Social Sciences Media Studies

How did we end up here, masters of scientific insight, purveyors of ever more powerful technologies, astride the burning planet that created us, and now responsible for cleaning up the mess and determining the future direction of all of life? And what do we do about it? Technology is Dead is a book that attempts to answer both of those questions. It is a book of both challenge and hope, written for those who are able or willing to lead us out of our global predicament.

Award-winning historian Amrita Chakrabarti Myers has recovered the riveting, troubling, and complicated story of Julia Ann Chinn (ca. 1796–1833), the enslaved wife of Richard Mentor Johnson, owner of Blue Spring Farm, veteran of the War of 1812, and US vice president under Martin Van Buren. Johnson never freed Chinn, but during his frequent absences from his estate, he delegated to her the management of his property, including Choctaw Academy, a boarding school for Indigenous men and boys on the grounds of the estate.

How Media Ownership Matters provides a fresh approach to understanding news media power, moving beyond the typical emphasis on market concentration or media moguls. Through a comparative analysis of the US, Sweden, and France, as well as interviews of news executives and editors and an original collection of industry data, this book maps and analyzes four ownership models: market, private, civil society, and public.

In this dynamic account, award-winning author Paul Fleischman arms teens with the basic tools to uncover vested interests and falsehoods by vetting sources, following the money, and checking references so that they can make informed decisions about what actions to take in the worldwide battle against climate change, overconsumption, and dwindling resources.

Spätestens seit der Allianz von Donald Trump und Elon Musk ist klar: Die Tech-Milliardäre sind nicht nur die reichsten Männer der Welt, es geht ihnen auch um politische Macht und um die radikale Umgestaltung von Gesellschaft und Natur. Als Douglas Rushkoff eine Einladung in ein exklusives Wüstenresort erhält, nimmt er an, dass er dort über Zukunftstechnologien sprechen soll. Stattdessen sieht er sich Milliardären gegenüber, die ihn zu Luxusbunkern und Marskolonien befragen.

Sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification in the 1960s to mark the displacement of working-class residents in London neighborhoods by the professional classes. The Death and Life of Gentrification traces how the word has far outgrown Glass's meaning, becoming a socially charged metaphor for cultural appropriation, upscaling, and the loss of authenticity.

Veiled Threats challenges the idea that women in violent terrorist groups lack agency. Too often, these women are assumed to be controlled by men: their fathers, their husbands, or some other male relative. Mia Bloom contests this narrow understanding. Although extremist groups often control different aspects of women's lives, including their religious obligations or dress, jihadi women have asserted themselves in myriad ways. Bloom interrogates the prevailing perceptions about women's involvement in violent extremism exclusively as victims: manipulated, drugged, or coerced.

Tackling the complex subject of bias head on, Skewed investigates the hidden messages we absorb from birth. Looking closely at what the research can tell us, Caryn Franklin and Dr Keon West explain how our inner worlds are shaped by false information, media trends, and the brain’s preference for patterns and stereotypes. Exploring biases around gender, sexuality, race, age and appearance, Caryn and Keon explain how bias impacts all of our lives.

Inviting listeners to explore a modern field of study with deep historical foundations, the book begins by considering the complexities of the term "information" and the information life cycle from classification to preservation. Each chapter examines a different area within IS, surveying its history, technologies, and practices with a critical eye.

John Brockman, editor of This Will Make You Smarter, presents his latest thought-provoking audiobook, featuring insights from leading thinkers such as Steven Pinker, Lisa Randall, Matt Ridley, and Daniel C. Dennett. Drawing from the horizons of science, today's leading thinkers reveal the hidden threats nobody is talking about - and expose the false fears everyone else is distracted by. Encompassing neuroscience, economics, philosophy, physics, psychology, biology, and more - here are 150 ideas that will revolutionize your understanding of the world.

In this most original examination of America's post-9/11 culture, Susan Faludi shines a light on the country's psychological response to the attacks on that terrible day. Turning her observational powers on the media, popular culture, and political life, Faludi unearths a barely acknowledged but bedrock societal drama shot through with baffling contradictions. Why, she asks, did our culture respond to an assault against American global dominance with a frenzied summons to restore "traditional" manhood, marriage, and maternity?

Long before there was a Duluth, Minnesota, the massive outcropping that divides the city emerged from the ridge of gabbro rock running along the westward shore of Lake Superior. A great westward migration carried the Ojibwe people to the Point of Rocks. Against this backdrop—Misaabekong, the place of the giants—the lives chronicled in Linda LeGarde Grover's book unfold, some in myth, some in long-ago times, some in an imagined present, and some in the author's family history, all with a deep bond to the land, one another, and the Ojibwe culture.

The rapid rise of the #MeToo movement has created a seismic shift in how we work with sexual misconduct that occurs in relationships between men and women, but the scope and impact of behaviors within that category is full of gray areas. #MeToo-Informed Therapy guides therapists in finding effective ways to help men who offend, empowering women to find their voices, exploring ways for men to be allies in the #MeToo movement, and helping couples whose relationships can be enhanced by understanding #MeToo issues.

Mit "Manufacturing Consent" legten Edward S. Herman und Noam Chomsky im Jahr 1988 ein umfassendes Werk zur Funktionsweise der Massenmedien in kapitalistischen Demokratien vor, das heute als eine der meistgelesenen Studien zum Thema gilt. Fein und detailliert zeigen die Autoren, wie die Medien einen gesellschaftlichen Konsens herstellen, der den herrschenden wirtschaftlichen und politischen Interessen folgt.

Wie YouTube das Weltbild formt: ein exklusiver Investigativ-Bericht. Der Aufstieg der Video-Plattform zur globalen Supermacht. Die Macht des YouTube-Algorithmus über den Alltag seiner Nutzerinnen. YouTube ist weit mehr als eine Video-Plattform: Mit mehr als zwei Milliarden User*innen und 500 Stunden Video-Uploads pro Minute ist die Google-Tochter die mächtigste Bildmaschine aller Zeiten. Der YouTube-Algorithmus entscheidet, wie wir die Welt sehen.

In Wicked Flesh, Jessica Marie Johnson explores the nature of complicated intimate and kinship ties and how they were used by Black women to construct freedom in the Atlantic world. Johnson draws on archival documents scattered in institutions across three continents, written in multiple languages and largely from the perspective of colonial officials and slave-owning men, to recreate Black women's experiences from coastal Senegal to French Saint-Domingue to Spanish Cuba to the swampy outposts of the Gulf Coast.

News for All the People reveals how racial segregation distorted the information Americans received from the mainstream media. It unearths numerous examples of how publishers and broadcasters actually fomented racial violence and discrimination through their coverage. And it chronicles the influence federal media policies exerted in such conflicts. It depicts the struggle of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American journalists who fought to create a vibrant yet little-known alternative, democratic press.

Since Victoria Woodhull launched her symbolic bid for the presidency in 1872, dozens of women have sought the presidency over the past 150 years. Their quest began long before women won the vote, and it unfolded over decades when a woman's pursuit of any higher political office was met with prejudice, mockery, and hostility. Even after women started voting in 1920, they remained shut out of rooms where presidential candidacies were often born.

With provocative discussions from both professional and fan writers, on subjects from Star Trek to The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Harry Potter, Twilight, and beyond, Fic sheds light on the widely misunderstood world(s) of fanfiction - not only how fanfiction is transforming the literary landscape, but how it already has.

A birder strolling in Central Park. A college student lounging on a university quad. Two men sitting in a coffee shop. Perfectly ordinary actions in ordinary settings—and yet, they sparked jarring and inflammatory responses that involved the police and attracted national media coverage. Why? In essence, Elijah Anderson would argue, because these were Black people existing in white spaces. In this book, Anderson brings his immense knowledge and ethnography to bear in this timely study of the racial barriers that are still firmly entrenched in our society at every class level.