In an age where film stars become presidents and politicians appear in pop videos, politics and popular culture have become inextricably interlinked. In this exciting new book, John Street provides a broad survey and analysis of this relationship.

Supporting you with varied features throughout, this intriguing new book provides a foundational understanding of politics and protest before focusing on step-by-step instructions for carrying out analysis on your own. It includes up to date cases, such as analysis of memes about Brexit, Trump and coronavirus, that cater for this quickly moving field.

While some have argued that we live in a ‘postfeminist’ era that renders feminism irrelevant to people’s contemporary lives this book takes ‘feminism’, the source of eternal debate, contestation and ambivalence, and situates the term within the popular, cultural practices of everyday life. It explores the intimate connections between the politics of feminism and the representational practices of contemporary popular culture, examining how feminism is ‘made sensible’ through visual imagery and popular culture representations. It investigates how popular culture is produced, represented and consumed to reproduce the conditions in which feminism is valued or dismissed, and asks whether antifeminism exists in commodity form and is commercially viable. Written in an accessible style and analysing a broad range of popular culture artefacts (including commercial advertising, printed and digital news-related journalism and commentary, music, film, television programming, websites and social media), this book will be of use to students, researchers and practitioners of International Relations, International Political Economy and gender, cultural and media studies.

Popular Culture and the Future of Politics: Cultural Studies and the Tao of South Park argues that progressives should conceive the connections between media, policy, and culture beyond the limits of 'politics' and 'news.' With sustained analyses of groundbreaking contemporary examples of what has become known as 'convergence culture,' Ted Gournelos brings together a wide range of media without sacrificing depth. His examples, such as South Park, The Simpsons, The Onion, The Daily Show, Chappelle's Show, and The Boondocks, are chosen for their political scope and social impact and demonstrate the ways in which what we know as 'politics' is rapidly changing. The book's forays into established fields like feminist, race, and queer theory are combined with perspectives drawn from political economy and rhetoric to demonstrate the power of irony, humor, and cultural dissonance in modern approaches to dissonant cultural politics.

At a time when polls show that two-thirds of Americans think George W. Bush is doing a great job running the country, comedian Baratunde Thurston says, "The other one-third can read."That one-third will want to read Better Than Crying, a collection of humor essays, articles and jokes focused on American politics, the media and pop culture. With fascinating revelations such as the day Dick Cheney died, what goes on inside the house of boy band O-Town and how John Ashcroft will use pork plantations in the war on terror, Better Than Crying will be the funniest book released on its publication date.

The first introductory textbook to situate popular culture studies in the United States as an academic discipline with its own history and approach to examining American culture, its rituals, beliefs, and the objects that shape its existence.

Can politics be combined with entertainment? Can political involvement and participation be fun? Politics and popular culture are converging all the time, whether it's in Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as governor of California or in political television dramas and movies like The West Wing and Dave. This book encourages readers to think about how links between entertainment and politics have the potential to rejuvenate citizenship, endorse civic values, and sustain civic commitment. Instead of discarding the popular as irrelevant or dangerous to the democratic process, Liesbet van Zoonen shows us the possibilities for increasing political knowledge and participation through the arenas of politics and popular music, political "soaps," political television dramas, and politicians as celebrities. A first-rate starting point for debate, Entertaining the Citizen will stimulate and entertain students and general readers alike.