Addresses the issue of what we should make of competing claims about meaning when debated in highly charged circumstances.

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.

Suitable for students and their teachers, this text can be used as an aid to class study and for independent student learning. With a strong emphasis on context and concepts, it offers an introduction to contemporary media.

The book highlights aspects of mediality and materiality in the dissemination and distribution of texts in the Scandinavian Middle Ages important for achieving a general understanding of the emerging literate culture. In nine chapters various types of texts represented in different media and in a range of materials are treated. The topics include two chapters on epigraphy, on lead amulets and stone monuments inscribed with runes and Roman letters. In four chapters aspects of the manuscript culture is discussed, the role of authorship and of the dissemination of Christian topics in translations. The appropriation of a Latin book culture in the vernaculars is treated as well as the adminstrative use of writing in charters. In the two final chapters topics related to the emerging print culture in early post-medieval manuscripts and prints are discussed with a focus on reception. The range of topics will make the book relevant for scholars from all fields of medieval research as well as those interested in mediality and materiality in general.

"Spreadable Media" maps fundamental changes taking place in the contemporary media environment, a space where corporations no longer tightly control media distribution. This book challenges some of the prevailing frameworks used to describe contemporary media.

Meaning in the Media addresses the issue of how we should respond to competing claims about meaning put forward in confrontations between people or organisations in highly charged circumstances such as bitter public controversies and expensive legal disputes. Alan Durant draws attention to the pervasiveness and significance of such meaning-related disputes in the media, investigating how their 'meaning' dimension is best described and explained. Through his analysis of deception, distortion, bias, false advertising, offensiveness and other kinds of communicative behaviour that trigger interpretive disputes, Durant shows that we can understand both meaning and media better if we focus in new ways on moments in discourse when the apparently continuous flow of understanding and agreement breaks down. This lively and contemporary volume will be invaluable to students and teachers of linguistics, media studies, journalism and law.

Accessible to wide range of readers from student to lay people, this authoritative reference provides a complete listing of media concepts, figures, and techniques with illustrations and historical commentaries. Written by distinguished scholar and author Marcel Danesi, and with an Introduction by Arthur Asa Berger, a leading figure in the world of media and communications, the dictionary also includes terms related to psychology, linguistics, aesthetics, computer science, semiotics, culture theory, anthropology, and more that have relevance in media studies. Each entry includes a definition in simple, clear language; an illustration where applicable; and, historical commentary (who coined a term for example, why, who uses it, etc.). A bibliography, a directory of online resources, and a time-line of media genres add to the dictionary's usefulness and appeal.

Suitable for students and their teachers, this text can be used as an aid to class study and for independent student learning. With a strong emphasis on context and concepts, it offers an introduction to contemporary media.

This book offers the first broad-based survey of the way artists, audiences and society at large are making use of social media, and how the emergence of social media platforms that allow two-way interaction between these groups has been held up as a ‘game changer’ by many in the theatre industry. The first book to analyse aesthetic, critical, audience development, marketing and assessment uptake of social media in the theatre industry in an integrated fashion, Theatre, Social Media and Meaning Making examines examples from the USA, UK, Europe and Australasia to provide a snapshot of this emerging niche within networked, telematic, immersive and participatory theatre production and reception practices. A vital new resource for the field, this book will appeal to scholars, students, and industry practitioners alike.

What is news? Why does news turn out like it does? What factors influence the creation, production, and dissemination of news? Cultural Meanings of News takes on these deceptively simple questions through an essential collection of seminal and contemporary studies by leaders in the fields of mass communication and media studies. Similar in format and purpose to editor Dan Berkowitz's award-winning Social Meanings of News, this new volume represents a conceptual update, a continuation of the discourse about the nature of news and how it comes to be, moving ideas ahead from the earlier tradition of sociological approaches to the more pervasive cultural perspectives that inform understandings about news. Cultural Meanings of News provides a carefully selected set of readings, organized into thematic areas that each probe a dimension of the literature: from sociological roots to cultural perspectives; news as narrative and cultural text; newswork as cultural ritual; news as cultural myth; news and its interpretive communities; news as a source and reflection of collective memory; toward the future of news research. This text-reader provides students and scholars with first-hand exposure to cultural approaches to the study of news, while also providing an organizing framework for understanding the commonalties and differences between threads in the research. The goals are to engage readers through guided immersion in the material.