Historically the bodies of civilians are the most damaged by the
increasing mechanization and derealization of warfare, but this is
not reflected in the representation of violence in popular media.
...In War Without Bodies , author Martin Danahay argues that
the media in the United States in particular constructs a "war
without bodies" in which neither the corpses of soldiers or
civilians are shown. War Without Bodies traces the
intertwining of new communications technologies and war from the
Crimean War, when Roger Fenton took the first photographs of the
British army and William Howard Russell used the telegraph to
transmit his dispatches, to the first of three "video wars" in the
Gulf region in 1990-91, within the context of a war culture that
made the costs of organized violence acceptable to a wider public.
New modes of communication have paradoxically not made more war
"real" but made it more ubiquitous and at the same time
unremarkable as bodies are erased from coverage. Media such as
photography and instantaneous video initially seemed to promise
more realism but were assimilated into existing conventions that
implicitly justified war. These new representations of war were
framed in a way that erased the human cost of violence and replaced
it with images that defused opposition to warfare. Analyzing
poetry, photographs, video and video games the book illustrates the
ways in which war was framed in these different historical
contexts. It examines the cultural assumptions that influenced the
reception of images of war and discusses how death and damage to
bodies was made acceptable to the public. War Without
Bodies aims to heighten awareness of how acceptance of war is
coded into texts and how active resistance to such hidden messages
can help prevent future unnecessary wars.
Using case studies and exercises, this innovative study poses challenging questions
Living in a saturated media environment, we are crowded from all sides by persuasive messages and information. ...Advice, promotion and propaganda form a spectrum of persuasion - and everywhere we see it performed in its full theatricality, complete with actors, scripts, props and costumes.
Based on enduring rhetorical principles, these persuasive techniques and the psychology behind them have become increasingly sophisticated during the 'age of persuasion', a century of applied research in advertising, advocacy, public relations, mass entertainment and social control.Media, Persuasion, and Propagandaguides the reader through the many varieties of persuasion and its performance, exploring the protocols of rhetoric unique to the medium, from orality and print to film and digital images. Using case studies and exercises, this innovative study poses challenging questions:
How do individuals and organisations exert influence to build communities and networks?What role do media play in communicating persuasive messages?How do we use recent discoveries in cognitive science to promote a cause, advocate social change or market ideas and products?How do we defend ourselves against manipulation and undue influence, and when does persuasion turn into propaganda?
Key Features
Uses global examples and case studies to define the spectrum of persuasion, from promotion to propagandaExamines the performance of propaganda, from orality to new mediaIncludes exercises in each chapter to reinforce the key themes and promote discussion
There is growing awareness about how social media circulate extreme viewpoints and turn up the temperature of public debate. Posts that exhibit agitation garner disproportionate engagement. Within ...this clamour, fringe sources and viewpoints are mainstreaming, and mainstream media are marginalized. This book takes up the mainstreaming of the fringe and the marginalization of the mainstream. In a cross-platform analysis of Google Web Search, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, 4chan and TikTok, we found that hyperpartisan web operators, alternative influencers and ambivalent commentators are in ascendency. The book can be read as a form of platform criticism. It puts on display the current state of information online, noting how social media platforms have taken on the mantle of accidental authorities, privileging their own on-platform performers and at the same time adjudicating between claims of what is considered acceptable discourse.
Participation has become fashionable again, but at the same time it has always played a crucial role in our contemporary societies, and it has been omnipresent in a surprisingly large number of ...societal fields. In the case of the media sphere, the present-day media conjuncture is now considered to be the most participatory ever, but media participation has had a long and intense history. To deal with these paradoxes, this book looks at participation as a structurally unstable concept and as the object of a political-ideological struggle that makes it oscillate between minimalist and maximalist versions. This struggle is analysed in theoretical reflections in five fields (democracy, arts, development, spatial planning and media) and in eight different cases of media practice. These case studies also show participation’s close connection to power, identity, organization, technology and quality.
Civic life today is mediated. Communities small and large are now using connective platforms to share information, engage in local issues, facilitate vibrant debate, and advocate for social causes. ...In this timely book, Paul Mihailidisexplores the texture of daily engagement in civic life, and the resources—human, technological, and practical—that citizens employ when engaging in civic actions for positive social impact. In addition to examining the daily civic actions that are embedded in media and digital literacies and human connectedness, Mihailidis outlines a model for empowering young citizens to use media to meaningfully engage in daily life.
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.
Appearing more than twenty years after the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe, this book could not have come at a more appropriate time; a time to take stock not only of the changes but also ...the continuities in media systems of the region since 1989. To what extent are media institutions still controlled by political forces? To what extent are media markets operating in Central and Eastern Europe? Do media systems in Central and Eastern Europe resemble media systems in other parts of Europe? The answers to these questions are not the same for each country in the region. Their experience is not homogeneous. An international line up of distinguished experts and emerging scholars methodically examine the different economic, political, cultural, and transnational factors affecting developments in media systems across Central and Eastern Europe. Whereas earlier works in the media system tradition have, in the main, adopted the political framework of comparative politics, the authors argue that media systems are also cultural and economic institutions and there are other critical variables that might explain certain outcomes better. Topics discussed range from political economy to gender inequality to the study of ethno-cultural diversity. This unmatched volume gives you the unique opportunity to study the growing field of comparative media analysis across Eastern and Western Europe. A valuable resource that goes beyond the field of media and cultural analysis which media scholars as well as to area specialists should not go without!
Feature films, television shows, homemade videos, tweets, blogs, and breaking news: digital media offer an always-accessible, apparently inexhaustible supply of entertainment and information. ...Although choices seems endless, public attention is not. How do digital media find the audiences they need in an era of infinite choice? InThe Marketplace of Attention, James Webster explains how audiences take shape in the digital age. Webster describes the factors that create audiences, including the preferences and habits of media users, the role of social networks, the resources and strategies of media providers, and the growing impact of media measures -- from ratings to user recommendations. He incorporates these factors into one comprehensive framework: the marketplace of attention. In doing so, he shows that the marketplace works in ways that belie our greatest hopes and fears about digital media. Some observers claim that digital media empower a new participatory culture; others fear that digital media encourage users to retreat to isolated enclaves. Webster shows that public attention is at once diverse and concentrated -- that users move across a variety of outlets, producing high levels of audience overlap. So although audiences are fragmented in ways that would astonish midcentury broadcasting executives, Webster argues that this doesn't signal polarization. He questions whether our preferences are immune from media influence, and he describes how our encounters with media might change our tastes. In the digital era's marketplace of attention, Webster claims, we typically encounter ideas that cut across our predispositions. In the process, we will remake the marketplace of ideas and reshape the twenty-first century public sphere.
In spite of the growing literature on discourse analysis, the relationship of discourse to violent/non-violent outcomes of conflict is an under-researched area. This book combines theories on ethnic ...conflict, identity construction and discourse analysis with a comprehensive and inclusive survey of the countries of the former Yugoslavia. It presents an understanding of the interrelationship between 'words' and 'deeds' grounded through an extensively close analysis of film, television and newspapers samples taken from the period. This combination of ground-breaking applications of theory with detailed empirical case studies will make Media Discourse and the Yugoslav Conflicts of key interest to scholars across a range of social sciences including sociology, discourse analysis, media, conflict and peace studies as well as those concerned with ethnopolitical conflict.
Racial Spectacles Markovitz, Jonathan
2011, 20110601, 2011-06-01
eBook
Racial Spectacles: Explorations in Media, Race, and Justice examines the crucial role the media has played in circulating and shaping national dialogues about race through representations of crime ...and racialized violence. Jonathan Markovitz argues that mass media "racial spectacles" often work to shore up racist stereotypes, but that they also provide opportunities to challenge prevalent conceptions of race, and can be seized upon as vehicles for social protest. This book explores a series of mass media spectacles revolving around the news, prime-time television, Hollywood cinema, and the internet that have either relied upon, reconfigured, or helped to construct collective memories of race, crime, and (in)justice. The case studies explored include the Scottsboro interracial rape case of the 1930s, the Kobe Bryant rape case, the Los Angeles Police Department's "Rampart scandal," the Abu Ghraib photographs, and a series of racist incidents at the University of California.
This book will prove to be important not only for courses on race and media, but also for any reader interested in issues of the media's role in social justice.
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