Showing titles in Media Studies

For thousands of years, we've been warned of a day when the Antichrist will arise to pilot the greatest deception in human history. Whereas many can discuss the dictatorial global economics, societal horrors, and eventual apocalypse that follows his arrival, few know that there are negotiations in the workings at this moment to build the very location where the abomination of desolation will stand in the holy place. This, as the book of Daniel prophesied, will be the catalyst event... The beginning of the end.

A smart, lively history of the Internet free culture movement and its larger effects on society - and the life and shocking suicide of Aaron Swartz, a founding developer of Reddit and Creative Commons - from Slate correspondent Justin Peters.

Halliburtons Army is the first book to show, in shocking detail, how Halliburton really does business in Iraq and around the world. From its vital role as the logistical backbone of the U.S. occupation in Iraq to its role in covering up gang-rape amongst its personnel in Baghdad, Halliburtons Army is a devastating bestiary of corporate malfeasance and political cronyism.

An incisive observer, writer, and participant in today's social movements, Zeynep Tufekci explains in this accessible and compelling book the nuanced trajectories of modern protests - how they form, how they operate differently from past protests, and why they have difficulty persisting in their long-term quests for change.

The pandemic has been orchestrated by a cabal of billionaires, known as “the Good Club,” to initiate history’s greatest transference of wealth and to further the globalization of poverty. The virus was created in military laboratories within the United States as a biological weapon. Even the riots have been staged. The Phantom Virus: How an Unseen Enemy Shut Down the Planet! by Rodney Howard-Browne and Paul L. Williams will prove it.

Revealing his extensive research and the verifiable evidence he’s discovered, Frank Joseph presents a comprehensive military history of armed confrontations between humans and extraterrestrials in the 20th and 21st centuries. He explains how, with the development of atomic bombs and ballistic missiles, the frequency of extraterrestrial intervention in human affairs increased dramatically. He documents incidents both famous and little known.

In the tradition of Neil Postman's masterpiece Amusing Ourselves to Death, Audience of One shows how American media have shaped American society and politics, by interweaving two crucial stories. The first story follows the evolution of television from the three-network era of the 20th century, which joined millions of Americans in a shared monoculture, into today's zillion-channel, internet-atomized universe, which sliced and diced them into fractious, alienated subcultures. The second story is a cultural critique of Donald Trump.

How dangerous is the coronavirus really? How contagious is it? How have total death rates not increased if the virus is the deadliest disturbance in the history of humanity? Sociopaths in Washington, DC, and their cronies in the "private" sector seized the opportunity that COVID-19 presented and used that narrative to support their mission and accelerate their goals: destroy our freedom, eliminate our privacy, and enrich themselves and their allies.

Today, trauma is everywhere, and it seems like everybody has it. Trauma shapes public debates on education, criminal justice and healthcare. It’s cited as a root cause of addiction, mental health issues, and relationship breakdowns. It permeates media, from music and television to films and books – my own included.

In today's digitally driven world, disaster is only a click away. A rogue tweet can bring down a business; an army of trolls can run a celebrity off-line; and virtual harassment might cause real psychological damage. Shame Nation is the first book to both explore the fascinating phenomenon of online shaming and offer practical guidance and inspiring advice on how to prevent and protect against cyber blunders and faceless bullies. Author and acclaimed Internet safety expert Sue Scheff unveils all sides of an issue that is only becoming more relevant day.

Few people then or now know about the clandestine war that the CIA ran in Vietnam, using the Green Berets for secret operations throughout Southeast Asia. This was not the Vietnam War of the newsreels - the body counts, rice paddy footage, and men smoking cigarettes on the sandbag bunkers.

Why does writing exist? What does it mean to those who write? Born from the interplay of natural and cultural history, the seemingly magical act of writing has continually expanded our consciousness. Portrayed in mythology as either a gift from heroes or a curse from the gods, it has been used as both an instrument of power and a channel of the divine, a means of social bonding and of individual self-definition.

Merchants of Truth by Jill Abramson, former editor of The New York Times, is the gripping and definitive in-the-room account of the revolution that has swept the news industry over the last decade and reshaped our world. Drawing on revelatory access, Abramson takes us behind the scenes at four media titans during the most volatile years in news history. Two are maverick upstarts: BuzzFeed, the brain-child of virtuoso clickbait scientist Jonah Perretti, and VICE, led by the booze-fuelled anarcho-hipster Shane Smith.

In recent decades, we have witnessed an explosion in the number of visual images we encounter, as our lives have become increasingly saturated with screens. From Google Images to Instagram, video games to installation art, this transformation is confusing, liberating and worrying all at once, since observing the new visuality of culture is not the same as understanding it.

The chemical compound DDT first earned fame during World War II by wiping out insects that caused disease and boosting Allied forces to victory. Americans granted it a hero’s homecoming, spraying it on everything from crops and livestock to cupboards and curtains. Then, in 1972, it was banned in the US. But decades after that, a cry arose to demand its return.

In The Social Organism, Luckett and Casey offer a revolutionary theory: social networks - to an astonishing degree - mimic the rules and functions of biological life. In sharing and replicating packets of information known as memes, the world's social media users are facilitating an evolutionary process just like the transfer of genetic information in living things. Memes are the basic building blocks of our culture, our social DNA. To master social media - and to make online content that impacts the world - you must start with the Social Organism.

The Loch Ness monster: a creature that should have died out with the dinosaurs or a legend built on hoaxes and wishful thinking? Sir Peter Scott, internationally renowned naturalist and president of the World Wildlife Fund, was convinced that the monster existed. So were senior scientists at London's Natural History Museum and Chicago University; they lost their jobs because they refused to renounce their belief in the creature.

In this blistering polemic, veteran journalist Mick Hume presents an uncompromising defence of freedom of expression, which he argues is threatened in the West not by jackbooted censorship but by a creeping culture of conformism and you-can't-say-that. The cold-blooded murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in January 2015 brought a deadly focus to the issue of free speech. Leaders of the free-thinking world united in condemning the killings, proclaiming ‘Je suis Charlie'.

The Fox Effect follows the career of Ailes from his early work as a television producer and media consultant for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. Consequently, when he was hired in 1996 as the president of Rupert Murdoch’s flagship conservative cable news network, Ailes had little journalism experience, but brought to the job the mindset of a political operative. As Brock and Rabin-Havt demonstrate through numerous examples, Ailes used his extraordinary power and influence to spread a partisan political agenda....

The biggest crime story in American history began on the night of March 1, 1932, when the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was snatched from his crib in Hopewell, New Jersey. The news shocked a nation enthralled with the aviator, the first person to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. American law enforcement marshalled all its resources to return “Little Lindy” to the arms of his parents - and perhaps even more energized were the legions of journalists catering to a public whose appetite for Lindbergh news was insatiable.