Media Studies Politics

Large corporations, big governments, and other centralized organizations have long determined and dominated the way we work, access healthcare, get an education, feed ourselves, and generally go about our lives.

Las redes sociales nos han llevado a un nuevo mundo en el que vivimos cercados por las opiniones ajenas. Lo que parecía la conquista total de la libertad de expresión ha hecho que una parte de la ciudadanía se revuelva, incómoda. Grupos de presión organizados en las redes -católicos, feministas, activistas de izquierdas y derechas- han empezado a perseguir lo que consideran «excesos» intolerables mediante el linchamiento digital, las peticiones de boicot y las recogidas de firmas.

Religious-liberty lawyer Asma Uddin has long considered her work defending people of all faiths to be a calling more than a job. Yet even as she seeks equal protection for Evangelicals, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Native Americans, Jews, and Catholics alike, she has seen an ominous increase in attempts to criminalize Islam and exclude American Muslims from their inalienable rights. Somehow, the view that Muslims aren’t human enough for human rights or constitutional protections is moving from the fringe to the mainstream - along with the claim “Islam is not a religion.”

True Christians have been persecuted throughout the Church Age, and in some parts of the world continue in great trials. But the Savior is always there providing comfort and strength. No marvel, for Christ warned his followers that this would happen. Here, in Martyr of the Catacombs, we get a glimpse of the heinous persecutions in Ancient Rome and look inside the lives of those Christians whose very lives depended upon the place of refuge beneath the city of Rome.

Mab Segrest explores her singular experience as a white lesbian organizing against a virulent Far Right movement in North Carolina in this best-selling political memoir.

A sharecropper, a warrior, and a truth-telling prophet, Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) stands as a powerful symbol not only of the 1960s Black freedom movement, but also of the enduring human struggle against oppression. This is a rhetorical biography that tells the story of Hamer's life by focusing on how she employed symbols - images, words, and even material objects such as the ballot, food, and clothing - to construct persuasive public personae, to influence audiences, and to effect social change.

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.

Marriage equality has surged across the country. Closet doors have burst open in business, entertainment, and even major-league sports. But as longtime advocate Michelangelo Signorile argues in his most provocative book yet, the excitement of such breathless change makes this moment more dangerous than ever.

The Facebook Narcissist is the first book dedicated to exploring the relationship between narcissism and social media. Lena Derhally, a licensed psychotherapist certified in Imago therapy, delves into how social media enhances individual and cultural narcissism and how it may create or exacerbate toxic narcissistic tendencies in people who use it. Social media is here to stay, but with education and awareness on how it makes us and the world more narcissistic, we can change the narrative and focus on the ways in which social media can be positive, and even improve the world.

Seeking ways to understand video games beyond their imperial logics, Patterson turns to erotics to re-invigorate the potential passions and pleasures of play. Video games vastly outpace all other mediums of entertainment in revenue and in global reach. On the surface, games do not appear ideological, nor are they categorized as national products. Instead, they seem to reflect the open and uncontaminated reputation of information technology. Like literature and film before it, video games have become the main artistic expression of empire today.

Recounts the story of America’s last great newspaper war between the New York Daily News and the New York Post, as both papers’ long rivalry turned existential amid the rise of digital news. The story is told through the eyes of the reporters, or “runners”, and photographers who fought the war on the ground in cities across America.

Prostitution in the Digital Age: Selling Sex From the Suite to the Street explores the sex trade in modern times. For those without direct experience with the seamy, real-life world of prostitution, it can be easy to accept the glamorized depictions of the sex-for-sale industry as it is often portrayed in fiction and Hollywood or sensationalized in the media. In reality, the business of sexual exploitation such as prostitution, sex trafficking, pornography, and sex tourism is far from attractive and, in many instances, can be dangerous, if not deadly.

Michael Levine shows how to get media exposure without hiring an expensive publicist. In clear, concise, and practical language, he explains the procedures he uses every day to get press for major stars. He tells how his techniques can be adapted to fit a small budget and be effective for any kind of company seeking publicity.

What if all the bad news you've been hearing about Christians isn't true? Here are some facts that may surprise you: Evangelicals are more respected by society today than they were 20 years ago. Divorce rates of Christian couples are lower than those of nonbelievers. The percentage of young people who attend church has held steady over the past 20 years. All these statements are true, yet we’ve been told the opposite time and time again. Why is the church being misled?

In Truth: How the Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality, Hector Macdonald explores how truth is used and abused in politics, business, the media and everyday life. He shows how a clearer understanding of truth's many faces renders us better able to navigate our world and more influential within it. Combining great storytelling with practical takeaways and a litany of fascinating, funny, and insightful case studies, Truth is a sobering and engaging listen about how profoundly our mindsets and actions are influenced by the truths that those around us choose to tell.

The Radical Mind is a groundbreaking analysis of the origins of the Christian Right, whose political victories are radically reshaping the landscape of American society. Scholars and the public alike have traditionally regarded the New Right and the Christian Right as separate movements. Insofar as both are conservative efforts, most people view them as reactionary and driven by a culture-war backlash against liberal changes to society.

The Beatles: Image and the Media charts the transformation of the Beatles from teen idols to leaders of the youth movement and powerful cultural agents. Drawing upon American mainstream print media, broadcasts, albums, films, and videos, the study covers the band's career in the United States. Michael R. Frontani explores how the Beatles' media image evolved and how this transformation related to cultural and historical events.

Communication professor and CNN Opinion contributor Kara Alaimo reveals how social media is affecting every aspect of the lives of women and girls—from our relationships and our parenting to our physical and mental well-being. Over the Influence is an audiobook about what it means to live in the world social media has wrought—whether you’re constantly connected or have deleted your accounts forever.

As consumers of art, and especially as fans, we have a host of tricky moral question to navigate: do the moral lives of artists affect the aesthetic quality of their work? In Drawing the Line, Erich Hatala Matthes argues that it doesn't matter whether we can separate the art from the artist, because we shouldn't. Matthes argues both that the lives of artists can play an important role in shaping our moral and aesthetic relationship to the artworks that we love and that these same artworks offer us powerful resources for grappling with the immorality of their creators.

Life-long liberal Kirsten Powers blasts the Left's forced march towards conformity in an exposé of the illiberal war on free speech. No longer champions of tolerance and free speech, the "illiberal Left" now viciously attacks and silences anyone with alternative points of view. Powers asks, "Whatever happened to free speech in America?"