Douglas Kellner elaborates upon his well known theory which explores how media spectacle can be used as a key to interpreting contemporary culture and politics. Grounded in both cultural and communication theory, Kellner argues that politics, war, news and information, media events (like terrorist attacks or royal weddings), and now democratic uprisings, are currently organized around media spectacles, and demonstrates how and why this has occurred. Rooting the discussions within key events of 2011 - including the war in Libya, the Arab Uprisings, the wedding of William Windsor to Kate Middleton, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and the Occupy movements - Media Spectacle and Insurrection, 2011 makes a highly relevant contribution to the field of media and communication studies. It offers a fresh perspective on the theme of contemporary media spectacle and politics by adopting an approach that is based around critical social and cultural theory. This series gives students a strong critical grounding from which to examine new media.

Media, Ideology and Hegemony contains a range of topics that provide readers with opportunities to think critically about the new digital world. This includes work on old and new media, on the corporate power structure in communication and information technology, and on government use of media to control citizens. Demonstrating that the new world of media is a hotly contested terrain, the book also uncovers the contradictions inherent in the system of digital power and documents how citizens are using media and information technology to actively resist repressive power. This collection of essays is grounded with a critical theoretical foundation, and is informed by the importance of undertaking the analysis in historical perspective. Contributors are: Alfonso M. Rodríguez de Austria Giménez de Aragon, Burton Lee Artz, Arthur Asa Berger, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Marco Briziarelli, Savaş Çoban, Jeffrey Hoffmann, Junhao Hong, Robert Jensen, Douglas Kellner, Thomas Klikauer, Peter Ludes, Tanner Mirrlees, Vincent Mosco, Victor Pickard, Padmaja Shaw, Nick Stevenson, Gerald Sussman, Minghua Xu.

The recent economic crisis, and the challenges to democracy in an increasingly globalized world, brings into sharp relief the importance of mass communication. This volume explores a range of issues, from the nature of communication, to the role of the media industry, to the way that mass communication has facilitated social movements in many parts of the world. Revisiting the works of Karl Marx and others, the essays bring a new perspective and a renewed interest in critical analyses of communication practices globally. This collection represents the cutting edge of communication research introducing a new generation of scholars to understanding changes in the way we learn about our society. Contributors are: Arthur Asa Berger, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Savaş Çoban, John Bellamy Foster, Christian Fuchs, Douglas Kellner, Robert W. McChesney, David Miller, Marisol Sandoval, Nick Stevenson, Gerald Sussman, Mandy Tröger, and Michael Wayne.

Global media and advances in technology have profoundly affected the way people experience events. The essays in this volume explore the dimensions of contemporary spectacles from the Arab Spring to spectatorship in Hollywood. Questioning the effects that spectacles have on their observers, the authors ask: Are viewers robbed of their autonomy, transformed into depoliticized and passive consumers, or rather are they drawn in to cohesive communities? Does their participation in an event—as audiences, activists, victims, tourists, and critics—change and complicate the event itself? Spectacle looks closely at the permeable boundaries between the reality and fiction of such events, the methods of their construction, and the implications of those methods.

Amid the extensive coverage of the Arab uprisings, the Gulf state of Bahrain has been almost forgotten. Fusing historical and contemporary analysis, Bahrain's Uprising seeks to fill this gap, examining the ongoing protests and state repression that continues today. Drawing on powerful testimonies, interviews, and conversations from those involved, this broad collection of writings by scholars and activists provides a rarely heard voice of the lived experience of Bahrainis, describing the way in which a sophisticated society, defined by a historical struggle, continues to hamper the efforts of the ruling elite to rebrand itself as a liberal monarchy.

As we enter a new millennium, it is clear that we are in the midst of one of the most dramatic technological revolutions in history that is changing everything from the ways that we work, communicate, participate in politics, and spend our leisure time. The technological revolution centers on computer, information, communication, and multimedia technologies, is often interpreted as the beginnings of a knowledge or information society, and therefore ascribes technologies a central role in every aspect of life. This Great Transformation poses tremendous challenges to critical social theorists, citizens, and educators to rethink their basic tenets, to deploy the media in creative and productive ways, and to restructure the workplace, social institutions, and schooling to respond constructively and progressively to the technological and social changes that we are now experiencing.

The election of Donald Trump as US President in 2016 seemed to catch the world napping. Like the vote for Brexit in the UK, there seemed to be a new de-synchronicity – a huge reality gap – between the unfolding of history and the mainstream news media’s interpretations of and reporting of contemporary events. Through a series of short, sharp interventions from academics and journalists, this book interrogates the emergent media war around Donald Trump. A series of interconnected themes are used to set an agenda for exploration of Trump as the lynch-pin in the fall of the liberal mainstream and the rise of the right media mainstream in the USA. By exploring topics such as Trump’s television celebrity, his presidential candidacy and data-driven election campaign, his use of social media, his press conferences and combative relationship with the mainstream media, and the question of ‘fake news’ and his administration’s defence of ‘alternative facts’, the contributors rally together to map the parallels of the seemingly momentous and continuing shifts in the wider relationship between media and politics.