Social Sciences Media Studies

Covens. Girl bands. Ballet troupes. Convents. In all times and places, girls and women have come together in communities of vocation, of necessity, of support. In Witches, Sam George-Allen explores how magic happens wherever women gather. Female farmers change the way we grow our food. Online beauty communities democratize skin-care rituals. And more than any other demographic, it’s teen girls that shape our culture.

The word “refugee” sparks conversation and fuels emotion. There are more than 22 million refugees worldwide and another 65 million who have been forcibly displaced. But who are these people? Images filter into our consciousness via dramatic photographs - but these photos only offer a glimpse into their stories. As a young ER nurse in Boston, Roberta Gately was stopped cold by stark images of big-bellied babies with empty haunting stares in the news. She called the aid organization featured in the news story, and, within two months, she had become a humanitarian aid worker.

One cannot turn on the news today without a report on an extreme-weather event or the latest update on Antarctica. But while our politicians argue, the truth is that climate change is already here. Nobody knows this better than Indigenous peoples, who, having developed an intimate relationship with ecosystems over generations, have observed these changes for decades. For them, climate change is not an abstract concept or policy issue, but the reality of daily life.

In Good Evening, Friends, Houston's iconic Eyewitness News anchor Dave Ward shares his untold personal and professional stories. Known as “the most trusted voice in Houston”, Ward first joined ABC's KTRK-Channel 13 in 1966 and today hosts Dave Ward's Houston on ABC13. His journey from a simple life as the son of an East Texas pastor to become a welcome daily presence in the homes of millions of Houstonians unfolds as if it were preordained.

"Big Data" is on the covers of Science, Nature, The Economist, and Wired magazines, on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. But despite the media hyperbole, as Christine Borgman points out in this examination of data and scholarly research, having the right data is usually better than having more data; little data can be just as valuable as big data. Borgman, an often-cited authority on scholarly communication, argues that data have no value or meaning in isolation; they exist within a knowledge infrastructure.

To succeed in science and tech fields today, girls don't have to change who they are. A girl who combines her natural talents, interests, and dreams with STEM skills has a greater shot at a career she loves and a salary she deserves. The authors present compelling research in a conversational, accessible style and provide specific advice and takeaways for each stage of schooling from elementary school through college, followed by comprehensive STEM resources.

Information is power. It drives commerce, protects nations, and forms the backbone of systems that range from health care to high finance. Yet despite the avalanche of data available in today's information age, neither institutions nor individuals get the information they truly need to make well-informed decisions. Faulty information and sub-optimal decision-making create an imbalance of power that is exaggerated as governments and corporations amass enormous databases on each of us.

BILD ist das mächtigste Medium des Landes - auch in Zeiten des Internets. Sie bestimmt, worüber Deutschland spricht. Welchen Anteil hat die Redaktion am Aufstieg der Populisten? Wie geht sie mit Minderheiten um? Und auf welche Weise manipuliert sie die Öffentlichkeit? 44 Jahre nach Günter Wallraffs "Aufmacher" gibt nun ein Buch neue, erschreckende Einblicke in die Machenschaften der BILD-Medien. Die Journalisten Mats Schönauer und Moritz Tschermak beobachten und analysieren seit einem Jahrzehnt, wie BILD arbeitet.

A seminal work in the history of sociology and a cornerstone of African American literature. Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African American in American society. Outside of its notable relevance in African American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works in the field of sociology.

The television industry is changing, and with it, the small screen's potential to engage in debate and present valuable representations of American history. Founded in 1972, HBO has been at the forefront of these changes, leading the way for many network, cable, and streaming services into the "post-network" era. Despite this, most scholarship has been dedicated to analyzing historical feature films and documentary films, leaving TV and the long-form drama hungry for coverage. Rebecca Weeks fills the gap in this area and defends the historiographic power of long-form dramas.

Facebook, Google, X (Twitter) & Co., die "Big Tech" genannten IT-Riesen aus dem Silicon Valley, glauben, die Kommunikationsstandards von Milliarden Menschen über ihre Richtlinien und Standards vorschreiben zu können. Diese Anmaßung erfolgt ohne jede demokratische Legitimation. Durch ihre geradezu monopolistische Stellung bestimmen sie die Rahmenbedingungen öffentlicher Kommunikation. Mit dramatischen Konsequenzen: tausendfacher Rechtsbruch, digitale Massenvernichtung freier Rede und drastische Eingriffe in die Meinungsfreiheit sind die Folge.

Die Vereinigten Staaten befinden sich mitten in einem neuen Bürgerkrieg, der mit den Waffen der Mediengesellschaft ausgetragen wird - und erleben in der Weltkrise 2020 eine multiple Katastrophe. Klaus Brinkbäumer und Stephan Lamby berichten von den zahlreichen Fronten. Nach vier Jahren einer fatalen Präsidentschaft sind die USA eine wütende, nur noch im Hass vereinte Nation. Die unterschiedlichen politischen Lager haben ihre diplomatischen Beziehungen abgebrochen und stehen sich auf medialen Schlachtfeldern gegenüber.

Noir - as a style, movement, or sensibility - has its roots in hardboiled detective fiction by writers like Chandler and Hammett, and films adapted from their novels were among the first called "film noir" by French cineastes. But film isn't the only medium with a taste for a dark story. Hundreds of noir dramas have been produced for television, featuring detectives and femmes fatales, gangsters, and dark deeds, continuing week after week, with a new disruption of the social order. In TV Noir, television historian Allen Glover presents the first complete study of the subject.

In this holistic history, Will Mari traces American journalism from the 1920s through the 1960s, a time of great change and controversy in the field; one in which journalism was produced in “news factories”, by workers with dozens of different roles, using the latest technology, and setting the stage for the emergence of the information economy. Told from an empathetic, omnivorous, ground-up point of view, The American Newsroom uses memoirs, trade journals, textbooks, and archival material to show how the newsroom expanded our ideas of what journalism could and should be.

Los charlatanes de la era digital se cuelan todos los días en la actualidad informativa y cada vez es más difícil discernir la verdad entre las mentiras y las medias verdades. "Bullshit" es el ensayo que necesitamos para desenmascarar a los que manipulan los datos y se sirven del lenguaje científico para construir un discurso que no se ajusta a la realidad.

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.

Instagram está tan ligado a nuestro día a día que su historia no puede disociarse del impacto que tiene sobre nuestras vidas. Desde su creación en el año 2010 de la mano de Kevin Systrom y Mike Krieger como una aplicación simple e intuitiva, lnstagram se ha convertido en una máquina de hacer famosos como nunca antes se había visto -ya sea en el patio de los colegios, en el mundo cultural o en el de la moda- en busca de un reconocimiento digital que obtiene gracias a likes, comentarios, seguidores y espectaculares acuerdos con distintas empresas.

Beyond Bombshells analyzes the cultural importance of strong women in a variety of current media forms. Action heroines are now more popular in movies, comic books, television, and literature than they have ever been. Their spectacular presence represents shifting ideas about female agency, power, and sexuality. This book explores how action heroines reveal and reconfigure perceptions about how and why women are capable of physically dominating roles in modern fiction.

In News for the Rich, White, and Blue, Nikki Usher recasts the challenges facing journalism in terms of place, power, and inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of field research, she illuminates how journalists decide what becomes news and how news organizations strategize about the future. Usher shows how newsrooms remain places of power, largely white institutions growing more elite as journalists confront a shrinking job market.

Female writers, directors, and producers have radically transformed the television industry in recent years. Shonda Rhimes, Lena Dunham, Tina Fey, Amy Schumer, Mindy Kaling: These extraordinary women have shaken up the entertainment landscape, making it look like an equal opportunity dream factory. But things weren't always this rosy. It took decades of determination in the face of preconceived ideas and outright prejudice to reach this new era.