Addressing a multitude of questions and issues surrounding how we use the media, Media Effects and Beyond represents the results of an international research programme into the use and effects of television, video and music. Seeing the viewer not simply as passive object but as a very active subject, the contributors engage with every aspect of children's, adolescents' and families' use of the media - its character, causes and consequences. Topics explored include media and social mobility; family commumication, and consumer lifestyles. Confronting the two traditions of lifestyle research and effects research, Media Effects and Beyond offers a much-needed reconceptualization of both. Written at a time when traditional European public service media systems struggle against a tidal wave of commercial electronic media, this book will be important reading for students of contemporary culture and communications, as well as media policy for decision makers.

Addressing a multitude of questions and issues surrounding how we use the media, Media Effects and Beyond represents the results of an international research programme into the use and effects of television, video and music. Seeing the viewer not simply as passive object but as a very active subject, the contributors engage with every aspect of children's, adolescents' and families' use of the media - its character, causes and consequences. Topics explored include media and social mobility; family commumication, and consumer lifestyles. Confronting the two traditions of lifestyle research and effects research, Media Effects and Beyond offers a much-needed reconceptualization of both. Written at a time when traditional European public service media systems struggle against a tidal wave of commercial electronic media, this book will be important reading for students of contemporary culture and communications, as well as media policy for decision makers.

Democracy is based on the belief that the media gets the attention of voters. But is this plausible in an age of multiplying media, disillusionment with the political system and time-scarcity? This book addresses this question, and charts experiences of 'public connection'.

In less than a decade, a new breed of progressive media projects have captured huge, non-traditional audiences and shaped political campaigns, public debates and policy in ways that could never have been imagined in a previous era. Drawing on years of research, media experts Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke now lay out a clear, hard-hitting theory of media impact. Their study showcases influential projects such as TPM Caf , FireDogLake and Feministing, suggesting ways in which media makers can exploit changes in journalism, technology, and politics.

Media is usually seen as a feature of the modern world enabled by the latest technologies. Scholars, educators, parents, and politicians often talk about media as something people should be wary of due to its potential negative impact on their lives. But do we really understand what media is? Elizaveta Friesem argues that instead of being worried about media or blaming it for what’s going wrong in society, we should become curious about uniquely human ways we communicate with each other. Media Is Us proposes five key principles of communication that are relevant both for the modern media and for people’s age-old ways of making sense of the world. In order to understand problems of the contemporary society revealed and amplified by the latest technologies, we will have to ask difficult questions about ourselves. Where do our truths and facts come from? How can we know who is to blame for flaws of the social system? What can we change about our own everyday actions to make the world a better place? To answer these questions we will need to rethink not only the term “media” but also the concept of power. The change of perspective proposed by the book is intended to help the reader become more self-aware and also empathic towards those who choose different truths. Concluding with practical steps to build media literacy through the ACE model—from Awareness to Collaboration through Empathy—this timely book is essential for students and scholars, as well as anyone who would use the new understanding of media to decrease the current levels of cultural polarization.

Elections are the means by which democratic nations determine their leaders, and communication in the context of elections has the potential to shape people's beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Thus, electoral persuasion is one of the most important political processes in any nation that regularly holds elections. Moreover, electoral persuasion encompasses not only what happens in an election but also what happens before and after, involving candidates, parties, interest groups, the media, and the voters themselves. This volume surveys the vast political science literature on this subject, emphasizing contemporary research and topics and encouraging cross-fertilization among research strands. A global roster of authors provides a broad examination of electoral persuasion, with international perspectives complementing deep coverage of U.S. politics. Major areas of coverage include: general models of political persuasion; persuasion by parties, candidates, and outside groups; media influence; interpersonal influence; electoral persuasion across contexts; and empirical methodologies for understanding electoral persuasion.

How small-scale drones, satellites, kites, and balloons are used by social movements for the greater good. Drones are famous for doing bad things: weaponized, they implement remote-control war; used for surveillance, they threaten civil liberties and violate privacy. In The Good Drone, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick examines a different range of uses: the deployment of drones for the greater good. Choi-Fitzpatrick analyzes the way small-scale drones--as well as satellites, kites, and balloons--are used for a great many things, including documenting human rights abuses, estimating demonstration crowd size, supporting anti-poaching advocacy, and advancing climate change research. In fact, he finds, small drones are used disproportionately for good; nonviolent prosocial uses predominate.

Beyond New Media: Discourse and Critique in a Polymediated Age examines a host of differing positions on media in order to explore how those positions can inform one another and build a basis for future engagements with media theory, research, and practice. Herbig, Herrmann, and Tyma have brought together a number of media scholars with differing paradigmatic backgrounds to debate the relative applicability of existing theories and in doing so develop a new approach: polymediation. Each contributor’s disciplinary background is diverse, spanning interpersonal communication, media studies, organizational communication, instructional design, rhetoric, mass communication, gender studies, popular culture studies, informatics, and persuasion. Although each of these scholars brings with them a unique perspective on media’s role in people’s lives, what binds them together is the belief that meaningful discourse about media must be an ongoing conversation that is open to critique and revision in a rapidly changing mediated culture. By studying media in a polymediated way, Beyond New Media addresses more completely our complex relationship to media(tion) in our everyday lives.

Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World offers a broad exploration of the conceptual foundations for comparative analysis of media and politics globally. It takes as its point of departure the widely used framework of Hallin and Mancini's Comparing Media Systems, exploring how the concepts and methods of their analysis do and do not prove useful when applied beyond the original focus of their 'most similar systems' design and the West European and North American cases it encompassed. It is intended both to use a wider range of cases to interrogate and clarify the conceptual framework of Comparing Media Systems and to propose new models, concepts and approaches that will be useful for dealing with non-Western media systems and with processes of political transition. Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World covers, among other cases, Brazil, China, Israel, Lebanon, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Thailand.