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 power drills?

A completely updated edition of a seminal work on fans and how fandom shapes the culture, social relations, economic models, and politics of our age.We are all fans. Whether we follow our favorite celebrities on Twitter, attend fan conventions such as Comic Con, or simply wait with bated breath for the next episode of our favorite television drama—each of us is a fan.Recognizing that fandom is not unusual, but rather a universal subculture, the contributions ...

Explores how digitalization has transformed global media entertainment and the making of popular culturesIn the three decades since the rise of the global internet, digitalization has transformed how media are made, circulated, and consumed, reshaping culture on a planetary scale. Yet the story of global media is not one of seamless connection or cultural homogenization. Planet Digital challenges the myth of a “global village,” revealing instead how region...

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 ...

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 ...

A range of perspectives on the complex political, philosophical, and pragmatic implications of opening research and scholarship through digital technologies.The Open Access Movement proposes to remove price and permission barriers for accessing peer-reviewed research work--to use the power of the internet to duplicate material at an infinitesimal cost-per-copy. In this volume, contributors show that open access does not exist in a technological vacuum; there are co...

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...

A Companion to Media Authorship“Gray and Johnson have brought together a stellar group of authors whose works deftly explicate the complexities of negotiating ‘authorship’ across a range of cultural production sites. This definitive collection is an important and long-overdue contribution to contemporary media studies.”Serra Tinic, author of On Location: Canada’s Television Industry in a Global Market“Wide-ranging and global, historical and ...

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...

Statistical data and evidence-based claims are increasingly central to our everyday lives. Critically examining ‘Big Data’, this book charts the recent explosion in sources of data, including those precipitated by global developments and technological change. It sets out changes and controversies related to data harvesting and construction, dissemination and data analytics by a range of private, governmental and social organisations in multiple settings.Analysing the power of data ...

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...

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...