“Music is a powerful tool in galvanizing people around an issue. There's no better way to get your point across than to put it in a beautiful song.” -- Ed SheeranDecember 2011, a ginger-haired performer hit rock bottom. Distanced from his family at a young age in an effort to make it in the music industry, this ambitious young musician put it all on the line. He used his God-given talent for small wages and beer and thankfully so with a lack of alternative income and ability to put...

In the late 2010s, the United States experienced a period of widespread silencing. Protests of unsafe drinking water have been met with tear gas; national park employees, environmentalists, and scientists have been ordered to stop communicating publicly. Advocates for gun control are silenced even as mass shootings continue. Expressed dissent to political power is labeled as “fake news.” DREAMers, Muslims, Trans military members, women, black bodies, the LGBTQI+ community, Latina/o/x commu...

Black Love Matters is an in-depth qualitative analysis that focuses on a diverse group of adult black men and their attitudes towards behavior in marriage and romantic relationships. To give voice to the men's narratives, Black Love Matters follows the men for four years, chronicling the experiences and the circumstances shaping their relationship trajectories. Highlights include discussions related to the roles that sex, infidelity, intimacy, trauma, family of origin, masculinity, and env...

The honest, entertaining and brilliantly relatable Sunday Times bestseller.Kate Lawler has never been maternal. And yet here she is: mother to Noa, after years of going back and forth about having children at all. This is the story of her journey from parentally undecided to early motherhood, via raging hormones, sleepless nights, emergency hospital trips, mum guilt, unspoken regrets and post-natal depression.This book is not a parenting manual. It...

A new audiobook from the author of Billy and Me about love and the unbreakable bonds of friendship. Read by Kate Rawson and Ben Elliot.Maddy, dressed in white, stands at the back of the church. At the end of the aisle is Rob - the man she's about to marry. Next to Rob is Ben - best man and the best friend any two people ever had.And that's the problem.Because if it wasn't Rob waiting for her at the altar, there's a strong chance it would be...

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity.Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New...

Just about any social need is now met with an opportunity to "connect" through digital means. But this convenience is not free—it is purchased with vast amounts of personal data transferred through shadowy backchannels to corporations using it to generate profit. The Costs of Connection uncovers this process, this "data colonialism," and its designs for controlling our lives—our ways of knowing; our means of production; our political participation.Colonialism might seem li...

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...

Written for students studying intercultural communication for the first time, this textbook gives a thorough introduction to inter- and cross-cultural concepts with a focus on practical application and social action.Provides a thorough introduction to inter- and cross-cultural concepts for beginning students with a focus on practical application and social actionDefines “communication” broadly using authors from a variety of sub disciplines and incorporating scienti...

Buying (RED) products—from Gap T-shirts to Apple—to fight AIDS.Drinking a “Caring Cup” of coffee at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf tosupport fair trade. Driving a Toyota Prius to fight global warming. Allthese commonplace activities point to a central feature of contemporaryculture: the most common way we participate in social activism is bybuying something.Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser have gathered an exemplarygroup of scholars to ...

2022 PROSE Award FinalistDrawing on narratives from hundreds of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous individuals, Ebony Omotola McGee examines the experiences of underrepresented racially minoritized students and faculty members who have succeeded in STEM. Based on this extensive research, McGee advocates for structural and institutional changes to address racial discrimination, stereotyping, and hostile environments in an effort to make the field more in...