Social Sciences Media Studies

The media of the 1950s and 1960s promoted an idealized version of American life sustained by the nuclear family and bolstered by a booming consumer economy. The seemingly wholesome and simple lifestyles portrayed on television screens, however, belied a torrent of social, economic, and political struggles occurring at the time. By the late 1950s, television writers were increasingly constrained to distract audiences from confronting counternarratives to the Dream.

Mississippi, 1955: 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered by a white mob after making flirtatious remarks to a white woman, Carolyn Bryant. Till's attackers were never convicted, but his lynching became one of the most notorious hate crimes in American history. It launched protests across the country, helped the NAACP gain thousands of members, and inspired famous activists like Rosa Parks to stand up and fight for equal rights for the first time.

With each passing day the potential reach of a single false news story — and its ability to negatively impact all of us — grows in both size and scope. Although politicians, activists, and ordinary citizens regularly complain about deceptive or biased news reports, they tend to define fake news as anything with which they happen to disagree, thus compounding the problem even further.

No one understands these problems (and people) better than Krakauer. He has spent years getting to know the most influential players in the industry and this fascinating book is what he’s learned. But most importantly, Krakauer equips listeners with the crucial tools to sniff out when the press is lying or misleading the people of America in the future—so together, we can bypass them altogether.

Using information in its everyday, nonspecialized sense, Michael Buckland explores the influence of information on what we know, the role of communication and recorded information in our daily lives, and the difficulty (or ease) of finding information. He shows that all this involves human perception, social behavior, changing technologies, and issues of trust.

The internet was created on the basis that all users are equal, but children and the vulnerable are not. In Born Digital, Robert Wigley distils the mountains of available research on the subject and brings to bear his wealth of institutional experience to present a road map for society to radically and urgently reset its relationship with technology - for the sake of future generations.

Everyone deplores narcissism, especially in others. The vain are by turns annoying or absurd, offending us whether they are blissfully oblivious or proudly aware of their behavior. But are narcissism and vanity really as bad as they seem? Can we avoid them even if we try? In Mirror, Mirror, Simon Blackburn, the author of such best-selling philosophy books as Think, Being Good, and Lust, says that narcissism, vanity, pride, and self-esteem are more complex than they first appear and have innumerable good and bad forms.

For years we have been told to make lists and obsessively monitor when we’re angry, what we eat, how much we worry, and how often we go to the gym. So why isn’t everyone healthy? Now based on the most extensive study of long life ever conducted The Longevity Project reveals what really matters across the long run—the personality traits, relationships, experiences, and career paths that naturally keep you vital.

The public intellectual, as a person and ideal, has a long and storied history. Writing in venues like the New Republic and Commentary, such intellectuals were always expected to opine on a broad array of topics, from foreign policy to literature to economics. Yet in recent years a new kind of thinker has supplanted that archetype: the thought leader. Equipped with one big idea, thought leaders focus their energies on TED talks rather than highbrow periodicals.

Owned is the story of the underreported and growing collusion between new wealth and new journalism. In recent years, right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks have turned to media as their next investment and source of influence. Their cronies are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi—once known as idealistic and left-leaning voices, now beneficiaries of Silicon Valley largesse. Together, this new alliance aims to exploit the failings of traditional journalism and undermine the very idea of an independent and fact-based fourth estate.

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.

Une plongée sans précédent dans les eaux troubles du "quatrième pouvoir" ! Aude Lancelin, ancienne directrice adjointe de L'Obs et de Marianne, raconte de l'intérieur un système médiatique français à la dérive... et en miroir, une gauche en pleine déliquescence qui a perdu tous ses repères. Un an avant une élection présidentielle, la "numéro deux" du plus célèbre hebdomadaire de la gauche française est brutalement licenciée.

The author of the acclaimed Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them) brings “her singular sensibility, her genius for language, her love of our deeply imperfect world” (Karen Karbo, author of In Praise of Difficult Women) to this insightful exploration of reality TV and the shifting definitions of truth in America.

Delving into speculation about the assassination of JFK, chemtrails, the emergence of the 'New World Order', the sinister experiments at CERN, possible cover-ups regarding Area 51, and the so-called 'Clinton Body Count', this collection provides an essential reference for everyone interested in learning more about the secret forces that may be controlling our world. Taking a balanced and measured approach, it explores why these theories have taken hold, and how much truth lies at their foundations. Do you believe them? Listen to find out.

The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought, and the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093. Dramatizing science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, The Collapse of Western Civilization reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do, providing a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate-change literature.

During the recent presidential election, "media literacy" became a buzzword that signified the threat media manipulation posed to democratic processes. Meanwhile, statistical research has shown that eight- to eighteen-year-olds pack more than eleven hours with some form of media into each day by "media multitasking." Young people are not only eager and interested to learn about and discuss the realities of media ownership, production, and distribution, they also deserve to understand differential power structures in how media influences our culture.

In his final speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop," Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his support of African American garbage workers on strike in Memphis. Although some consider this oration King's finest, it is mainly known for its concluding two minutes, wherein King compares himself to Moses and seems to predict his own assassination. But King gave an hour-long speech, and the concluding segment can only be understood in relation to the whole.

Katharine Jenkins offers an introduction to feminist philosophy, giving the listener an idea of what it is, why it is important, and how to think about it. She explores key topics such as gender oppression, beauty, objectification, and sexuality. Moreover, she considers questions about the relation between the personal and the political, what it is to be a woman, whether there is a distinctive kind of women's knowledge, and what feminist philosophy can bring to our understanding of such aspects of our world as justice, work, and the environment.

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was Douglass' third autobiography. In it he was able to go into greater detail about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery, as he and his family were no longer in any danger from the reception of his work. In this engrossing narrative he recounts early years of abuse; his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist campaigns, and his crusade for full civil rights for former slaves.

The distinguished American civil rights leader, W. E. B. DuBois first published these fiery essays, sketches, and poems individually in 1920 in the Atlantic, the Journal of Race Development, and other periodicals. Reflecting the author's ideas as a politician, historian, and artist, this volume has long moved and inspired readers with its militant cry for social, political, and economic reform. It is essential reading for all students of African American history.