This book investigates the changing culture of grandparenting. Depending on the group, the period, and the family, grandparents have been powerful patriarchs and matriarchs, reliable second parents, dependents, burdens, or community figures. The book examines the history of grandparenting and the changing depiction of grandparent culture from “old” to “hip,” including the development of the celebrity grandparent, the emergence of media technologies that allow for new communication and rela...

In the twenty-first century, fatherhood is shifting from simply being a sidekick in the parental team to taking center stage with new expectations of involvement and caretaking. The social expectations of fathers start even before the children are born. Mr. Mom is now displaced with fathers who don’t think of themselves as babysitting their own children, but as central decision makers, along with mothers, as parents. Deconstructing Dads: Changing Images of Fathers in Popular Culture is an ...

Through history, interviews, anecdotes, and popular culture, this book examines pregnancy from all angles, covering changing expectations for pregnancy; new definitions of when fatherhood begins; the implications of new, earlier connections to the fetus; and the political, economic, and social consequences to the public.In the 21st century, pregnancy is more than a biological event—it's a cultural phenomenon. A Womb with a View: America's Growing Public Interes...

This timely, highly readable edited collection undertakes an interdisciplinary analysis of the innovative ways in which both the political process and the entertainment industry appeal to voters under the age of 30 and how the intended audience receives these endeavors. Along the way, contributors shed light on the state of the modern American political system and its relationship to entertainment and popular culture. By integrating academic investigations with a 'real-world' point of view...

From an acclaimed professor and former advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a passionate and edgy defense of free speech in Canada, and the role the internet plays in the issue.In February 2013, Tom Flanagan, acclaimed academic, University of Calgary professor, and former advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, made comments surrounding the issue of viewing child pornography that were tweeted from the event he was speaking at and broadcast worldwide. In the t...

The Book That Every Citizen and Journalist Should Read“What this book does better than any single book on media history, ethics, or practice isweave . . . [together] why media audiences have fled and why new technology and megacorporate ownership are putting good journalism at risk.” —Rasmi Simhan, Boston Globe“Kovach and Rosenstiel’s essays on each [element] are concise gems, filled with insights worthy of becoming axiomatic. . . . The book should become es...

Everywhere you look, these days, Conservatives are winning elections. No matter where you look, the story is the same: white, angry men on the Right are winning power. The Left, meanwhile, is divided and dispirited, and rapidly losing ground. Fight the Right is a handbook on how to survive the nasty, brutish and short-sighted era in which we find ourselves and is designed to help progressives better understand their conservative adversary, and ultimately defeat conservatives where...

The symptoms of the crisis of the U.S. media are well-known-a decline in hard news, the growth of info-tainment and advertorials, staff cuts and concentration of ownership, increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. McChesney's new book, The Problem of the Media, gets to the roots of this crisis, explains it, and points a way forward for the growing media reform movement.Moving consistently from critique to action, the book explores the po...

In July 1997, twenty-five of America's most influential journalists sat down to try and discover what had happened to their profession in the years between Watergate and Whitewater. What they knew was that the public no longer trusted the press as it once had. They were keenly aware of the pressures that advertisers and new technologies were putting on newsrooms around the country. But, more than anything, they were aware that readers, listeners, and viewers — the people who use the news —...

Substantial changes have occurred in the nature of political discourse over the past thirty years. Once, traditional media dominated the political landscape, but in recent years Facebook, Twitter, blogs and Blackberrys have emerged as important tools and platforms for political campaigns. While the Canadian party system has proved surprisingly resilient, the rhythms of political life are now very different. A never-ending 24-hour news cycle has resulted in a never-ending political campaign...

How seemingly innocuous technologies are unsettling the balance of power by putting it in the hands of the masses - and what a world without "big" will mean for all of us.In The End of Big, social media pioneer, political and business strategist, and Harvard Kennedy School faculty member Nicco Mele offers a fascinating, sometimes frightening look at how our ability to stay connected - constantly, instantly, and globally - is dramatically changing our world.G...

Celebrants and skeptics alike have produced valuable analyses of the Internet's effect on us and our world, oscillating between utopian bliss and dystopian hell. But according to Robert W. McChesney, arguments on both sides fail to address the relationship between economic power and the digital world.McChesney's award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy skewered the assumption that a society drenched in commercial information is a democratic one. In Digital Disconnect