Presents a comprehensive analysis of research on content-related media harm and offense. This book brings together findings on both established and newer interactive media. In today's media and communications environment, pressing questions arise regarding the media's potential for harm, especially in relation to children. This fully revised edition offers a unique and comprehensive analysis of the latest research on content-related media harm and offense. For the first time, a balanced, critical account brings together findings on both established and newer, interactive media.Arguing against asking simple questions about media effects, the case is made for contextualizing media content and use within a multi-factor, risk-based framework in order to guide future research and policy formation.

This book is a comprehensive introduction to media ethics and an exploration of how it must change to adapt to today's media revolution. Using an ethical framework for the new 'mixed media' ethics – taking in the global, interactive media produced by both citizens and professionals – Stephen J. A. Ward discusses the ethical issues which occur in both mainstream and non-mainstream media, from newspapers and broadcast to social media users and bloggers. He re-defines traditional conceptions of journalistic truth-seeking, objectivity and minimizing harm, and examines the responsible use of images in an image-saturated public sphere. He also draws the contours of a future media ethics for the 'new mainstream media' and puts forward cosmopolitan principles for a global media ethics. His book will be invaluable for all students of media and for others who are interested in media ethics.

This book explores different forms of mediated offence in the context of Trump's America, Brexit Britain, and the rise of far-right movements across the globe. In this political landscape, the so-called ‘right to offend’ is often seen as a legitimate weapon against a ‘political correctness gone mad’ that stifles ‘free speech’. Against the backdrop of these current developments, this book aims to generate a productive dialogue among scholars working in a variety of intellectual disciplines, geographical locations and methodological traditions. The contributors share a concern about the complex and ambiguous nature of offence as well as about the different ways in which this so-called ‘negative affect’ comes to matter in our everyday and socio-political lives. Through a series of instructive case studies of recent media provocations, the authors illustrate how being offended is more than an individual feeling and is, instead, closely tied to political structures and power relations.

Speech, Media, and Ethics: The Limits of Free Expression is an interdisciplinary work that employs ethics, liberal philosophy, and legal and media studies to outline the boundaries to freedom of expression and freedom of the press, defined broadly to include the right to demonstrate and to picket, the right to compete in elections, and the right to communicate views via the written and electronic media. Moral principles are applied to analyze practical questions that deal with free expression and its limits.

From the mid-1990s onwards concerns regarding the exposure of children to harmful content in the increasingly digital media environment intensified. Soon thereafter policy makers across Europe realised that alternative regulatory instruments, such as self- and co-regulation, might be more appropriate than traditional legislation to address this matter of public interest. Taking the complex and delicate nature of protecting minors into account, this book provides an in-depth legal analysis of the alternative regulatory instruments that can be used to regulate content in the digital era, with particular attention to the protection of fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression, privacy and procedural guarantees, internal market regulation, competition rules, and implementation requirements.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2023 The Myth of Harm engages and analyses controversies generated by horror that examines some of the most high-profile media debates around the issue of whether or not horror texts corrupt children. The horror genre has endured a long and controversial success within popular culture. Fraught with accusations pertaining to its alleged ability to harm and corrupt young people and indeed society as a whole, the genre is constantly under pressure to suppress that which has made it so popular to begin with - its ability to frighten and generate discussion about society's darker side. Recognising the circularity of patterns in each generational manifestation of horror censorship, The Myth of Harm draws upon cases such as the Slenderman stabbing and the James Bulger murder amongst many others in order to explore the manner in which horror has been repeatedly cast as a harmful influence upon children at the expense of scrutinising other more complex social issues. Focusing on five major controversies beginning in the 1930's Golden Age of Horror Cinema and ending on a more contemporary note with Cyber-Gothic horror – this book identifies and considers the various myths and false hoods surrounding the genre of horror and question the very motivation behind the proliferation and dissemination of these myths as scapegoats for political and social issues, platforms for “moral entrepreneurs” and tools of hyperbolae for the news industry.