Given the prominence of the electronic media in the 21st century, it is crucial that both media professionals and consumers know how to decipher and evaluate media content, the assumptions on which that content is based, and the constraints to which it is subject. Electronic Media Criticismoffers a variety of critical approaches to audio and video discourse. Rather than restricting itself to one perspective, the book applies key aesthetic, sociological, philosophical, psychological, structural, and economic principles to arrive at a comprehensive evaluation of both programming and advertising content. Maintaining the approach of the original volume, this second edition includes: * updated chapters to reflect the current media world, including sample reviews and illustrations, * material pertaining to "new media"--because the book is process-oriented rather than medium-oriented, Internet referents are interspersed in discussion of the various critical perspectives, * two additional scripts for critical analysis--an episode of The Simpsonsand an installment of the dark Canadian comedy The Newsroom,and * new exercises for further practice in applying critical procedures. Orlik interweaves the insights of industry and academic authorities, recognizing that both orientations are essential in the development of a valid and viable critical outlook. Written for media students and practitioners, all readers of this volume will gain feasible and flexible tools for focused and rational analysis of electronic media products, as well as improved understanding of the role and essential ingredients of criticism itself.

Media Criticism in a Digital Age introduces readers to a variety of critical approaches to audio and video discourse on radio, television and the Internet. It is intended for those preparing for electronic media careers as well as for anyone seeking to enhance their media literacy. This book takes the unequivocal view that the material heard and seen over digital media is worthy of serious consideration. Media Criticism in a Digital Age applies key aesthetic, sociological, philosophical, psychological, structural and economic principles to arrive at a comprehensive evaluation of programming and advertising content. It offers a rich blend of insights from both industry and academic authorities. These insights range from the observations of Plato and Aristotle to the research that motivates twenty-first century marketing and advertising. Key features of the book are comprised of: multiple video examples including commercials, cartoons and custom graphics to illustrate core critical concepts; chapters reflecting today’s media world, including coverage of broadband and social media issues; fifty perceptive critiques penned by a variety of widely respected media observers and; a supplementary website for professors that provides suggested exercises to accompany each chapter (www.routledge .com/cw/orlik) Media Criticism in a Digital Age equips emerging media professionals as well as perceptive consumers with the evaluative tools to maximize their media understanding and enjoyment.

Digital Media Criticism is an introductory text about media criticism - the act of interpreting and making sense of a range of new media texts that we use (and create) on a daily basis - offering a critical language and a methodological template for interrogating and analyzing the complex texts of digital media. Individual chapters connect key methods of media criticism - genre, auteur, cultural/ideological, and ethnographic - with digital culture. Case studies of social media, user generated content, cell phones, and video games are provided, which include everything from downloading ring tones and making new (Facebook) friends, to creating an avatar, texting, and opening a window on RL (real-life). Insightful and accessible, the book looks at the possibilities and limits of the digital age for us - as creators, consumers, and distributors of content. It will be useful to undergraduates studying media criticism, digital culture and communication, and media literacy, and is written to invite them into a conversation about the culture of the digital age.

Methods of Historical Analysis in Electronic Media provides a foundation for historical research in electronic media by addressing the literature and the methods--traditional and the eclectic methods of scholarship as applied to electronic media. It is about history--broadcast electronic media history and history that has been broadcast, and also about the historiography, research written, and the research yet to be written. Divided into five parts, this book: *addresses the challenges in the application of the historical methods to broadcast history; *reviews the various methods appropriate for electronic-media research based on the nature of the object under study; *suggests new approaches to popular historical topics; *takes a broad topical look at history in broadcasting; and *provides a broad overview of what has been accomplished, a historian's challenges, and future research. Intended for students and researchers in broadcast history, Methods of Historical Analysis in Electronic Media provides an understanding of the qualitative methodological tools necessary for the study of electronic media history, and illustrates how to find primary sources for electronic media research.

This volume examines the consequences, implications, and opportunities associated with issues of diversity in the electronic media. With a focus on race and gender, the chapters represent diverse approaches, including social scientific, humanistic, critical, and rhetorical. The contributors consider race and gender issues in both historical and contemporary electronic media, and their work is presented in three sections: content, context (audiences, effects, and reception), and culture (media industries, policy, and production). In this book, the authors investigate, problematize, and theorize a variety of concerns which at their core relate to issues of difference. How do we use media to construct and understand different social groups? How do the media represent and affect our engagement with and responses to different social groups? How can we understand these processes and the environment within which they occur? Although this book focuses on the differences associated with race and gender, the questions raised by and the theoretical perspectives presented in the chapters are applicable to other forms of socially-constructed difference.

How have changes in media affected our everyday experience, behavior, and sense of identity? Such questions have generated endless arguments and speculations, but no thinker has addressed the issue with such force and originality as Joshua Meyrowitz in No Sense of Place. Advancing a daring and sophisticated theory, Meyrowitz shows how television and other electronic media have created new social situations that are no longer shaped by where we are or who is "with" us. While other media experts have limited the debate to message content, Meyrowitz focuses on the ways in which changes in media rearrange "who knows what about whom" and "who knows what compared to whom," making it impossible for us to behave with each other in traditional ways. No Sense of Place explains how the electronic landscape has encouraged the development of: -More adultlike children and more childlike adults; -More career-oriented women and more family-oriented men; and -Leaders who try to act more like the "person next door" and real neighbors who want to have a greater say in local, national, and international affairs. The dramatic changes fostered by electronic media, notes Meyrowitz, are neither entirely good nor entirely bad. In some ways, we are returning to older, pre-literate forms of social behavior, becoming "hunters and gatherers of an information age." In other ways, we are rushing forward into a new social world. New media have helped to liberate many people from restrictive, place-defined roles, but the resulting heightened expectations have also led to new social tensions and frustrations. Once taken-for-granted behaviors are now subject to constant debate and negotiation. The book richly explicates the quadruple pun in its title: Changes in media transform how we sense information and how we make sense of our physical and social places in the world.

What do we think of when we think of literary critics? Enlightenment snobs in powdered wigs? Professional experts? Cloistered academics? Through the end of the 20th century, book review columns and literary magazines held onto an evolving but stable critical paradigm, premised on expertise, objectivity, and carefully measured response. And then the Internet happened. From the editors of Review 31 and 3:AM Magazine, The Digital Critic brings together a diverse group of perspectives—early-adopters, Internet skeptics, bloggers, novelists, editors, and others—to address the future of literature and scholarship in a world of Facebook likes, Twitter wars, and Amazon book reviews. It takes stock of the so-called Literary Internet up to the present moment, and considers the future of criticism: its promise, its threats of decline, and its mutation, perhaps, into something else entirely. With contributions from Robert Barry, Russell Bennetts, Michael Bhaskar, Louis Bury, Lauren Elkin, Scott Esposito, Marc Farrant, Orit Gat, Thea Hawlin, Ellen Jones, Anna Kiernan, Luke Neima, Will Self, Jonathon Sturgeon, Sara Veale, Laura Waddell, and Joanna Walsh.