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A critical cultural materialist introduction to the study of global entertainment media. In Global Entertainment Media, Tanner Mirrlees undertakes an analysis of the ownership, production, distribution, marketing, exhibition and consumption of global films and television shows, with an eye to political economy and cultural studies. Among other topics, Mirrlees examines: Paradigms of global entertainment media such as cultural imperialism and cultural globalization. The business of entertainment media: the structure of capitalist culture/creative industries (financers, producers, distributors and exhibitors) and trends in the global political economy of entertainment media. The "governance" o...
The search for meaning is an essential human activity. It is not just about agreeing on some definitions about the world, objects, and people; it is an ethical process of opening up to find new possibilities. Langlois uses case studies of social media platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon) to revisit traditional conceptions of meaning.
The sometimes surprising, often humorous story of the forces that came together to shape the central role Twitter now plays in contemporary politics and culture Is Twitter a place for sociability and conversation, a platform for public broadcasting, or a network for discussion? Digital platforms have become influential in every sphere of communication, from the intimate and everyday to the public, professional, and political. Since the scrappy startup days of social media in the mid-2000s, not only has the worldwide importance of platforms grown exponentially, but also their cultures have shifted dramatically, in a variety of directions. These changes have brought new opportunities for progr...
The search for meaning is an essential human activity. It is not just about agreeing on some definitions about the world, objects, and people; it is an ethical process of opening up to find new possibilities. Langlois uses case studies of social media platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon) to revisit traditional conceptions of meaning.
This book questions the predominance of “media abundance” as a guiding concept for contemporary mediated politics. The authors argue that media abundance is not a universal condition, and that certain individuals, communities, and even nations can more accurately be referred to as media scarce – where access to media technologies and content is limited, highly controlled, or surveilled. Through case studies that focus on guerilla militants, incarcerated Indigenous people, and cold war‐era infrastructure, including Soviet “closed” or “secret” cities and Canadian nuclear bunkers, the book’s chapters interrogate how the once media scarce later “speak” to – and can be hea...
How should one approach the notion of the precarious in art – its meanings and its outcomes? Its presence in artistic practices may be transient, yet it instigates permanent changes in the production, discourse, and perception of art. The Permanence of the Transient: Precariousness in Art gathers essays that examine the traces and implications of precariousness in contemporary art, and lays a foundation for a thoughtful study of its emergence in related fields throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The different perspectives represented in this volume touch on art history and theory, curatorial practice, media art, philosophy, language, and transnational studies, and highlight artists’ narratives. Together, these interdisciplinary essays locate precariousness as an undercurrent in contemporary art and a connective tissue across diverse areas of knowledge and everyday life.
There has been a data rush in the past decade brought about by online communication and, in particular, social media (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, among others), which promises a new age of digital enlightenment. But social data is compromised: it is being seized by specific economic interests, it leads to a fundamental shift in the relationship between research and the public good, and it fosters new forms of control and surveillance. Compromised Data: From Social Media to Big Data explores how we perform critical research within a compromised social data framework. The expert, international lineup of contributors explores the limits and challenges of social data research in order to invent and develop new modes of doing public research. At its core, this collection argues that we are witnessing a fundamental reshaping of the social through social data mining.
This open access volume assesses the influence of our changing media environment. Today, there is not one single medium that is the driving force of change. With the spread of various technical communication media such as mobile phones and internet platforms, we are confronted with a media manifold of deep mediatization. But how can we investigate its transformative capability? This book answers this question by taking a non-media-centric perspective, researching the various figurations of collectivities and organizations humans are involved in. The first part of the book outlines a fundamental understanding of the changing media environment of deep mediatization and its transformative capacity. The second part focuses on collectivities and movements: communities in the city, critical social movements, maker, online gaming groups and networked groups of young people. The third part moves institutions and organizations into the foreground, discussing the transformation of journalism, religion, politics, and education, whilst the fourth and final part is dedicated to methodologies and perspectives.
From the social media-based 2008 Obama election campaign to the civic protest and political revolutions of the 2011 Arab Spring, the past few years have been marked by a widespread and complex shift in the political landscape, as the rise of participatory platforms- such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs- have multiplied the venues for political communication and activism. This book explores the emergence of a permanent campaign- the need for constant readiness- on networked communication platforms. With in-depth analyses of some of the most well-known participatory media today, this book offers a critical assessment of the constant efforts at managing the plurality of voices that characterize contemporary politics. -- from Publisher description.
This open access book shows how figures, figuring, and configuration are used to understand complex, contemporary problems. Figures are images, numbers, diagrams, data and datasets, turns-of-phrase, and representations. Contributors reflect on the history of figures as they have transformed disciplines and fields of study, and how methods of figuring and configuring have been integral to practices of description, computation, creation, criticism and political action. They do this by following figures across fields of social science, medicine, art, literature, media, politics, philosophy, history, anthropology, and science and technology studies. Readers will encounter figures as various as Je Suis Charlie, #MeToo, social media personae, gardeners, asthmatic children, systems configuration management and cloud computing – all demonstrate the methodological utility and contemporary relevance of thinking with figures. This book serves as a critical guide to a world of figures and a creative invitation to “go figure!”