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'A beautifully written, intellectually challenging, and highly readable exploration of the mysteries of contemporary mass media and popular culture. Real does a masterful job of empowering his readers. Students will find this book fascinating, and in some cases terrifying' - Arthur Asa Berger, San Francisco State University
Beautifully written and class tested, Exploring Mass Media for a Changing World provides a comprehensive but modestly priced text around which instructors can develop a customized teaching package. Written for introductory courses, it covers essential information students need in order to understand the media, the mass communication process, and the role of media in society. It summarizes basic, generally agreed-upon principles, theories, significant historical events, and essential facts, but does so in a tightly written, readable style. Taken together, this information can be thought of as a minimum repertoire that all citizens of the "information age" need in order to become literate consumers and users of mass communication. Features include: *Historical Framework--For ease of comprehension, media processes and individual media are placed in historical context to show their technological evolution and the effects of those changes on society. *Organization--The first seven chapters deal with the evolution of communication theories and processes common to all media. The next five deal with specific media in the chronological order in which they became mass media. Chapters 13 and 14 introduce two non-media institutions (advertising and public relations) whose exploration is essential in order to understand how mass media functions in our society. Finally, chapter 15 returns to the theme of technological evolution and its effects on society with an in-depth discussion of the internet. *Flexibility--Because it is concise, affordable, and comprehensive, it can be used either as a stand-alone text in mass media courses or as part of an instructional package in courses where mass communication is one of several major units. *Themes--The following themes are introduced early and carried throughout: (a) the evolution of media technology and its effects on society, (b) the global and culture-bound characteristics of mass media, and (c) the need for media literacy in the 21st century. *Supplements--An accompanying instructor's manual begins with a chapter-length essay on teaching the mass media course then offers the following items for each chapter: topical outline and key vocabulary; key ideas to be emphasized and pitfalls to be avoided; discussion questions; objective and essay test items; and both print and nonprint resources for further study.
From Donald Trump’s use of Twitter, to social media mourning, to cyber-bullying: the evidence of media influence today is all around us. As such, good media research is more important than ever, and crucially, is something all students can and should do. Exploring Media Research is an eye-opening exploration of what it means to understand and do media research today. Carefully balancing theory and practice, Andy Ruddock demystifies the process, showing you don’t need huge amounts of time or money to do meaningful media analysis. The book: Introduces students to the scope and seriousness of media influence Shows them how to tie their own interests to academic concepts and research issues Explains how to use this understanding to develop proper research questions Translates key theoretical concepts into actual research methods students can use to explore the media texts, events, markets and professionals that interest them. Bringing theory to life throughout with a range of contemporary case studies, Exploring Media Research is a thoughtful and practical guide to gathering and analysing media data. It is essential reading for students of media, communication and cultural studies.
An introduction to the study of visual culture, this book offers a view of 'visual culture' that includes not only images, but also other visual media and forms of expression, from architecture to fashion, design and the human body. The book is organised around three broad themes, exploring key ideas and debates that have occurred during the last 20 or so years: *the meanings of the term 'visual culture' and of the various practices that form its basis*conceptual approaches to the contemporary analysis of visual culture*the cultural, social and historical contexts informing its production, distribution and consumption.Drawing on a wide range of examples from the last 100 years, the book adopts a cross-disciplinary perspective; it also explores, however, the limits of visual culture as an interdisciplinary field of study, engaging in current debates about the uses and value of the study of visual culture. It will therefore be of value both for readers new to the subject and also for those seeking fresh interventions into contemporary discussions within the field.Features*Accessibly written by a team of experts in the field*Illustrated throughout*Includes chapters on a wide range of visual forms, including architecture and urban design, film, crafts, fashion, design, fine art and the media.
A masterpiece in intercultural training! Exploring Culture brings Geert Hofstede's five dimensions of national culture to life. Gert Jan Hofstede and his co-authors Paul Pedersen and Geert Hofstede introduce synthetic cultures, the ten "pure" cultural types derived from the extremes of the five dimensions. The result is a playful book of practice that is firmly rooted in theory. Part light, part serious, but always thought-provoking, this unique book approaches training through the three-part process of building awareness, knowledge, and skills. It leads the reader through the first two components with more than 75 activities, dialogues, stories, and incidents. The Synthetic Culture Laboratory and two full simulations fulfill the skill-building component. Exploring Culture is suitable for students, trainers, coaches and educators. It can be used for individual study or as a text, and it serves as an excellent partner to Geert Hofstede's popular Cultures and Organizations.
Since the 2000s, the Japanese word shōjo has gained global currency, accompanying the transcultural spread of other popular Japanese media such as manga and anime. The term refers to both a character type specifically, as well as commercial genres marketed to female audiences more generally. Through its diverse chapters this edited collection introduces the two main currents of shōjo research: on the one hand, historical investigations of Japan’s modern girl culture and its representations, informed by Japanese-studies and gender-studies concerns; on the other hand, explorations of the transcultural performativity of shōjo as a crafted concept and affect-prone code, shaped by media studies, genre theory, and fan-culture research. While acknowledging that shōjo has mediated multiple discourses throughout the twentieth century—discourses on Japan and its modernity, consumption and consumerism, non-hegemonic gender, and also technology—this volume shifts the focus to shōjo mediations, stretching from media by and for actual girls, to shōjo as media. As a result, the Japan-derived concept, while still situated, begins to offer possibilities for broader conceptualizations of girlness within the contemporary global digital mediascape.
In recent years, there has been growing awareness across a range of academic disciplines of the value of exploring issues of religion and the sacred in relation to cultures of everyday life. Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age offers inter-di
How do media ‘make’ race? How do legacies of empire shape our understandings of race and media? How does racism structure the media industries? Is the internet an inherently white space? Understanding the relationship between race, culture and media has never been more important. From the demonisation of Muslims to rampant new forms of racism on digital platforms, media are central to understanding how race is both constructed and experienced in everyday life. Yet media are key to resisting racism, too. While they can silence and stereotype us, they can also enable us to cut across difference, to contest and mobilise, and to create genuine community. Race, Culture and Media is a critical, impassioned and accessible exploration of this complex relationship. Anamik Saha outlines the theories, concepts and research you need to know in order to make sense of race, culture and media today - challenging you to move beyond simplistic notions of ‘diversity’ to really engage with issues of both power and participation. It is essential reading for students and researchers across media, communication and cultural studies. Dr Anamik Saha is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he convenes the MA Race, Media and Social Justice.
Providing a student guide to the process of research and writing for media and cultural studies, the author covers both quantitative and qualitative methods and includes a list of useful library resources and essential Web sites.
“What the future fortunes of [Gramsci’s] writings will be, we cannot know. However, his permanence is already sufficiently sure, and justifies the historical study of his international reception. The present collection of studies is an indispensable foundation for this.” —Eric Hobsbawm, from the preface Antonio Gramsci is a giant of Marxian thought and one of the world's greatest cultural critics. Antonio A. Santucci is perhaps the world's preeminent Gramsci scholar. Monthly Review Press is proud to publish, for the first time in English, Santucci’s masterful intellectual biography of the great Sardinian scholar and revolutionary. Gramscian terms such as “civil society” and “hegemony” are much used in everyday political discourse. Santucci warns us, however, that these words have been appropriated by both radicals and conservatives for contemporary and often self-serving ends that often have nothing to do with Gramsci’s purposes in developing them. Rather what we must do, and what Santucci illustrates time and again in his dissection of Gramsci’s writings, is absorb Gramsci’s methods. These can be summed up as the suspicion of “grand explanatory schemes,” the unity of theory and practice, and a focus on the details of everyday life. With respect to the last of these, Joseph Buttigieg says in his Nota: “Gramsci did not set out to explain historical reality armed with some full-fledged concept, such as hegemony; rather, he examined the minutiae of concrete social, economic, cultural, and political relations as they are lived in by individuals in their specific historical circumstances and, gradually, he acquired an increasingly complex understanding of how hegemony operates in many diverse ways and under many aspects within the capillaries of society.” The rigor of Santucci’s examination of Gramsci’s life and work matches that of the seminal thought of the master himself. Readers will be enlightened and inspired by every page.
