A fascinating look into what happens when comedy becomes political and politics becomes comedySatirical TV has become mandatory viewing for citizens wishing to make sense of the bizarre contemporary state of political life. Shifts in industry economics and audience tastes have re-made television comedy, once considered a wasteland of escapist humor, into what is arguably the most popular source of political critique. From fake news and pundit shows to animated sitc...

Archaeologist Jonathan Gray stumbled upon something that shocked him!  … a whole cache of "out of place" items that should not exist. And they weren't just in one place. There was a global pattern to them. This pattern showed a lost science and technology. That's when he knew someone had to speak up. This content was of tremendous value. MACHINERY: Did you know that the Egyptians bored into granite rock with drills that turned 500 times faster than modern pow...

Highlights the trailers, merchandising and cultural conversations that shape our experiences of film and televisionIt is virtually impossible to watch a movie or TV show without preconceived notions because of the hype that precedes them, while a host of media extensions guarantees them a life long past their air dates. An onslaught of information from print media, trailers, internet discussion, merchandising, podcasts, and guerilla marketing, we generally know som...

When you combine the sheer scale and range of digital information now available with a journalist’s "nose for news" and her ability to tell a compelling story, a new world of possibility opens up. With The Data Journalism Handbook, you’ll explore the potential, limits, and applied uses of this new and fascinating field.This valuable handbook has attracted scores of contributors since the European Journalism Centre and the Open Knowledge Foundation launched the project at M...

Introduces key terms, research traditions, debates, and their histories, and offers a sense of the new frontiers and questions emerging in the field of media studiesKeywords for Media Studies introduces and aims to advance the field of critical media studies by tracing, defining, and problematizing its established and emergent terminology. The book historicizes thinking about media and society, whether that means noting a long history of “new media,” or tracing how...

Television entertainment rules supreme, one of the world’s most important disseminators of information, ideas, and amusement. More than a parade of little figures in a box, it is deeply embedded in everyday life, in how we think, what we think and care about, and who we think and care about it with.But is television entertainment art? Why do so many love it and so many hate or fear it? Does it offer a window to the world, or images of a fake world? How is it political and how does ...

Innovative methods in textual analysis to decode today’s ever-expanding media landscapeReading Media: How to do Textual Analysis reinvigorates one of media and cultural studies’ most foundational methods at a moment when it is most needed, showing its continuing vitality by adapting it to new media environments, cultural objects, and scholarly questions.The volume insists that the close study of meaning, form, and representation remains central to ...

Using our favourite Springfield family as a case study, Watching with The Simpsons examines the textual and social role of parody in offering critical commentary on other television programs and genres.Jonathan Gray brings together textual theory, discussions of television and the public sphere, and ideas of parody and comedy. Including primary audience research, it focuses on how The Simpsons has been able to talk back to three of television’s key genres - the si...

Television Studies provides an overview of the origins, central ideas, and intellectual traditions of this exciting field.What have been the primary areas of inquiry in television studies? Why and how did these areas develop? How have scholars studied them? How are they developing? What have been the discipline’s key works? This book answers these questions by tracing the history of television studies right up to the digital present, surveying emerging scholarship, and add...

Television History, the Peabody Archive, and Cultural Memory is the first edited volume devoted to the Peabody Awards Collection, a unique repository of radio and TV programs submitted yearly since 1941 for consideration for the prestigious Peabody Awards. The essays in this volume explore the influence of the Peabody Awards Collection as an archive of the vital medium of TV, turning their attention to the wealth of programs considered for Peabody Awards that were not honored and ...

Enter the Mirrorverse with a full-color hardcover volume that explores a new and divergent universe brought to life in the exciting action role playing game!Sinister forces are rising in the Mirrorverse, requiring champions mighty enough to meet the deadly challenge. The World of Disney Mirrorverse gives an in-depth look at powerfully amplified versions of Sulley, Baymax, Jack Skellington, Maleficent, Belle, Buzz Lightyear, Captain Jack Sparrow, Scar and m...

Television and film have always been connected, but recent years have seen them overlapping, collaborating, and moving towards each other in ever more ways. Set amidst this moment of unprecedented synergy, this book examines how television and film culture interact in the 21st century.Both media appear side by side in many platforms or venues, stories and storytellers cross between them, they regularly have common owners, and they discuss each other constantly. Jonathan Gray and De...