Pop Culture, Politics, and the News

Pop Culture, Politics, and the News PDF Author: Joel Penney
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197557589
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
In Pop Culture, Politics, and the News, Joel Penney explores how pop culture news has taken on an important role in contemporary political discourse. Through coverage of topics like Hollywood diversity, celebrity controversy, and "cancel culture" backlash, entertainment journalism has emerged as a key source of political information and commentary, providing audiences with an accessible lens into some of the most hot-button issues of our time. Yet due to the "clickbait" economics of the polarized digital news business, the quality of entertainment journalism is often compromised, and consequently, people view pop culture coverage as "soft news" with little substance or public value. Very little is known about how this journalism is produced and consumed as a component of the digital news ecosystem. Moreover, we lack a measured sense of its potential impact on the political interests and knowledge of its audiences, the politics of the entertainment industry it covers, and the shape of public debate more broadly. Drawing on interviews with entertainment journalists and testimonials from news audiences who share these stories on social media, Joel Penney argues for the importance of reframing our understanding of impactful journalism and persuasive political communication when culture and identity have moved thoroughly to the center of U.S. public discourse. Moreover, Penney examines how audiences engage with this highly accessible and emotionally resonant form of journalism and use it as a resource for political expression and discussion, raising important questions about how it can serve as a bridge to public issue engagement as well as a potential distraction from on-the-ground political concerns. As a cutting-edge, data-rich analysis of the blurring boundaries between entertainment, politics, social media activism, and partisan journalism, Pop Culture, Politics, and the News makes a major contribution to public scholarship on the shifting digital information landscape.

Encyclopedia of Politics, the Media, and Popular Culture

Encyclopedia of Politics, the Media, and Popular Culture PDF Author: Tony Kelso
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313343802
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
Whether it's television, radio, concerts, live appearances by comedians, Internet websites, or even the political party conventions themselves, the mixing of politics and popular culture is frequently on display. The Encyclopedia of Politics, the Media, and Popular Culture examines the people, major events, media, and controversies in eight thematic chapters and over 150 entries to provide an invaluable resource for any student, scholar, or everyday political junkie needing a comprehensive introduction to the subject. On a typical weeknight in the United States, millions shun the traditional evening network news broadcasts and, instead, later grab their remotes to turn to Comedy Central to catch up on the political happenings of the day, delivered by the comedian Jon Stewart on the faux news program, The Daily Show. Immediately afterwards, they might stay tuned to The Colbert Report for another dosage of hilarious, fake news that, to them, comes across more honestly than the serious version they could watch on CNN. Whether it's television, radio, concerts, live appearances by comedians, Internet websites, or even the political party conventions themselves, the mixing of politics and popular culture is frequently on display. The Encyclopedia of Politics, the Media, and Popular Culture provides in-depth coverage of these fascinating, and often surprising intersections in both historical and contemporary culture. This highly readable and entertaining encyclopedia provides a sweeping survey of the historic and ongoing interplay between politics, the media, and popular culture in eight thought-provoking chapters. The volume is enhanced with the inclusion of over 150 entries to help students and researchers easily locate more in-depth information on topics ranging from political scandals to YouTube.

Parasocial Politics

Parasocial Politics PDF Author: Jason Zenor
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739183907
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Book Description
The popularity of cable news, satire, documentaries, and political blogs suggest that people are often absorbing and dissecting direct political messages from informational media. But entertainment media also discusses the important political issues of our time, though not as overtly. Nonetheless, consumers still learn, debate, and form opinions on important political issues through their relationship with entertainment media. While many scholarly books examine these political messages found in popular culture, very few examine how actual audiences read these messages. Parasocial Politics explores how consumers form complex relationships with media texts and characters, and how these readings exist in the nexus between real and fictional worlds. This collection of empirical studies uses various methodologies, including surveys, experiments, focus groups, and mixed methods, to analyze how actual consumers interpret the texts and the overt and covert political messages encoded in popular culture.

Popular Culture and Political Change in Modern America

Popular Culture and Political Change in Modern America PDF Author: Ronald Edsforth
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143840185X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Book Description
This book is a collection of essays dealing with the ways in which specific popular entertainment media, mass consumer products, and popular movements affect politics and political culture in the United States. It seeks to present a range of possibilities that reflect the dimensions of the current debate and practice in the field. Some of the contributions to this volume place popular culture media such as films, music, and books in a broad social context, and several articles deal with the historical roots of twentieth-century American popular culture. Popular culture is treated as categorically neither good nor bad, in either political or aesthetic terms. Instead, the essays reflect the editors' convictions that popular culture is simply too important to be ignored by those academics who treat politics and its history seriously. The collection also shows that studying popular or mass culture in a historical way illuminates a variety of possible relationships between popular culture and politics.

Politics and Popular Culture

Politics and Popular Culture PDF Author: John Street
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745668682
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
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.

Homer Simpson Goes to Washington

Homer Simpson Goes to Washington PDF Author: Joseph J. Foy
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 081318326X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Book Description
The modern landscape of American entertainment is filled with commentary on the state of the union. Viewers turn to The Daily Show instead of Fox or CNN, satirical films such as Wag the Dog, cartoons like The Simpsons, or controversial action dramas similar to 24 in order to learn more about current events in the United States. Popular culture is educating America more than the nightly news, aiding viewers in their quest to understand the American political system. In Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics through Popular Culture, Joseph J. Foy and other contributing scholars offer diverse political perspectives through the framework of popular culture. From the classic film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to the cutting-edge television program Chappelle's Show, a wide spectrum of entertainment media is used to explain the complexities of U.S. politics and how audiences engage with them. Popular culture and politics have never been so intertwined in the American consciousness as they are today. As political knowledge becomes increasingly fragmented, Homer Simpson Goes to Washington explains how popular culture can actually help connect people to their government.

Journalism and Popular Culture

Journalism and Popular Culture PDF Author: Peter Dahlgren
Publisher: SAGE Publications Limited
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
In counterpoint to conventional examinations of images of journalism which tend to concentrate on its informational role in the political process, this book provides a lively analysis of journalism in its other guise - as entertainment. In a series of interrelated studies, the authors examine the theoretical problems in assessing popular journalism and consider common examples of its manifestations - its relationship to media stars, the coverage of sport, and the presentation of news in a `popular' form.

Reading the News

Reading the News PDF Author: Robert Karl Manoff
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
We take our news for granted: that it will inform us about the significant people and cite the authoritative ones, reflect the world the way it is, and tell us why something happens as it does. Now, six working journalists, press critics, and scholars at the leading edge of media criticism have been specially commissioned to make the familiar act of reading the news into a fresh and revealing event. Taking the famous "five W's and an H" (Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How), the authors turn these questions back on journalism for the first time to show us exactly what to make of the press. Leon V. Sigal Who? Sources Make the News Carlin Romano What? Grisly Truth about Bare Facts Michael Schudson When? Deadlines, Datelines, and History Where? Cartography, Community, and the Cold War James W. Carey Why And How? The Dark Continent of American Journalism Robert Karl Manoff Writing the News (By Telling the "Story") For everyone who reads the newspaper, for the journalist, and for the media critic alike, these essays offer fresh, provocative insights into a centerpiece of American culture, the news.

Popular Culture and the Future of Politics

Popular Culture and the Future of Politics PDF Author: Ted Gournelos
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739137220
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Book Description
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.

The Integrated News Spectacle

The Integrated News Spectacle PDF Author: James Robert Compton
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820470702
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
The Integrated News Spectacle examines the rational organization of control of popular news forms. It uses spectacular media events - such as the mourning of Princess Diana, the Monica Lewinsky presidential scandal, and the Gulf wars of 1991 and 2003 - as entry points into a discussion of the broader context surrounding an integrated system of commodity production, distribution and exchange. James R. Compton critiques the generally accepted notion of tabloidization associated with media spectacles, and situates these dramatic narratives within a broad historical context. Drawing on the work of Guy Debord, David Harvey, and Pierre Bourdieu, this book explains how the power relationships associated with media events can best be comprehended by revealing the practical application of the logic of spectacle - a logic characterized by the transposable circulation and promotion of cultural commodities.