New media--we are told--exist at the bleeding edge of obsolescence. We thus forever try to catch up, updating to remain the same. Meanwhile, analytic, creative, and commercial efforts focus exclusively on the next big thing: figuring out what will spread and who will spread it the fastest. But what do we miss in this constant push to the future? In Updating to Remain the Same, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun suggests another approach, arguing that our media matter most when they seem not to matter at all--when they have moved from "new" to habitual. Smart phones, for example, no longer amaze, but they increasingly structure and monitor our lives. Through habits, Chun says, new media become embedded in our lives--indeed, we become our machines: we stream, update, capture, upload, link, save, trash, and troll.
Chun links habits to the rise of networks as the defining concept of our era. Networks have been central to the emergence of neoliberalism, replacing "society" with groupings of individuals and connectable "YOUS." (For isn't "new media" actually "NYOU media"?) Habit is central to the inversion of privacy and publicity that drives neoliberalism and networks. Why do we view our networked devices as "personal" when they are so chatty and promiscuous? What would happen, Chun asks, if, rather than pushing for privacy that is no privacy, we demanded public rights--the right to be exposed, to take risks and to be in public and not be attacked?
How does television function within society? Why have both its programmes and its audiences been so widely denigrated? Taking inspiration from Richard Hoggarts classic study The Uses of Literacy, John Hartleys new book is a lucid defence of the place of television in our lives, and of the usefulness of television studies.
Hartley re-conceptualizes television as a transmodern medium, capable of reuniting government, education and media, and of creating a new kind of cultural teaching which facilitates communication across social and geographical boundaries. He provides a historical framework for the development of both television and television studies, his focus ranging from an analysis of the early documentary Housing Problems, to the much-overlooked cultural impact of the refrigerator.
The study of advertising and its treatment of utopian appeal enhance our understanding of consumer culture. By looking into the advertising page, we also look into consumers' desires and the process by which these desires are reshaped and rechanneled through images and narratives created solely for the purpose of making a sale. Utopian Images and Narratives in Advertising: Dreams for Sale, edited by Luigi Manca, Alessandra Manca, and Gail W. Pieper, is a collection of essays which gather a host of academicians from a wide variety of disciplines including sociology, psychology, literature, fine arts, history, religious studies, communication, and media studies. Through their expansive disciplinary expertise, the contributors bring unique insights to the analysis of the advertising page. The collection's cross-disciplinary investigation also examines gender images and narratives which, in the advertising page, are frequently associated with utopian fantasies. The analyses offered in Utopian Images and Narratives in Advertising will appeal to any scholar or student engaged in mass media, communication, and the effect of advertising and consumerism on individuals and cultures.
Victorians on Screen investigates the representation of the Victorian age on British television from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. Structured around key areas of enquiry specific to British television, it avoids a narrow focus on genre by instead taking a thematic approach and exploring notions of authenticity, realism and identity.
The 1980s saw an explosion in the use of the domestic video cassette recorder (VCR), arguably the most significant new form of home entertainment technology since television.
In Video Playtime Ann Gray investigates what women themselves felt about the VCR, both in terms of the ways these entertainment facilities were used within their households, and what kinds of programmes and films they themselves particularly enjoyed.
Ann Gray draws heavily on verbatim quotes from discussions to provide a rich description of different types of household micro-cultures and to give readers more direct access to the women themselves and the ways in which they accounted for their own experience. Video Playtime addresses questions of domestic technology as well as those of taste and cultural preference, particularly in relation to class, addressing the dynamics of power within existing social and cultural relations and thereby setting the analysis within a much wider social context.
The controversial relationship between violent behavior in American society and violent acts portrayed in the media--motion pictures, television, pop music, and video games--forms the subject of this reference work.
Violence and the Media provides a section on legal data, opinions, and documents, and provides a close-up look at the legislative issues surrounding violence and the media. It is a vital resource for high school and college students, legislators, and concerned laypersons.
It was over a decade ago that experimental psychologists and media-effects researchers declared the debate on the effects of violent video gaming as "essentially over," referring to the way violence in videogames increases aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviors in players. Despite the decisive tone of this statement, neither the presence nor popularity of digital games has since diminished, with games continuing to attract new generations of players to experience its technological advancements in the narration of violence and its techniques of depiction.
Drawing on new insights achieved from research located at an intersection between humanities, social and computer sciences, Gareth Schott's addition to the Approaches in Digital Game Studies series interrogates the nature and meaning of the "violence" encountered and experienced by game players. In focusing on the various ways violence is mediated by both the rule system and the semiotic layer of games, the aim is to draw out the distinctiveness of games' exploitation of violence or violent themes. An important if not canonical text in the debates about video games and violence, Violent Games constitutes an essential book for those wishing to make sense of the experience offered by games as technological, aesthetic, and communicational phenomena in the context of issues of media regulation and the classification of game content "as" violence.
In today's multimedia environment, visuals are essential and expected parts of storytelling. However, the visual communication research field is fragmented into several sub-areas, making study difficult. Fahmy, Bock, and Wanta note trends and discuss the challenges of conducting analysis of images across print, broadcast, and online media.
In an increasingly global society, the ability to identify a culture's visual aesthetics helps us localize messages for better understanding and resonance with targeted audiences. But how do we identify the visual cues that specific cultures respond to? Based on Web design best practices and data collected from close to 2000 websites in more than 30 countries over a period of eight years, this book defines a methodology for identifying patterns - a pattern language - by which one can analyze the cultural aesthetics of a website to: (1) learn more about the visual communication patterns of a particular culture, (2) apply what is learned to the creation of new Web communication, and (3) identify trends in visual communication on the Web as influenced by emerging technologies.
In an increasingly global society, the ability to identify a culture's visual aesthetics helps us localize messages for better understanding and resonance with targeted audiences. But how do we identify the visual cues that specific cultures respond to? Based on Web design best practices and data collected from close to 2000 websites in more than 30 countries over a period of eight years, this book defines a methodology for identifying patterns - a pattern language - by which one can analyze the cultural aesthetics of a website to: (1) learn more about the visual communication patterns of a particular culture, (2) apply what is learned to the creation of new Web communication, and (3) identify trends in visual communication on the Web as influenced by emerging technologies.
