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This book explores how issues of power, form and subjectivity feature at the core of all serious thinking about the media, including appreciations of their creativity as well as anxiety about the risks they pose. Drawing widely on an interdisciplinary literature, the author connects his exposition to examples from film, television, radio, photography, painting, web practice, music and writing in order to bring in topics as diverse as reporting the war in Afghanistan, the televising of football, documentary portrayals of 9/11, reality television, the diversity of taste in the arts and the construction of civic identity. The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, three big chapters on each of the key notions provide an interconnected discussion of the media activities opened up for exploration and the debates they have provoked. The second part presents examples, arguments and analysis drawing on the author's previous work around the core themes, with notes placing them in the context of the whole book. The book brings together concepts both from Social Studies and the Arts and Humanities, addressing a readership wider than the sub-specialisms of media research. It refreshes ideas about why the media matter, and how understanding them better remains a key aim of cultural inquiry and a continuing requirement for public policy.
This article examines the post-millennial popularity of the found footage movie, in particular its engagement with the representational codes of non-fiction media. Whilst the majority of critical writings on found footage identify the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Centre as a key visual referent, they too often dwell on the literal re-enactment of the event. This article instead suggests that these films evoke fear by mimicking the aesthetic and formal properties of both mainstream news coverage and amateur recording. As such they create both ontological and epistemological confusion as to the reality of the events depicted. Rather than merely replicating the imagery of terror/ism, these films achieve their terrifying effects by mimicking the audiences media spectatorship of such crisis.
The book explores how we understand global conflicts as they relate to the ‘European refugee crisis’, and draws on a range of empirical fieldwork carried out in the UK and Italy. It examines how global conflict has been constructed in both countries through media representations – in a climate of changing media habits, widespread mistrust, and fake news. In so doing, it examines the role played by historical amnesia about legacies of imperialism – and how this leads to a disavowal of responsibility for the reasons people flee their countries. The book explores how this understanding in turn shapes institutional and popular responses in receiving countries, ranging from hostility – such as the framing of refugees by politicians, as 'economic migrants' who are abusing the asylum system – to solidarity initiatives. Based on interviews and workshops with refugees in both countries, the book develops the concept of ‘migrantification’ – in which people are made into migrants by the state, the media and members of society. In challenging the conventional expectation for immigrants to tell stories about their migration journey, the book explores experiences of discrimination as well as acts of resistance. It argues that listening to those on the sharpest end of the immigration system can provide much-needed perspective on global conflicts and inequalities, which challenges common Eurocentric misconceptions. Interludes, interspersed between chapters, explore these issues in other ways through songs, jokes and images.
of information about development in Canadian schools during that period offer the historian a significant opportunity to study practical and ideological traditions of visual communications for pedagogical purposes among humanitarian agencies. The focus of historical inquiries of visual media is often on the content produced and the intended audience, with limited examination of those responsible for the logistics and pedagogical dimensions of the distribution of the materials. This article discusses the following aspects of the practices of CIDA: the purpose of
Bacon 04 3/2/06 10:26 AM Page 76 4 The media Fears about the deterioration of press freedom in Russia during the presidency of Vladimir Putin have been widely discussed since his election in March 2000. In May 2003 Putin was included in a list of ‘Predators of Press Freedom’ issued by the Paris-based organisation Reporters Without Borders. In its 2003 annual Press Freedom Survey the international organisation Freedom House for the first time downgraded its evaluation of the Russian media from being ‘partly free’ to being ‘not free’.1 Concerns with regards to
In this chapter we will consider how you might use a variety of media to communicate your research to both the public and your peers. The chapter is intended for those new to using media (traditional or social) for research communication and does not seek to provide a comprehensive overview of the potential ways media might be used, but rather offers examples as a jumping-off point for your own endeavours. The chapter briefly covers writing for traditional media, before moving on to consider your digital profile and the practicalities of using
If finance and politics both disseminate a myth of the economy that feeds into the notion of it as something akin to a pot of money, then the only place that could challenge this elite vision is the media. Indeed, one of the key roles the media is meant to play in modern democracies is to act as a counterbalance to the elite powers explored in the previous two chapters (big business and the state). In democratic theory there are three overlapping roles the media is supposed to play: 1) to inform the public about the world
Media soundscapes: listening to installation and performance Media scholars have pointed out the recent ubiquity of moving image media in the historically ‘visual’ art spaces of museums and art galleries.1 Indeed, I cannot recall a recent visit to an art gallery, museum, or alternative art space where I did not encounter works that feature or incorporate video, film, animation, or other forms of media. As a result, there is much to listen to in these ‘noisy’ spaces. Caleb Kelly provides a description: ‘Upon entering almost any contemporary gallery space, we hear
Chapter Six Media coverage On 22 January 1979, Tony Benn noted in his diary: ‘Today was the Day of Action for local government employees and 1.25 million workers took the day off. The press is just full of crises, anarchy, chaos, disruption – bitterly hostile to the trade union movement. I have never seen anything like it in my life.’1 At the peak of the ‘winter of discontent’, the National Day of Action became the greatest industrial stoppage since the General Strike of May 1926. On 22 January 1979 around 1.5 million public sector workers took part in major
This chapter considers the presence of ‘borderline’ forms of Beckettian adaptation in new media. In particular, it examines the productive but critical engagement of those forms with key tenets of Linda Hutcheon's classic A Theory of Adaptation ( 2006 ), especially the constraints which Hutcheon's theory imposes upon adaptation where scope is concerned. Although Hutcheon's understanding of adaptation is broad, considering video games and interactive art, ‘brief echoes’ of works are excluded because they ‘recontextualise only short fragments