Showing titles in Media Studies

In the early 20th century, World War I was the most devastating event humanity had yet experienced. New machines of war left tens of millions killed or wounded in the most grotesque of ways. The Great War remade the world's map, created new global powers, and brought forth some of the biggest problems still facing us today. But it also birthed a new art form: the horror film, made from the fears of a generation ruined by war. From Nosferatu to Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man, the touchstones of horror can all trace their roots to the bloodshed of the First World War.

What is new about how teenagers communicate through services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Do social media affect the quality of teens' lives? In this eye-opening book, youth culture and technology expert danah boyd uncovers some of the major myths regarding teens' use of social media. She explores tropes about identity, privacy, safety, danger, and bullying. Ultimately, boyd argues that society fails young people when paternalism and protectionism hinder teenagers' ability to become informed, thoughtful, and engaged citizens through their online interactions.

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.

Many Americans believe that their own government is guilty of shocking crimes. Although paranoia has been a feature of the American scene since the birth of the Republic, in Real Enemies, Kathryn Olmsted tells us that it was only in the 20th century that strange and unlikely conspiracy theories became central to American politics, In particular, she posits World War I as a critical turning point and shows that as the federal bureaucracy expanded, Americans grew more fearful of the government itself.

At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers - some of them only high school students - in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was not only years but light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers.

In today’s chaotic world, where the multiplication of information sources creates competing narratives, credibility is the key to winning the war of ideas. This is the reason why governments and corporations resort to astroturfing - creation of ostensibly grassroots movements set up to advance political agendas and commercial campaigns. The democratization of information and polarization of politics offer a perfect storm.

We've all found ourselves checking email at the dinner table, holding our breath while waiting for Outlook to load, or sitting hunched in front of a screen for an hour longer than we intended. Mobile devices and the web have invaded our lives, and this is a big idea book that addresses one of the biggest questions of our age: Can we stay connected without diminishing our intelligence, attention spans, and ability to really live? Can we have it all?

Dead Wrong is a study of the scientific and forensic facts of four assassinations of the 1960s (President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Black Panther leader Fred Hampton), as well as an examination of new and incriminating evidence indicative of murder, not suicide, in the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, White House Counsel Vincent Foster, U.N. Weapons Inspector Dr. David C. Kelly and bioweapons expert Frank Olson.

In "Killing Kennedy: Exposing the Plot, the Cover-Up, and the Consequences," author Jack Roth interviews researchers, scholars, eyewitnesses, and family members of those who were part of the tangled web of US intelligence operations associated with the Cold War and the circumstances surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The author asks important questions, including why the assassination still matters today and what the lasting ripple effects have been since that fateful day.

What does contemporary China's diverse and exciting fiction tell us about its culture, and the relationship between art and politics? The Subplot takes us on a lively journey through a literary landscape like you’ve never seen before: a vast migrant-worker poetry movement, homoerotic romances by “rotten girls,” swaggering literary popstars, millionaire e-writers churning out the longest-ever novels, underground comics, the surreal works of Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, and Nobel laureate Mo Yan, and what is widely hailed as a golden age of Chinese science fiction.

The BBC is a central part of British life, shared culture and international standing. But the BBC is in peril as never before in its long history. It faces ever-increasing competition and threats from new technology and consumption trends. It suffers relentless attacks from a range of hostile players motivated by their own political and commercial interests. And it faces deep funding cuts. These pressures may even destroy it within a generation. We must not end up recognising what its value was only when it's gone.

Since September 11, 2001, Seymour M. Hersh has riveted readers, and outraged the Bush Administration, with his stories in The New Yorker magazine, including his breakthrough pieces on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Now, in Chain of Command, he brings together this reporting, along with new revelations, to answer the critical question of the last three years: how did America get from that clear morning in September to a divisive and dirty war in Iraq?

Annalee Newitz traces the way disinformation, propaganda, and violent threats have evolved from military weapons deployed against foreign adversaries into tools in domestic culture wars. Newitz delves into America's deep-rooted history with psychological operations, beginning with Benjamin Franklin's Revolutionary War-era fake newspaper and nineteenth-century wars on Indigenous nations, and reaching its apotheosis with the Cold War and twenty-first-century influence campaigns online.

Focusing for the first time on why attorney general Robert F. Kennedy wasn’t killed in 1963 instead of on why President John F. Kennedy was, Mark Shaw offers a stunning and provocative assassination theory that leads directly to the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy. Mining fresh information and more than 40 new interviews, Shaw weaves a spellbinding narrative involving Mafia don Carlos Marcello; Jack Ruby (Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer); Ruby’s attorney, Melvin Belli; and, ultimately, the Kennedy brothers and their father.

On September 10, 1976, exiled Chilean leader Orlando Letelier delivered a blistering rebuke of Augusto Pinochet's brutal right-wing regime in a speech at Madison Square Garden. Eleven days later, while Letelier was on Embassy Row in Washington, DC, a bomb affixed to the bottom of his car exploded, killing him and his coworker Ronni Moffitt. The slaying, staggering in its own right, exposed an international conspiracy that reached well into US territory.

In the following keynote address given at Baylor University, author Paul Levinson discusses Canadian philosopher and academic Marshall McLuhan's seminal book, "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man," which proposed that the media—not the content that they carry—affects the society in which it plays a role and, thus, should be the focus of study. Levinson, a colleague of McLuhan’s, lays out, how in the decades since its 1964 publication, McLuhan’s study of media theory and the concept that "the medium is the message," still holds true.

Conspiracy theories pop up surrounding every major national and global event-some are possible, some are not. TikTok influencer and psychology professor Casey Lytle will teach you how to be an intelligent consumer of 'alternative' theories. Lytle's trademark 'project management approach' will help you discern possible from impossible in the popular and controversial theories surrounding 10 national and global events.

The year is 1997, Michael Soussan, a fresh-faced young graduate takes up a new job at the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program, the largest humanitarian operation in the organization's history. His mission is to help Iraqi civilians survive the devastating impact of economic sanctions that were imposed following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. As a gaffe-prone novice in a world of sensitive taboos, Soussan struggles to negotiate the paranoia of his boss and the inner workings of one of the world's notoriously complex bureaucracies.

El nou llibre del reconegut historiador i autor del fenomen global Sàpiens. Una obra que analitza com les xarxes d'informació han conformat el món i a nosaltres mateixos. A Nexus, Y. N. Harari contempla la humanitat des de l'àmplia perspectiva de la història per analitzar com les xarxes d'informació han conformat el nostre món i a nosaltres mateixos. Durant els últims 100.000 anys, els sàpiens hem acumulat un poder enorme.

The phenomenon of “conspiracy” or “fringe” theories has always been with people, which makes sense since captivating and entertaining hypotheses arouse the public interest with seemingly sound conclusions that are often based on incomplete, unrelated, or erroneous suppositions. However, with the correct tweaking, they often appear to propound airtight arguments. Conspiracy theories make good use of real or imagined individuals or organizations operating behind a curtain of secrecy manipulating the action.