the founding of Media Lens in 2001.

What Liberal Media?: The Truth about Bias and the News

Eric Alterman

Widely acclaimed and hotly contested, veteran journalist Eric Alterman's ambitious investigation into the true nature of the U.S. news media touched a nerve and sparked debate across the country. As the question of whose interests the media protects-and how-continues to raise hackles, Alterman's sharp, utterly convincing assessment cuts through the cloud of inflammatory rhetoric, settling the question of liberal bias in the news once and for all. Eye-opening, witty, and thoroughly and solidly researched, What Liberal Media? is required reading for media watchers, and anyone concerned about the potentially dangerous consequences for the future of democracy in America.

Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics

Daniel C. Hallin

Building on a survey of media institutions in eighteen West European and North American democracies, Hallin and Mancini identify the principal dimensions of variation in media systems and the political variables which have shaped their evolution. They go on to identify three major models of media system development (the Polarized Pluralist, Democratic Corporatist and Liberal models) to explain why the media have played a different role in politics in each of these systems, and to explore the forces of change that are currently transforming them. It provides a key theoretical statement about the relation between media and political systems, a key statement about the methodology of comparative analysis in political communication and a clear overview of the variety of media institutions that have developed in the West, understood within their political and historical context.

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Edward S. Herman

An intellectual dissection of the modern media to show how an underlying economics of publishing warps the news.

Keywords for Media Studies

Book 5

Introduces key terms, research traditions, debates, and their histories, and offers a sense of the new frontiers and questions emerging in the field of media studies

Keywords for Media Studies introduces and aims to advance the field of critical media studies by tracing, defining, and problematizing its established and emergent terminology. The book historicizes thinking about media and society, whether that means noting a long history of “new media,” or tracing how understandings of media “power” vary across time periods and knowledge formations.

Bringing together an impressive group of established scholars from television studies, film studies, sound studies, games studies, and more, each of the 65 essays in the volume focuses on a critical concept, from “fan” to “industry,” and “celebrity” to “surveillance.” Keywords for Media Studies is an essential tool that introduces key terms, research traditions, debates, and their histories, and offers a sense of the new frontiers and questions emerging in the field of media studies.

Visit keywords.nyupress.org for online essays, teaching resources, and more.

Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies

Noam Chomsky

In his national bestselling 1988 CBC Massey Lectures, Noam Chomsky inquires into the nature of the media in a political system where the population cannot be disciplined by force and thus must be subjected to more subtle forms of ideological control. Specific cases are illustrated in detail, using the U.S. media primarily but also media in other societies.

Chomsky considers how the media might be democratized (as part of the general problem of developing more democratic institutions) in order to offer citizens broader and more meaningful participation in social and political life.

The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media

Brooke Gladstone

"Mind-opening, thought-provoking and incredibly timely… An absolutely spectacular read."—Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing A million listeners trust NPR's Brooke Gladstone to guide them through the complexities of the modern media. Bursting onto the page in vivid comics by acclaimed artist Josh Neufeld, this brilliant radio personality guides us through two millennia of media history, debunking the notion that "The Media" is an external force beyond our control and equipping us to be savvy consumers and shapers of the news. Owing to the graphic format, this book is readable only on larger screens and devices.

South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias

Brian C. Anderson

For the better part of 30 years, liberal bias has dominated mainstream media. But author and political journalist Brian Anderson reveals in his new book that the era of liberal dominance is going the way of the dodo bird.

Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity

Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig, “the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era” (The New Yorker), masterfully argues that never before in human history has the power to control creative progress been so concentrated in the hands of the powerful few, the so-called Big Media. Never before have the cultural powers- that-be been able to exert such control over what we can and can’t do with the culture around us. Our society defends free markets and free speech; why then does it permit such top-down control? To lose our long tradition of free culture, Lawrence Lessig shows us, is to lose our freedom to create, our freedom to build, and, ultimately, our freedom to imagine.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Neil Postman

What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment? As our world begins to look more and more like Orwell's 1984, Neil's Postman's essential guide to the modern media is more relevant than ever.

"It's unlikely that Trump has ever read Amusing Ourselves to Death, but his ascent would not have surprised Postman.” -CNN

Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals.

“A brilliant, powerful, and important book. This is an indictment that Postman has laid down and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one.” –Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

Hidden Agendas

John Pilger

In this powerful book, journalist and film maker John Pilger strips away the layers of deception, dissembling language and omission that prevent us from understanding how the world really works.

From the invisible corners of Tony Blair's Britain to Burma, Vietnam, Australia, South Africa and the illusions of the 'media age', power, he argues, has its own agenda. Unchallenged, it operates to protect its interests with a cynical disregard for people - shaping, and often devastating, millions of lives.

By unravelling the hidden histories of contemporary events, Pilger allows us to read between the lines. He also celebrates the eloquent defiance and courage of those who resist oppression and give us hope for the future. Tenaciously researched and written with passion and wit, Hidden Agendas will change the way you see the world.

Media and Power

James Curran

Media and Power addresses three key questions about the relationship between media and society.
*How much power do the media have?
*Who really controls the media?
*What is the relationship between media and power in society?

In this major new book, James Curran reviews the different answers which have been given, before advancing original interpretations in a series of ground-breaking essays.
This book also provides a guided tour of the major debates in media studies. What part did the media play in the making of modern society? How did 'new media' change society in the past? Will radical media research recover from its mid-life crisis? Is public service television the dying product of the nation in an age of globalization? Media and Power provides both a clear introduction to media research and an innovative analysis of media power.

Critical Media Studies: An Introduction, Edition 2

Brian L. Ott

Fully revised to reflect today’s media environment, this new edition of Critical Media Studies offers students a comprehensive introduction to the field and demonstrates how to think critically about the power and influence of media in our daily lives. Material new to this edition includes a chapter on sociological analysis and reveals new ways audiences use media in their everyday lives to manage social roles, relationships, and contexts. Readers will also appreciate the extensive updating of previously discussed examples to reflect contemporary industry standards, textual forms, and audience behaviors and the inclusion of more international material to reflect contemporary media’s global reach.

Continuing its well-received writing style that is both engaging and accessible, the book’s twelve perspectives provide readers with a diverse array of critical approaches to media studies, including original approaches such as erotic, sociological, and ecological analysis. Combining the best of well-tested theory with cutting-edge scholarship, this new edition of Critical Media Studies, offers invaluable insights into our current understanding of the nature and consequences of media in today’s world.

Updated and enhanced online resources for instructors – including PowerPoint slides, test bank, study guides, and sample assignments – can be found at www.wiley.com/go/criticalmediastudies.

The Media Studies Book: A Guide for Teachers

David Lusted

Introducing media criticism as well as teaching about the media, in inter-disciplinary and 'across the curriculum' teaching, this is the first critical reference book on the important curriculum initiatives taking place in media education. The core of the book is a collection of essays on key concepts from media studies, including 'language', 'narrative', 'institution', 'audience', 'representation', and 'the production process'. Written by teachers for teachers, these essays organise ideas through classroom activities, with a full listing of teaching materials , resources, agencies, and publications in media education. Contributors: Tim Blanchard, Gill Branston, David Buckingham, Jenny Grahame, Karen Manzi and Allan Rowe, Ben Moore, Gillian Swanson, Adrian Tilley, and Tana Wollen.

Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It

Thomas de Zengotita

In this utterly original look at our modern "culture of performance," de Zengotita shows how media are creating self-reflective environments, custom made for each of us. From Princess Diana's funeral to the prospect of mass terror, from oral sex in the Oval Office to cowboy politics in distant lands, from high school cliques to marital therapy, from blogs to reality TV to the Weather Channel, Mediated takes us on an original and astonishing tour of every department of our media-saturated society. The implications are personal and far-reaching at the same time.
Thomas de Zengotita is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine and holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University. He teaches at the Dalton School and at the Draper Graduate Program at New York University.
"Reading Thomas de Zengotita's Mediated is like spending time with a wild, wired friend-the kind who keeps you up late and lures you outside of your comfort zone with a speed rap full of brilliant notions."-O magazine
"A fine roar of a lecture about how the American mind is shaped by (too much) media...."-Washington Post
"Deceptively colloquial, intellectually dense...This provocative, extreme and compelling work is a must-read for philosophers of every stripe."-Publishers Weekly

Introducing Media Studies: A Graphic Guide

Ziauddin Sardar

The media is ubiquitous. Every day we watch hours of TV, listen to the radio, read newspapers and magazines, go to the cinema, sit in front of videos or surf the Web. These information commodities exercise enormous influence and power over all of us. Introducing Media Studies explores the complex relationship between the media, ideology, knowledge and power. It provides a scintillating tour of media history and presents a coherent view of the media industry, media theory and methods in media research. It explains how 'the audience' is constructed and how it in turn interprets the content and meaning of media representation. We also learn how to analyse film, deconstruct advertising and appreciate how TV and the press shape public opinion. The media is a condition of our existence and, in an unprecedented way, the pervading shape of our history. No one can afford to neglect a critical understanding of its omnipresence. Here is an entertaining and informative book, accessible to students and general readers concerned with the increasing power, influence and proliferation of the media.

Media Life

Mark Deuze

Research consistently shows how through the years more of our time gets spent using media, how multitasking our media has become a regular feature of everyday life, and that consuming media for most people increasingly takes place alongside producing media.

Media Life is a primer on how we may think of our lives as lived in rather than with media. The book uses the way media function today as a prism to understand key issues in contemporary society, where reality is open source, identities are - like websites - always under construction, and where private life is lived in public forever more.

Ultimately, media are to us as water is to fish. The question is: how can we live a good life in media like fish in water? Media Life offers a compass for the way ahead.

Re-Inventing the Media

Graeme Turner

Re-Inventing the Media
provides a highly original re-thinking of media studies for the contemporary post-broadcast, post-analogue, and post-mass media era.

While media and cultural studies has made much of the changes to the media landscape that have come from digital technologies, these constitute only part of the transformations that have taken place in what amounts of a reinvention of the media over the last two decades.

Graeme Turner takes on the task of re-thinking how media studies approaches the whole of the contemporary media-scape by focusing on three large, cross-platform, and transnational themes: the decline of the mass media paradigm, the ongoing restructuring of the relations between the media and the state, and the structural and social consequences of celebrity culture.

By addressing the fact that the reinvention of the media is not simply a matter of globalising markets or the take-up of technological change, Turner is able to explore the more fundamental movements and widespread trends that have significantly influenced the character of what the contemporary media have become, how it is structured, and how it is used.

Re-Inventing the Media
is a must-read for both students and scholars of media, culture and communication studies.

The Media and Social Theory

David Hesmondhalgh

Media studies needs richer and livelier intellectual resources. This book brings together major and emerging international media analysts to consider key processes of media change, using a number of critical perspectives. Case studies range from reality television to professional journalism, from blogging to control of copyright, from social networking sites to indigenous media, in Europe, North America, Asia and elsewhere. Among the theoretical approaches and issues addressed are:

critical realism
post-structuralist approaches to media and culture
Pierre Bourdieu and field theory
public sphere theory – including post-Habermasian versions
actor network theory
Marxist and post-Marxist theories, including contemporary critical theory
theories of democracy, antagonism and difference.

This volume is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers of cultural studies, media studies and social theory.

Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media

John B. Thompson

This wide-ranging and innovative book develops an original theory of the media and their impact on the modern world, from the emergence of printing to the most recent developments in the media industries.

The Media and the Military

P. Young

The first comprehensive study of the contentious issue of the public's right to know in time of war or limited conflict. The book traces the uneasy relations between the military and a generally unprepared and gullible media, from the Crimea to the present day. It shows how the advent of nuclear warfare has outlawed the nationalistic wars of survival of the past, and freed the citizen from his age-old obligations in time of war, able to make up his or her own mind on the merits of the situation. It is here that the battle lies, in the struggle for public opinion as a necessary precursor to war. This book details how the military discovered the secret of media and public manipulation in the Falklands, tested it in Grenada, and refined it in Panama before deploying it in all its glory during the Gulf. This book is essential reading for every soldier and journalist, or any student of military history as it points the way to the future.

Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks

Meenakshi Gigi Durham

Bringing together a range of core texts into one volume, this acclaimed anthology offers the definitive resource in culture, media, and communication.

A fully revised new edition of the bestselling anthology in this dynamic and multidisciplinary field
New contributions include essays from Althusser through to Henry Jenkins, and a completely new section on Globalization and Social Movements
Retains important emphasis on the giant thinkers and “makers” of the field: Gramsci on hegemony; Althusser on ideology; Horkheimer and Adorno on the culture industry; Raymond Williams on Marxist cultural theory; Habermas on the public sphere; McLuhan on media; Chomsky on propaganda; hooks and Mulvey on the subjects of visual pleasure and oppositional gazes
Features a substantial critical introduction, short section introductions and full bibliographic citations

Theory and Research in Mass Communication: Contexts and Consequences, Edition 2

David K. Perry

This updated edition presents a civic journalism treatment of the field of mass communication research. The sine qua non of the civic journalism movement seems to center around an implicit assumption that the human mind is an evolved part in the natural world, not a detached spectator as much traditional philosophy assumes. Thus, it has attempted to encourage journalists and members of their audiences to participate actively in civic life. Applying the same idea to mass communication academics, this book focuses on the empirical consequences of their work, especially its possible impact on human life. It argues that researchers need to connect with the broader communities in which they live and considers the impact of media research on society.

Features of the second edition include:
*detailed update of research evidence concerning the media violence issue;
*additional material concerning media ownership structures and their possible relationship to media content and effects;
*new material focusing on the impact of tobacco and alcohol advertising;
*updated and expanded section concerning the history of media studies; and
*an expanded discussion of philosophical issues pertaining to theory construction.

This book is intended for graduate and advanced undergraduate students studying mass communication theory and related subjects, such as communication theory, media effects, media literacy, and media and society.

Hack Attack: The Inside Story of How the Truth Caught Up with Rupert Murdoch

Nick Davies

The definitive book on how the News of the World phone-hacking scandal reached the highest echelons of power in the government, security, and media in the UK, from the journalist who broke the story.

At first, it seemed like a small story. The royal editor of the News of the World was caught listening to the voicemail messages of staff at Buckingham Palace. He and a private investigator were jailed, and the case was closed. But Nick Davies, special correspondent for The Guardian, knew that it didn't add up. He began to investigate, and ended up exposing a world of crime and cover-up, of fear and favor—the long shadow of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

Hack Attack is the mesmerizing story of how Davies and a small group of lawyers and politicians took on one of the most powerful men in the world—and beat him. It exposes the inner workings of the ruthless machine that was the News of the World, and of the private investigators who hacked phones, listened to live calls, sent Trojan horse emails, bribed the police, and committed burglaries to dig up tabloid scoops. Above all, it is a study of the private lives of the power elite. It paints an intimate portrait of the social network that gave Murdoch privileged access to government, and allowed him and his lieutenants to intimidate anyone who stood up to them.

Spanning the course of the investigation from Davies's contact with his first source in early 2008 to the resolution of the criminal trial in June 2014, this is the definitive record of one of the major scandals of our time, written by the journalist who was there every step of the way.

Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture

Henry Jenkins

How sharing, linking, and liking have transformed the media and marketing industries

Spreadable Media is a rare inside look at today’s ever-changing media landscape. The days of corporate control over media content and its distribution have been replaced by the age of what the digital media industries have called “user-generated content.” Spreadable Media maps these fundamental changes, and gives readers a comprehensive look into the rise of participatory culture, from internet memes to presidential tweets.

The authors challenge our notions of what goes “viral” and how by examining factors such as the nature of audience engagement and the environment of participation, and by contrasting the concepts of “stickiness”—aggregating attention in centralized places—with “spreadability”—dispersing content widely through both formal and informal networks. The former has often been the measure of media success in the online world, but the latter describes the actual ways content travels through social media. The book explores the internal tensions businesses face as they adapt to this new, spreadable, communication reality and argues for the need to shift from “hearing” to “listening” in corporate culture.

Now with a new afterword addressing changes in the media industry, audience participation, and political reporting, and drawing on modern examples from online activism campaigns, film, music, television, advertising, and social media—from both the US and around the world—the authors illustrate the contours of our current media environment. For all of us who actively create and share content, Spreadable Media provides a clear understanding of how people are spreading ideas and the implications these activities have for business, politics, and everyday life, both on- and offline.

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

Henry Jenkins

Winner of the 2007 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award
2007 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

A classic study on the dynamic between an individual and different media channels

Convergence Culture maps a new territory: where old and new media intersect, where grassroots and corporate media collide, where the power of the media producer and the power of the consumer interact in unpredictable ways.

Henry Jenkins, one of America’s most respected media analysts, delves beneath the new media hype to uncover the important cultural transformations that are taking place as media converge. He takes us into the secret world of Survivor Spoilers, where avid internet users pool their knowledge to unearth the show’s secrets before they are revealed on the air. He introduces us to young Harry Potter fans who are writing their own Hogwarts tales while executives at Warner Brothers struggle for control of their franchise. He shows us how The Matrix has pushed transmedia storytelling to new levels, creating a fictional world where consumers track down bits of the story across multiple media channels.Jenkins argues that struggles over convergence will redefine the face of American popular culture. Industry leaders see opportunities to direct content across many channels to increase revenue and broaden markets. At the same time, consumers envision a liberated public sphere, free of network controls, in a decentralized media environment. Sometimes corporate and grassroots efforts reinforce each other, creating closer, more rewarding relations between media producers and consumers. Sometimes these two forces are at war.

Jenkins provides a riveting introduction to the world where every story gets told and every brand gets sold across multiple media platforms. He explains the cultural shift that is occurring as consumers fight for control across disparate channels, changing the way we do business, elect our leaders, and educate our children.

Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences

Ien Ang

Living Room Wars brings together Ien Ang's recent writings on television audiences, and , in response to recent criticisms of cultural studies, argues that it is possible to study audience pleasures and popular television in a way that is not naively populist. Ang examines how the makers and marketers of television attempt to mould their audience and looks at the often unexpected ways in which the viewers actively engage with the programmes they watch.
Living Room Wars highlights the inherent contradictions of a `politics of pleasure' of television consumption: Ang moves beyond the trditional forcus on textual meanings to explore the structural and historical representations fo television audiences as an integral part of modern culture. Her wide-ranging and illuminating discussion takes in the battle between television and its audiences; the politics of empirical audience research; new technologies and the tactics of television consumption; ethnography and radical contextualism in audience studies; television fiction and women's fantasy; feminist desire and female pleasure in media consumption, and the transnational media system.

Media Virus!: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture

Douglas Rushkoff

The most virulent viruses today are composed of information. In this information-driven age, the easiest way to manipulate the culture is through the media. A hip and caustically humorous McLuhan for the '90s, culture watcher Douglas Rushkoff now offers a fascinating expose of media manipulation in today's age of instant information.

Critical Thinking About Sex, Love, and Romance in the Mass Media: Media Literacy Applications

Mary-Lou Galician

This distinctive volume explores how romantic coupleship is represented in books, magazines, popular music, movies, television, and the Internet within entertainment, advertising, and news/information. This reader offers diverse theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches on the representation of romantic relationships across the media spectrum.

Filling a void in existing media scholarship, this collection explores the media’s influence on perceptions and expectations in relationships, including the myths, stereotypes, and prescriptions manifested throughout the press. Featuring fresh voices, as well as the perspectives of seasoned veterans, contributions include quantitative and qualitative studies along with cultural/critical, feminist, and descriptive analyses. This anthology has been developed for use in courses on mass media and society, media studies, and media literacy. In addition to its use in coursework, it is highly relevant for scholars, researchers, and others interested in how the media influence the personal lives of individuals.

We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People

Dan Gillmor

"We the Media, has become something of a bible for those who believe the online medium will change journalism for the better." -Financial Times

Big Media has lost its monopoly on the news, thanks to the Internet. Now that it's possible to publish in real time to a worldwide audience, a new breed of grassroots journalists are taking the news into their own hands. Armed with laptops, cell phones, and digital cameras, these readers-turned-reporters are transforming the news from a lecture into a conversation. In We the Media, nationally acclaimed newspaper columnist and blogger Dan Gillmor tells the story of this emerging phenomenon and sheds light on this deep shift in how we make--and consume--the news.

Gillmor shows how anyone can produce the news, using personal blogs, Internet chat groups, email, and a host of other tools. He sends a wake-up call tonewsmakers-politicians, business executives, celebrities-and the marketers and PR flacks who promote them. He explains how to successfully play by the rules of this new era and shift from "control" to "engagement." And he makes a strong case to his fell journalists that, in the face of a plethora of Internet-fueled news vehicles, they must change or become irrelevant.

Journalism in the 21st century will be fundamentally different from the Big Media oligarchy that prevails today. We the Media casts light on the future of journalism, and invites us all to be part of it.

Dan Gillmor is founder of Grassroots Media Inc., a project aimed at enabling grassroots journalism and expanding its reach. The company's first launch is Bayosphere.com, a site "of, by, and for the San Francisco Bay Area."

Dan Gillmor is the founder of the Center for Citizen Media, a project to enable and expand reach of grassroots media. From 1994-2004, Gillmor was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper, and wrote a weblog for SiliconValley.com. He joined the Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press. Before that, he was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont. He has won or shared in several regional and national journalism awards. Before becoming a journalist he played music professionally for seven years.

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

Tim Wu

A New Yorker and Fortune Best Book of the Year

"A must-read for all Americans who want to remain the ones deciding what they can read, watch, and listen to.” —Arianna Huffington

Analyzing the strategic maneuvers of today’s great information powers—Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T—Tim Wu uncovers a time-honored pattern in which invention begets industry and industry begets empire.

It is easy to forget that every development in the history of the American information industry—from the telephone to radio to film—once existed in an open and chaotic marketplace inhabited by entrepreneurs and utopians, just as the Internet does today. Each of these, however, grew to be dominated by a monopolist or cartel.

In this pathbreaking book, Tim Wu asks: will the Internet follow the same fate? Could the Web—the entire flow of American information—come to be ruled by a corporate leviathan in possession of "the master switch"? Here, Tim Wu shows how a battle royale for the Internet’s future is brewing, and this is one war we dare not tune out.

Mass Media and Historical Change: Germany in International Perspective, 1400 to the Present

Frank Bösch

Media influenced politics, culture, and everyday life long before the invention of the Internet. This book shows how the advent of new media has changed societies in modern history, focusing not on the specifics of technology but rather on their distribution, use, and impact. Using Germany as an example for international trends, it compares the advent of printing in Europe and East Asia, and the impact of the press on revolutions, nation building, and wars in North America and Europe. The rise of tabloids and film is discussed as an international phenomenon, as the importance of media during National Socialism is looked at in comparison with Fascist Italy and Spain. Finally, this book offers a precise analysis of media during the Cold War, with divided Germany providing the central case study.

Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method

Jennifer Holt

Media Industries: History, Theory and Method is among the first texts to explore the evolving field of media industry studies and offer an innovative blueprint for future study and analysis.

capitalizes on the current social and cultural environment of unprecedented technical change, convergence, and globalization across a range of textual, institutional and theoretical perspectives
brings together newly commissioned essays by leading scholars in film, media, communications and cultural studies
includes case studies of film, television and digital media to vividly illustrate the dynamic transformations taking place across national, regional and international contexts

No Time To Think: The Menace of Media Speed and the 24-hour News Cycle

Howard Rosenberg

An eviscerating look at the state of journalism in the age of the 24 hour news cycle by a Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic and a veteran news correspondent.

No Time To Think focuses on the insidious and increasing portion of the news media that, due to the dangerously extreme speed at which it is produced, is only half thought out, half true, and lazily repeated from anonymous sources interested in selling opinion and wild speculation as news. These news item can easily gain exposure today, assuming a life of their own while making a mockery of journalism and creating casualties of cool deliberation and thoughtful discourse. Much of it is picked up gratuitously and given resonance online or through CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and other networks, which must, in this age of the 24-hour news cycle, "feed the beast."

In dissecting this frantic news blur, No Time to Think breaks down a number of speed-driven blunders from the insider perspective of Charles Feldman, who spent 20 years as a CNN correspondent, as well as the outsider perspective of Howard Rosenberg, who covered the coverage for 25 years as TV critic for The Los Angeles Times.

No Time to Think demonstrates how today's media blitz scrambles the public's perspective in ways that potentially shape how we think, act and react as a global society. The end result effects not only the media and the public, but also the government leaders we trust to make carefully considered decisions on our behalf. Featuring interviews ranging from former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw to internet doyenne Arianna Huffington to PBS stalwart Jim Lehrer to CNN chief Jonathan Klein to a host of former presidential press secretaries and other keen-eyed media watchers, this incisive work measures lasting fallout from the 24-hour news cycle beginning in 1980 with the arrival of CNN, right up to the present.

The News: A User's Manual

Alain De Botton

The news is everywhere. We can’t stop constantly checking it on our computer screens, but what is this doing to our minds?

We are never really taught how to make sense of the torrent of news we face every day, writes Alain de Botton (author of the best-selling The Architecture of Happiness), but this has a huge impact on our sense of what matters and of how we should lead our lives. In his dazzling new book, de Botton takes twenty-five archetypal news stories—including an airplane crash, a murder, a celebrity interview and a political scandal—and submits them to unusually intense analysis with a view to helping us navigate our news-soaked age. He raises such questions as Why are disaster stories often so uplifting? What makes the love lives of celebrities so interesting? Why do we enjoy watching politicians being brought down? Why are upheavals in far-off lands often so boring?

In The News: A User’s Manual, de Botton has written the ultimate guide for our frenzied era, certain to bring calm, understanding and a measure of sanity to our daily (perhaps even hourly) interactions with the news machine.

(With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)

Society Of The Spectacle

Guy Debord

The Das Kapital of the 20th century,Society of the Spectacle is an essential text, and the main theoretical work of the Situationists. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960's, in particular the May 1968 uprisings in France, up to the present day, with global capitalism seemingly staggering around in it’s Zombie end-phase, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism, and everyday life in the late 20th century. This ‘Red and Black’ translation from 1977 is Introduced by Notting Hill armchair insurrectionary Tom Vague with a galloping time line and pop-situ verve, and given a more analytical over view by young upstart thinker Sam Cooper.

Critical Political Economy of the Media: An Introduction

Jonathan Hardy

How the media are organised and funded is central to understanding their role in society. Critical Political Economy of the Media provides a clear, comprehensive and insightful introduction to the political economic analysis of contemporary media.

Jonathan Hardy undertakes a critical survey of political economy scholarship encompassing worldwide literature, issues and debates, and relationships with other academic approaches. He assesses different ways of making sense of media convergence and digitalisation, media power and influence, and transformations across communication markets. Many of the problems of the media that prompted critical political economy research remain salient, he argues, but the approach must continue to adapt to new conditions and challenges. Hardy advances the case for a revitalised critical media studies for the 21st century.

Topics covered include:

media ownership and financing
news and entertainment
convergence and the Internet
media globalisation
advertising and media
alternative media
media policy and regulation

Introducing key concepts and research, this book explains how political economy can assist students, researchers and citizens to investigate and address vital questions about the media today.

Media, Knowledge and Power

Oliver Boyd-Barrett

First Published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Outrage, Inc.: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood

Derek Hunter

From Derek Hunter—one of the most entertaining political writers today—comes an insightful, alarming look at how progressives have taken over academia, pop culture, and journalism in order to declare everything liberal great, and everything great, liberal.

Progressives love to attack conservatives as anti-science, wallowing in fake news, and culturally backwards. But who are the real denialists here?

There are three institutions in American life run by gatekeepers who have stopped letting in anyone who questions their liberal script: academia, journalism, and pop culture. They use their cult-like groupthink consensus as "proof" that science, reporting, and entertainment will always back up the Democrats. They give their most political members awards, and then say the awards make their liberal beliefs true. Worse, they are using that consensus to pull the country even further to the left, by bullying and silencing dissent from even those they've allowed in.

Just a few years ago, the media pretended they were honest brokers. Now a CNN segment is seven liberals versus a sacrificial lamb. MSNBC ate their sacrificial lamb. Well, Chris Matthews did. Tired of being forced to believe or else, Derek Hunter exposes the manufactured truths and unwritten commandments of the Establishment. With research and a biting, sarcastic wit, he explains:

The growing role of celebrities in the political world, and movies with a "message" that dominate awards season, but rarely the box office.
The unquestioning reporting on "studies" that don’t prove what they say they prove.
The hidden bias of "fact-checking," when the media cherry picks which facts they check.
Celebrity scientists like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson blending liberal activism with pretend expertise outside their fields.

Clever, controversial, and convincing, Derek Hunter's book gets to the root of America's biggest cultural war lies.

Googled: The End of the World As We Know It

Ken Auletta

A revealing, forward-looking examination of the outsize influence Google has had on the changing media Landscape.

There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. As only he can, bestselling author Ken Auletta takes readers for a ride on the Google wave, telling the story of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses?from newspapers to books, to television, to movies, to telephones, to advertising, to Microsoft. With unprecedented access to Google?s founders and executives, as well as to those in media who are struggling to keep their heads above water, Auletta reveals how the industry is being disrupted and redefined.

Using Google as a stand-in for the digital revolution, Auletta takes readers inside Google?s closed-door meetings and paints portraits of Google?s notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as those who work with?and against?them. In his narrative, Auletta provides the fullest account ever told of Google?s rise, shares the ?secret sauce? of Google?s success, and shows why the worlds of ?new? and ?old? media often communicate as if residents of different planets.

Google engineers start from an assumption that the old ways of doing things can be improved and made more efficient, an approach that has yielded remarkable results? Google will generate about $20 billion in advertising revenues this year, or more than the combined prime-time ad revenues of CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX. And with its ownership of YouTube and its mobile phone and other initiatives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt tells Auletta his company is poised to become the world?s first $100 billion media company. Yet there are many obstacles that threaten Google?s future, and opposition from media companies and government regulators may be the least of these. Google faces internal threats, from its burgeoning size to losing focus to hubris. In coming years, Google?s faith in mathematical formulas and in slide rule logic will be tested, just as it has been on Wall Street.

Distilling the knowledge accrued from a career of covering the media, Auletta will offer insights into what we know, and don?t know, about what the future holds for the imperiled industry.

Revolutions in Communication: Media History from Gutenberg to the Digital Age, Edition 2

Bill Kovarik

Revolutions in Communication offers a new approach to media history, presenting an encyclopedic look at the way technological change has linked social and ideological communities. Using key figures in history to benchmark the chronology of technical innovation, Kovarik's exhaustive scholarship narrates the story of revolutions in printing, electronic communication and digital information, while drawing parallels between the past and present.

Updated to reflect new research that has surfaced these past few years, Revolutions in Communication continues to provide students and teachers with the most readable history of communications, while including enough international perspective to get the most accurate sense of the field. The supplemental reading materials on the companion website include slideshows, podcasts and video demonstration plans in order to facilitate further reading. www.revolutionsincommunication.com

News: The Politics of Illusion, Tenth Edition

W. Lance Bennett

Can real news survive in an era of social media and spin? An updated edition of the “smart, provocative introduction to media and American politics.”—Paul Freedman, author of Campaign Advertising and American Democracy

For over thirty years, News: The Politics of Illusion has not simply reflected the political communication field—it has played a major role in shaping it. Today, the familiar news organizations of the legacy press are operating in a fragmenting and expanding mediaverse as online competitors challenge the very definition of news itself. We’re inundated with opinions, gossip, clickbait, false equivalencies, targeting, and other challenges—while at the same time, the rise of serious investigative organizations such as ProPublica presents yet a different challenge to legacy journalism.

Lance Bennett’s thoroughly revised tenth edition offers an up-to-date guide to understanding how and why the media and news landscapes are being transformed. It explains the mix of old and new, and points to possible outcomes. Where areas of change are clearly established, key concepts from earlier editions have been revised. There are new case studies, updates on old favorites, and insightful analyses of how novel kinds of information and engagement are affecting our politics. As always, News presents fresh evidence and arguments that invite new ways of thinking about the political information system and its place in democracy.

“Bennett argues that the American political information system—with news at its center—is broken, with serious consequences for democracy. Bennett lays out his case and invites readers to make up their own minds.”—Paul Freedman, University of Virginia

The Content Trap: A Strategist's Guide to Digital Change

Bharat Anand

“My favorite book of the year.”—Doug McMillon, CEO, Wal-Mart Stores

Harvard Business School Professor of Strategy Bharat Anand presents an incisive new approach to digital transformation that favors fostering connectivity over focusing exclusively on content.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG

Companies everywhere face two major challenges today: getting noticed and getting paid. To confront these obstacles, Bharat Anand examines a range of businesses around the world, from The New York Times to The Economist, from Chinese Internet giant Tencent to Scandinavian digital trailblazer Schibsted, and from talent management to the future of education. Drawing on these stories and on the latest research in economics, strategy, and marketing, this refreshingly engaging book reveals important lessons, smashes celebrated myths, and reorients strategy.

Success for flourishing companies comes not from making the best content but from recognizing how content enables customers’ connectivity; it comes not from protecting the value of content at all costs but from unearthing related opportunities close by; and it comes not from mimicking competitors’ best practices but from seeing choices as part of a connected whole.

Digital change means that everyone today can reach and interact with others directly: We are all in the content business. But that comes with risks that Bharat Anand teaches us how to recognize and navigate. Filled with conversations with key players and in-depth dispatches from the front lines of digital change, The Content Trap is an essential new playbook for navigating the turbulent waters in which we find ourselves.

Praise for The Content Trap

“A masterful and thought-provoking book that has reshaped my understanding of content in the digital landscape.”—Ariel Emanuel, co-CEO, WME | IMG

“The Content Trap is a book filled with stories of businesses, from music companies to magazine publishers, that missed connections and could never escape the narrow views that had brought them past success. But it is also filled with stories of those who made strategic choices to strengthen the links between content and returns in their new master plans. . . . The book is a call to clear thinking and reassessing why things are the way they are.”—The Wall Street Journal

Streampunks: YouTube and the Rebels Remaking Media

Robert Kyncl

An entertainment and tech insider—YouTube’s chief business officer—delivers the first detailed account of the rise of YouTube, the creative minds who have capitalized on it to become pop culture stars, and how streaming video is revolutionizing the media world.

In the past ten years, the internet video platform YouTube has changed media and entertainment as profoundly as the invention of film, radio, and television did, more than six decades earlier. Streampunks is a firsthand account of this upstart company, examining how it evolved and where it will take us next.

Sharing behind-the-scenes stories of YouTube’s most influential stars—Streampunks like Tyler Oakley, Lilly Singh, and Casey Neistat—and the dealmakers brokering the future of entertainment like Scooter Braun and Shane Smith, Robert Kyncl uses his experiences at three of the most innovative media companies, HBO, Netflix, and YouTube, to tell the story of streaming video and this modern pop culture juggernaut. Collaborating with Google speechwriter Maany Peyvan, Kyncl explains how the new rules of entertainment are being written and how and why the media landscape is radically changing, while giving aspiring Streampunks some necessary advice to launch their own new media careers.

Kyncl persuasively argues that, despite concerns about technology impoverishing artists or undermining artistic quality, the new media revolution is actually fueling a creative boom and leading to more compelling, diverse, and immersive content. Enlightening, surprising, and thoroughly entertaining, Streampunks is a revelatory ride through the new media rebellion that is reshaping our world.

Media/Impact: An Introduction to Mass Media: Edition 11

Shirley Biagi

Consistently praised for its engaging writing style, currency, and visual appeal, MEDIA/IMPACT focuses students on today's digital mass media industries and support businesses as well as the legal, ethical, social, global, and technological issues that these businesses face every day. The totally re-designed eleventh edition gives special emphasis to convergence--how the mass media industries are intersecting to deliver content and how audiences are adapting to the new mass media marketplace. The author grounds her discussion in the business aspects of all the mass media industries, with concise histories of each industry plus an insider's look at what it's like to work in each business.
Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Media Effects Research: A Basic Overview: Edition 5

Glenn G. Sparks

Packed with current examples and the latest research available, MEDIA EFFECTS RESEARCH: A BASIC OVERVIEW, 5e, offers a comprehensive introduction to the study of mass media's effects on society. Using an engaging personal narrative style, the author presents media theories in the context of current research findings-giving readers a clear understanding of how the effects of mass media are measured and what the latest research has concluded about media's influence on our lives. Completely up to date, the Fifth Edition offers new coverage of electronic media's effects on sleep displacement, TV viewing and obesity research, media violence, emotions in cooperative video game play, first- vs. second-order cultivation, agenda-setting theory research, new media's effects on imitative suicides, Internet use statistics, screen time and face-to-face interaction, multitasking, and much more. In addition, 19 all-new Study Boxes offer an in-depth look at media effects information in real-world practice.
Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators

Clay Shirky

The author of the breakout hit Here Comes Everybody reveals how new technology is changing us for the better.

In his bestselling Here Comes Everybody, Internet guru Clay Shirky provided readers with a much-needed primer for the digital age. Now, with Cognitive Surplus, he reveals how new digital technology is unleashing a torrent of creative production that will transform our world. For the first time, people are embracing new media that allow them to pool their efforts at vanishingly low cost. The results of this aggregated effort range from mind-expanding reference tools like Wikipedia to life-saving Web sites like Ushahidi.com, which allows Kenyans to report acts of violence in real time. Cognitive Surplus explores what's possible when people unite to use their intellect, energy, and time for the greater good.

Mass Communication in India, Fifth Edition

Book 741

FIFTH EDITION REVISED & UPDATED

The fourth ‘industrial revolution’ is already upon us. Mass communication has played a key role in the emergence and advancement of each of the four industrial revolutions.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs), from book publishing, the press and telegraph to cinema, recorded music, radio, television, computers, the internet and the mobile phone, have accelerated the diffusion and adoption of the many innovations spawned by these revolutions.

Mass Communication in India begins with an introduction to mass communication theory (Chapter 1); this is followed by dedicated chapters (2 to 8) on journalism, cinema, radio, television, music, book publishing and the folk media. The remaining chapters (9 to 14) are given over to advertising and public relations, media audiences, mass communication and society, development communication, IT, telecommunications and the internet, and intellectual property rights (IPR) related to the mass media. Each chapter ends with a comprehensive list of recent publications for further reading.

This fifth edition expands, revises and updates the critical analysis of both traditional mass media and the new digital social media in the context of the changing socio-cultural and political-economic scenario in India and around the world; the analysis is from the theoretical perspectives of political economy and cultural studies.

The Indian Media Business: Edition 4

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar

The Indian Media Business, Fourth Edition gives you detailed analysis, perspective and information on eight segments of the media business in India—print, TV, film, radio, music, digital, outdoor, and events. It presents the business history, current dynamics, regulation, economics, technology, valuations, case studies, trends (Indian and global) and a clear sense of how the business operates. This book is a must-read for media professionals, students and for those planning to invest in the Indian media and entertainment business.

The outstanding feature of the fourth edition is a new chapter on digital media—arguably, the first ever look at digital media from a comprehensive business perspective. This looks at everything from history to business dynamics and the major issues digital media faces in India.

This edition tackles regulation with more detail than any of the previous ones. There is one large case study on the quality of regulation in India and several caselets such as the ones on copyright law, defamation law and how it works for social media.

This edition also contains more caselets than the previous editions. There are caselets on the changes in readership methodology, on the trouble with news broadcasting and on the rising power of Hindi newspapers and the impact of digital on both print and TV among others.