mass media

"[This book] provides readers with the tools and perspectives to be empowered and autonomous media users. The book explores critical inquiry skills to help young people form a multidimensional comprehension of what they read and watch, opportunities to see others like them making change, and insight into their own identity projects. By covering topics like storytelling, building arguments and recognizing fallacies, surveillance and digital gatekeeping, advertising and consumerism, and global social problems through a critical media literacy lens, this book will help students evolve from passive consumers of media to engaged critics and creators"--Provided by publisher.

It can be hard to know what to believe, especially when what looks or sounds like a legitimate news story is tainted with bias and opinion or is riddled with flat-out lies and disinformation. Media bias and disinformation are two different things, but they often share the same purpose: to manipulate how members of the public think and act rather than allow people to make up their own minds based solely on the facts.

Superfans are not just consumers; they are participants in a fan culture that can include millions of other people with similar tastes and beliefs. And some fans are so committed they use their fandom as a creative outlet; they produce fan fiction, art, videos, comics, costumes, and songs to honor their idols.

"In You Are What You Watch, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and data expert Walt Hickey explains the power of entertainment to change our biology, our beliefs, how we see ourselves, and how nations gain power through entertainment. Virtually anyone who has ever watched a profound movie, a powerful TV show, or read a moving novel understands that entertainment can and does affect us in surprising and significant ways. But did you know that our most popular forms of entertainment can have a direct physical effect on us, a measurable impact on society, geopolitics, the economy, and even the future itself? In You Are What You Watch, Walter Hickey, Pulitzer Prize winner and former chief culture writer at acclaimed data site FiveThirtyEight.com, proves how exactly how what we watch (and read and listen to) has a far greater effect on us and the world at large than we imagine. Employing a mix of research, deep reporting, and 100 data visualizations, Hickey presents the true power of entertainment and culture. From the decrease in shark populations after Jaws to the increase in women and girls taking up archery following The Hunger Games, You Are What You Watch proves its points not just with research and argument, but hard data. Did you know, for example, that crime statistics prove that violent movies actually lead to less real-world violence? And that the international rise of anime and Manga helped lift the Japanese economy out of the doldrums in the 1980s? Or that British and American intelligence agencies actually got ideas from the James Bond movies? In You Are What You Watch, readers will be given a nerdy, and sobering, celebration of popular entertainment and its surprising power to change the world"--.

Looks at the field of media psychology.

"Members of the media can provide vastly different views of the same event. Biased viewpoints have become a routine part of how the media reports the news in America. Readers of daily newspapers as well. As consumers who receive their news through radio or TV broadcasts and those who rely on the internet for their news can certainly find straight reporting in those sources. But biased coverage of the news is ever-present as well, providing consumers with the challenge of finding truth in the flood of daily news coverage"--Provided by publisher.

"We have entered a time when celebrities are so valued that they are more respected and powerful than anyone else. It began with movie and sports stars, but now as a result of the preponderance of reality shows that vault virtual nobodies into lives of immense wealth and clout, celebrity has been democratized. YouTube stars and Instagram influencers are the latest to rise to celebrity status, and they have more power than many of us know. This curation of perspectives explores the advantages to celebrity, how advances in media technology have impacted fame, and the dangers inherent in a rising celebrity culture"--Provided by publisher.

"Anthology of essays exploring the decline in Americans' trust in media"--Provided by publisher.