The U.S. pandemic narratives which embodied many conflicting structures failed to provide guidance for groups and individuals to construct a clear understanding of the pandemic or a consistent measure to combat the disease. This book provides a careful examination of the discordant narratives that embodied the chaos, tensions, and conflicts in the U.S. pandemic responses. The ultimate goal of this volume is to help groups and individuals understand just what went wrong in the U.S. pandemic responses.

Highlighting the significance of Maines’ works in symbolic interactionism, Volume 57 of Studies in Symbolic Interaction documents his most celebrated areas of scholarship, including social structure, narrative sociology, social interaction, dialectic perspective, temporality, and mesostructure.

This book explores the phenomenon of distortion of information through media via the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ways in which relevant information distortion and virality have occurred in regard to the disease and its risks. Positing that the interrelated processes of misinformation, disinformation, fake news and conspiracy theories are related forms of distortion of information through media (DIM) and can only be understood through a multilevel theoretical model that incorporates message-based, individual difference, social network-based, societal and geotechnical factors, Brian H. Spitzberg develops an integrative, well-argued, and well-evidenced framework within which these issues can and should be addressed. This book offers a model for further research across such disciplines as communication, journalism/media studies, political science, sociology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, evolutionary psychology, public health, big data analytics, social network analytics, computational linguistics and geographic information sciences, and will interest researchers and students in those areas.

In the wake of Donald J. Trump’s unprecedented victory and his administration’s multi-pronged attacks on an array of vulnerable populations, a diverse collection of scholars was asked to document the ways in which marginalized peoples have experienced the first years of Trump mayhem. The essays in this volume ask us to think through tough narratives of exclusion, exile, and pain. The challenge in this book is to represent the unrepresentable, to document in chilling detail how Trump, his allies in government, and his unshakeable base have weaponized the culture war and threatened the ideals of the Republic. This book invites us to experience the scarifying perspective of the marginalized Other, to remember to honor all our most human stories that, woven together, make up the collective ‘us’; the collective ‘U.S.’ The editors also hope this collection suggests a way forward, a way to defeat American nativism and a way to end the war on those of us who are, on this sad day, our nation’s public enemies.

Discordant Democracy: Noise, Affect, Populism, and the Presidential Campaign paints a portrait of the political experience at a pivotal time in American political and social history. The modern political campaign is aestheticized and assimilated into mass culture, divorced from fact and policy, and nakedly tethered to emotional appeal. Through a multi-modal comparative examination of the sonic and emotional cultures of the 2008 and 2016 campaigns, Justin Patch raises critical queries about our affective relationship to modern politics and the impact of emotional campaigning on democracy. Discordant Democracy asks: how do campaign sounds affect us; what role do we the electorate play in creating and sustaining these sounds and affects; and what actions do they generate? Theories from anthropology, cognitive science, sound studies and philosophy are engaged to grapple with these questions and connect bombastic mass-mediated political events, campaign media and individual sonic experience. The analyses complicate notions of top-down campaigning, political spin, and enthusiastic millennial populism by examining our role in producing and animating political sounds through conversation, applause, laughter, media, and music.

This edited collection highlights how people connected with friends and family, students and colleagues, and leaders and communities, in their quest to persevere during the pandemic. The chapters describe how people enjoyed their passions for the arts in new and unexpected ways, given the restrictions of COVID-19 safety protocols, and how scripted and reality television programming helped them escape, however briefly, from the traumas of the pandemic, the racial injustice, the political machismo and divisiveness of this time. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of communication, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, and gender studies.

As the United States grapples with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s living legacy of systemic racism, and partisan threats to the foundations of democracy, the integrity of news and Project Censored's survey of underreported news stories has never been more important. This 2022 edition of Project Censored's State of the Free Press offers a comprehensive survey of the most important but underreported news stories of 2021 and a comparative analysis of the current state of corporate and independent news media, and its effect on democracy. The establishment media sustains a decrepit post-truth era, as examined the lowlight features: "Junk Food News"-frivolous stories that distract the public from actual news-and-"News Abuse"-important stories covered in ways that undermine public understanding. The alternative media provokes a burgeoning critical media literacy age, as evaluated in the highlight feature: "Media Democracy in Action"-relevant stories responsibly reported on by independent organizations. Finally, in an homage to the history of the annual report, the editors reinstate the "Déjà vu News" feature-revisited stories from previous editions. State of the Free Press 2022 endows readers with the critical thinking and media literacy skills required to hold the corporate media to account for distorting or censoring news coverage, and thus, to revitalize our democracy. State of the Free Press 2022 is a joint production of The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press.

Shawn C. Smallman and Kimberley Brown's popular introductory textbook for undergraduates in international and global studies is now released in a substantially revised and updated third edition. Encompassing the latest scholarship in what has become a markedly interdisciplinary endeavor and an increasingly chosen undergraduate major, the book introduces key concepts, themes, and issues and then examines each in lively chapters on essential topics, including the history of globalization; economic, political, and cultural globalization; security, energy, and development; health; agriculture and food; and the environment. Within these topics the authors explore such diverse and pressing subjects as commodity chains, labor (including present-day slavery), pandemics, human rights, and multinational corporations and the connections among them. This textbook, used successfully in both traditional and online courses, provides the newest and most crucial information needed for understanding our rapidly changing world. New to this edition: *Close to 50% new material *New illustrations, maps, and tables *New and expanded emphases on political and economic globalization and populism; health; climate change, and development *Extensively revised exercises and activities *New resume-writing exercise in careers chapter *Thoroughly revised online teacher's manual

Using George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four as a guide for interpreting the role of the American state in the twenty-first century – paying particular attention to how the government responded to the life and death issues of terrorism, COVID-19, and climate change – this book presents eye-opening and compelling documentary evidence that suggests Orwellian policies have already been implemented by Republicans and Democrats. A Sociological Analysis of Incipient Totalitarianism in the United States advances a groundbreaking sociological explanation for how totalitarian rule is embraced by the public when freedom, equality, and justice are compromised, offering a sociological explanation of how totalitarian rule is operationalized from the macro level to the micro level, using concepts associated with Marx (ruling ideas), Mead (generalized other) and Berger and Luckmann (recipe knowledge) which are especially key to understanding the process. Finally, the book suggests policies that could halt and reverse the progression of totalitarianism in the United States. Scholarly and yet readily accessible to a general readership, this book showcases the sociological importance and enduring influence of Orwell – working as a supplement to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and making a meaningful contribution to the public discourse by challenging and informing students and the public about the very real fears of creeping totalitarianism in the United States.