Mediatisation of Emotional Life


Book Description

This volume brings together an international team of authors to investigate a wide range of issues concerning the fundamental role of media technologies in shaping contemporary emotional life. Chapters explore key aspects of the mediatisation of emotional life, feelings and interpersonal relations: love, intimacy, loneliness, friendship, family relations, erotic, sexual and romantic experiences. The authors explain the key aspects of strong user–media relationships and human relationships based on media use and investigate problems such as the formation of identity based on social media, the role of communication applications and the effects of mobile and locative media on our relationships, as well as artificial intelligence, on our perception of our emotions. With a focus on new media, the book also draws on the scope of traditional media that express and shape emotions, taking into account the classic approaches to emotionality of messages from the perspective of film creators and recipients. This cutting-edge collection will be of interest to scholars and students of media and communication studies, especially digital media and new technologies, psychology, pedagogy, sociology of everyday life and cultural studies. Chapters 5 and 10 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.




Contemporary Challenges in Mediatisation Research


Book Description

This book focuses on key challenges related to conducting research on mediatisation, presenting the most current theoretical, empirical, and methodological challenges and problems, addressing ignored and less frequently discussed topics, critical and controversial themes, and defining niches and directions of development in mediatisation. With a focus on the under-representation of certain topics and aspects, as well as methodological, technological, and ethical dilemmas, the chapters consider the main critical objections formulated against mediatisation studies and exchange critical positions. Moving beyond areas of common focus – culture, sport, and religion – to emerging areas of study such as fashion, the military, business, and the environment, the book then offers a critical assessment of the transformation of fields and the relevance of new and dynamic (meta)processes including datafication, counter-mediatisation, and platformisation. Charting new paths of development in mediatisation, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of mediatisation, media studies, media literacy, communication studies, and research methods.




True Crime in American Media


Book Description

This book explores contemporary American true crime narratives across various media formats. It dissects the popularity of true crime and the effects, both positive and negative, this popularity has on perceptions of crime and the justice system in contemporary America. As a collection of new scholarship on the development, scope, and character of true crime in twenty-first century American media, analyses stretch across film, streaming/broadcast TV, podcasts, and novels to explore the variety of ways true crime pervades modern culture. The reader is guided through a series of interconnected topics, starting with an examination of the contemporary success of true crime, the platforms involved, the narrative structures and engagement with audiences, moving on to debates on representation and the ethics involved in portraying both victims and perpetrators of crime within the genre. This collection provides new critical work on American true crime media for all interested readers, and especially scholars and students in the humanities and social sciences. It offers a significant area of research in social sciences, criminology, media, and English Literature academic disciplines.




Global South Discourse in East Asian Media Studies


Book Description

This book examines the nexus of East Asian media, culture, and digital technologies in the early 21st century from a Global South perspective. Providing an empirically rich analysis of the emergence of Asian culture, histories, texts, and state policies as they relate to both Asian media and global media, the author discusses relevant theoretical frameworks as East Asian popular culture and media have shifted the contours of globalization. After overviewing Western media/cultural theories and histories, the book explores the ways in which East Asia-focused analytical frameworks are able to shift people’s understanding of globalization and media, drawing upon examples from different East Asian countries to illustrate how current cultural flows have influenced and have been influenced by a handful of dimensions. Offering an important contribution to understanding the historical trajectory and recent developments of East Asia media, this book will interest students and scholars of media, communication, popular culture, cultural studies, Asian studies, politics and sociology.




Cultural Histories of Law, Media and Emotion


Book Description

Cultural Histories of Law, Media and Emotion: Public Justice explores how the legal history of long-eighteenth-century Britain has been transformed by the cultural turn, and especially the associated history of emotion. Seeking to reflect on the state of the field, 13 essays by leading and emerging scholars bring cutting-edge research to bear on the intersections between law, print culture and emotion in Britain across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Divided into three sections, this collection explores the ‘public’ as a site of legal sensibility; it demonstrates how the rhetoric of emotion constructed the law in legal practice and in society and culture; and it highlights how approaches from cultural and emotions history have recentred the individual, the biography and the group to explain long-running legal-historical problems. Across this volume, authors evidence how engagements between cultural and legal history have revitalised our understanding of law’s role in eighteenth-century culture and society, not least deepening our understanding of justice as produced with and through the public. This volume is the ideal resource for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars interested in the history of emotions as well as the legal history of Britain from the late seventeenth to the nineteenth century.




Crowds, Community and Contagion in Contemporary Britain


Book Description

Crowds, Community and Contagion in Contemporary Britain presents the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to re-assess the neoliberal politics, xenophobia and racism that have undermined community cohesion in the United Kingdom since 1979, and which have continued largely unchecked through the last four decades. Guided by three interconnected ideas used throughout to scrutinise the meaning of culture as a way of life – Welsh cultural theorist Raymond Williams’ structure of feeling, Jamaican-British sociologist Stuart Hall’s conception of the conjuncture and Belgian political philosopher Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism – Sarah Lowndes finds that a renewed sense of mutual regard and collective responsibility are necessary to meet the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. She begins by reflecting on public gatherings in Britain from 1945 to 2019, moving on to analyse five key examples of public gatherings affected by the pandemic in 2020 onwards: Chinese New Year, the UEFA Champions League Final, VE Day street parties, Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and the cancellation of Eid ul-Adha celebrations. A thorough examination of how ideas proliferate and spread through our society, public sphere and collective consciousness, this book will appeal to scholars and upper-level students of cultural studies, cultural history, sociology and politics.




Women Comedians in the Digital Age


Book Description

This book offers a thorough examination of digital work by women comedians in the US, exploring their use of digital media to perform jokes, engage with fans, remake their reputations, and become political activists. This book argues that despite its many adverse effects, digital work is changing comedy, empowering women to create new comic forms and negotiate the contentious political climate incited by former President Donald. J. Trump. Chapters are focused on video podcasting, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and the streaming platform Netflix – each containing informative case studies on significant women comedians who use them, including Sarah Silverman, Amy Schumer, Leslie Jones, Mindy Kaling, Colleen Ballinger, Lilly Singh, Ms. Pat, Whitney Cummings, Issa Rae, and others. To understand their strategies, this book examines the popularity of their digital content, their career outcomes in television and film, as well as the ups and downs of their critical reputations in magazines, newspapers, the trade press, and with their participatory audiences online. This insightful and timely work will appeal to scholars researching and teaching in the areas of media studies, digital communication, gender studies, and performance.




Reasserting the Disney Brand in the Streaming Era


Book Description

Reasserting the Disney Brand in the Streaming Era investigates the evolution of the Disney brand at a pivotal moment – the move from content creation to acquisition and streaming – and how the company reasserted its brand in a changing marketplace. Exploring how Disney’s acquisition of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Fox positioned the company to launch the Disney+ streaming service, the chapters look at the history of those acquisitions, and the deployment of the content, brands, and intellectual property from those acquisitions, through an analysis of the original content that appeared on Disney+. Offering a focused investigation of how the content offered from these various media brands was adapted for Disney+ so that it reflects the Disney brand, the authors illustrate through close textual analysis how this content reflects elements of the "Classic Disney Style." The analysis positions these texts in relation to their industrial contexts, while also identifying important touchstone texts (both television and film) in Disney's catalog. This comprehensive and thoughtful analysis will interest upper-level students and scholars of media studies, political economy, Disney studies, media industries and new technology.




The Eurovision Song Contest as a Cultural Phenomenon


Book Description

Drawing from the wealth of academic literature about the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) written over the last two decades, this book consolidates and recognizes the ESC's relevance in academia by analysing its contribution to different fields of study. The book brings together leading ESC scholars from across disciplines and from across the globe to reflect on the intersection between their academic fields of study and the ESC by answering the question: what has the ESC contributed to academia? The book also draws from fields rarely associated with the ESC, such as Law, Business and Research Methodologies, to demonstrate the contest's broad utility in research, pedagogy and in practice. Given its interdisciplinary approach, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students working in cultural, media, and music studies, as well as those interested in the intersections between these areas and politics, law, education, pedagogy, and history.




Serial Killers in Contemporary Television


Book Description

This volume examines the significant increase in representations of serial killers as central characters in popular television over the last two decades. Via critical analyses of the philosophical and existential themes presented to viewers and their place in the cultural landscape of contemporary America, the authors ask: What is it about serial killers that incited such a boom in these types of narratives in popular television post-9/11? Looking past the serial format of television programming as uniquely suited for the presentation of the serial killer’s actions, the chapters delve into deeper reasons as to why TV has proven to be such a fertile ground for serial killer narratives in contemporary popular culture. An international team of authors question: What is it about serial killers that makes these characters deeply enlightening representations of the human condition that, although horrifically deviant, reflect complex elements of the human psyche? Why are serial killers intellectually fascinating to audiences? How do these characters so deeply affect us? Shedding new light on a contemporary phenomenon, this book will be a fascinating read for all those at the intersection of television studies, film studies, psychology, popular culture, media studies, philosophy, genre studies, and horror studies.