Showing results by publisher "Tantor Audio" in Media Studies

For decades, technology encouraged people to squander their time and intellect as passive consumers. Today, technology has finally caught up with human potential. In Cognitive Surplus, Internet guru Clay Shirky forecasts the thrilling changes we will all enjoy as new digital technology puts our untapped resources of talent and goodwill to use at last.

Every morning on CNBC's Squawk Box, Joe Kernen asks challenging questions. And at home he does the same with his young daughter, Blake. What are you learning in school? What TV shows do you like? What message did you get from that movie? When Blake was nine, her answers told Joe that she had already absorbed a distorted view of economics---from her school, pop culture (even animated movies!), and just about everywhere else.

Denby has fun snarking the snarkers, expelling the bums and promoting the true wits, but he is also making a serious point: the Internet has put snark on steroids. In politics, snark means the lowest, most insinuating and insulting side can win. For the young, a savage piece of gossip could ruin a reputation and possibly a future career. And for all of us, snark just sucks the humor out of life. Denby defends the right of any of us to be cruel but shows us how the real pros pull it off. Snark, he says, is for the amateurs.

American politics has been hijacked. Not by "neocons" or "theocons", but by a fringe group of economic extremists obsessed with radical ideas that favor no one but themselves and their business interests. With dark and engaging wit, Jonathan Chait shows how over the past three decades these canny zealots have gamed the political system and the media.

With Amazon's growing power in both bookselling and publishing, considering where and how we get our books is more important now than ever. The simple act of putting a book in a reader's hands—what booksellers call handselling—becomes a catalyst for an exploration of the moral, financial, and political pressures all indie bookstores face.

Tyrants on Twitter is the first detailed analysis of how Chinese and Russian agents weaponize Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to subvert the liberal international order. In addition to examining the 2016 US election, David L. Sloss explores Russia's use of foreign influence operations to threaten democracies in Europe, as well as China's use of social media and other digital tools to meddle in Western democracies and buttress autocratic rulers around the world.

Despite the high number of programs and their evident popularity, paranormal reality television has to date received little critical attention. Ghost Channels provides an overview of the paranormal reality television genre, its development, and its place in television history. Conducting in-depth analyses of over thirty paranormal television series, author Amy Lawrence suggests these programs reveal much about Americans' contemporary fears.

Renyi Hong theorizes the notion of being "passionate about your work" as an affective project that encourages people to endure trying situations like unemployment, job change, repetitive and menial labor, and freelancing. Not simply a subject of aspiration, passion has been deployed as a means to build resilience and mend disappointments with our experiences of work. Tracking the rise of passion in nineteenth-century management to trends like gamification, coworking, and unemployment insurance, Hong argues that the ideal of passionate work sustains a condition of cruel optimism.

World War II was a media war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the press to a great extent, of course, but as the war progressed, the media also came to influence commanders' decisions on the battlefield. The Media Offensive offers a new way to understand military-media relations during World War II. The press and public opinion shaped not only how the conflict was seen but also how it was fought. In what could be called "the new history of war reporting," the focus is switched from how the military controlled reporters to how military decisions were shaped by the press.

In 2010—long before the release of Lemonade—Professor Kevin Allred created the university course "Politicizing Beyonce" to both wide acclaim and controversy. He outlines his pedagogical philosophy in Ain't I a Diva?, exploring the process of teaching Beyonce and what it means to use a superstar to blow up the canon. Allred brings his syllabus to life by pairing music videos and songs with historical and academic texts, and combines analysis with classroom anecdotes.

Cold War Radio is a fascinating look at how the United States waged the Cold War through the international broadcasting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Mark G. Pomar takes listeners inside the two radio stations to show how the broadcasts were conceived and the impact they had on international broadcasting, United States-Soviet relations, Russian history, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.