Books in the Communication, Globalization, and Cultural Identity series

China in the Era of Social Media examines the unique characteristics of Chinese social media and the impact of social media on the country's unprecedented social transformation, political change, ruling communist ideology, and public discourse and public opinions.

This book explores the communication processes of the Transition Movement, a community-led global social movement, as it was adapted in a local context. First it analyzes how the movement's grand narratives of responding to ';climate change' and creating greater ';resiliency' were communicated into local community-based stories, responses, and actions in the Transition Town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Second, it seeks to understand the multilayered communication processes that facilitate these actions toward sustainable social change. Transition Amherst developed and/or supported projects that addressed reducing dependency on peak-oil, creating community-based-local economies, supporting sustainable food production and consumption, and participating in more efficient transportation, among others. The popularity of the model coincides with an increase in the interest in and use of the term ';sustainability' by media, academics and policymakers around the world, and an increase in the global use of digital technology as a resource for information gathering and sharing. Thus this book situates itself at the intersections of a global environmental and economic crisis, the popularization of the term ';sustainability,' and an increasingly digitized and networked global society in order to better understand how social change is contextualized and facilitated in a local community via a global network. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the ways in which the theories of Transition are applied over an extended period of time in practice, on the ground in a Transition town.

In this volume an international array of scholars provides case studies from various countries of social inequalities and how they shape media narratives and experiences. The topics include how social inequalities relate to gender and empowerment, poverty and the media, and discriminatory access to media technologies.

This collection examines the different forces and factors that affect professional writing and communication practices in various social, economic, political, and technological contexts in the nations of the former Soviet Union and the former Eastern Bloc.

This study provides an interdisciplinary examination of media portrayals of ethnic and religious minorities in Germany. Using years of combined quantitative and qualitative research, the author compares parliamentary discourse with that of the mainstream media and analyzes the politicized uses of collective identities.

This study examines Chile's 1988 Franja Electoral, the month-long nationally televised political program that gave space to both sides ahead of the country's national plebiscite. The author argues that the "mediatization" of Chilean politics through this practice enabled the peaceful transition of power from Pinochet's military dictatorship.

In this volume an international array of scholars provides case studies from various countries of social inequalities and how they shape media narratives and experiences. The topics include how social inequalities relate to gender and empowerment, poverty and the media, and discriminatory access to media technologies.

This collection examines the risks and social opportunities created by the growth of information and communication technologies. In particular, the contributors analyze how digital inclusion is affected by the social and cultural contexts of access around the world.

This volume contains contributions from an international array of scholars and provides a global analysis of theoretical approaches to social inequalities as they relate to media and communication, including critical discussions of class and gender analyses and discourses on capitalism and communication technology.

This collection provides a cross-cultural comparative analysis, both qualitative and quantitative, of how Islam is represented in the media in various countries, from Western Europe to Russia, China, and India.

This volume contains contributions from an international array of scholars and provides a global analysis of theoretical approaches to social inequalities as they relate to media and communication, including critical discussions of class and gender analyses and discourses on capitalism and communication technology.

This book tracks the birth, development, and contemporary expansion of media and public relations research in post-socialist societies. Contributors illuminate the current state of the academic fields of communication and media studies and their pertinent explorations in several countries in East-Central Europe and Central Asia.

Transcultural Images in Hollywood Cinemaexamines the transnational and transcultural characteristics of Hollywood cinema. The narrative, cinematographic, and aesthetic structures of Hollywood cinema are turned upside down as chapters analyze gender, social, cultural, and economic-political contexts.

Communication Theory and Application in Post-Socialist Contexts serves as a resource for anyone on the quest of diversifying and globalizing communication studies. It captures significant communication tendencies in several post-socialist countries and situates these tendencies within communication theory and application in a wide array of areas.

The representation of Islam is unquestionably a critical test for comparing journalistic reporting across countries and cultures. The Islamic religion has weight in international reporting (defining what we termed ';foreign Islam'), but it is also the religion of numerically important minority groups residing in Europe (';national Islam'). The first part of the book is ';setting the scene.' Three chapters provide insights in dominant patterns of the representation of Islam as detected by various authors and studies involved with Islam representation in Europe. Part two, the core section of the book, contributes to the development of the field of comparative journalism studies by comparing several countries and six media systems in Western Europe: the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium (Flanders), the French-speaking part of Belgium (Wallonia), the Netherlands, France, Germany, and the U.K. Part three of this book presents two reception studies, one qualitative and the other quantitative. Equally important, as the bulk of attention goes to Western Europe, is the extension towards the representation of Muslims and Islam outside Western Europe. Part four of the book is devoted to the representation of Islam in some of the so-called BRICs-countries: Russia, China, and India.