Brian Michael Goss - Böcker

Global Auteurs employs auteur theory to examine the work of three contemporary and innovative directors: Pedro Almodóvar, Lars von Trier, and Michael Winterbottom.With extensive background information on the global film industry, and on auteur theory and its implications for ideological critique, this book’s insightful case studies examine both ideologies the filmmakers re-circulate and ideologies that they confront in textual form. The discussion of Pedro Almodóvar devotes particular attention to mass mediation, the family, and gender in the corpus of his films, while Lars von Trier’s corpus is interpreted as driven by a motif that characterizes all of his films: the «failed idealist». Michael Winterbottom’s body of work presents a genre-diverse, post-MTV style concerned with «outsiders» and taboo, representation and truth, and human rights.Global Auteurs’ sophisticated approach to decoding film is suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses on film, global mass media, and contemporary Europe.

Global Auteurs employs auteur theory to examine the work of three contemporary and innovative directors: Pedro Almodóvar, Lars von Trier, and Michael Winterbottom.With extensive background information on the global film industry, and on auteur theory and its implications for ideological critique, this book’s insightful case studies examine both ideologies the filmmakers re-circulate and ideologies that they confront in textual form. The discussion of Pedro Almodóvar devotes particular attention to mass mediation, the family, and gender in the corpus of his films, while Lars von Trier’s corpus is interpreted as driven by a motif that characterizes all of his films: the «failed idealist». Michael Winterbottom’s body of work presents a genre-diverse, post-MTV style concerned with «outsiders» and taboo, representation and truth, and human rights.Global Auteurs’ sophisticated approach to decoding film is suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses on film, global mass media, and contemporary Europe.

Using the Herman & Chomsky «Propaganda Model» that was introduced in 1988, Goss offers a rigorous and accessible portrait of contemporary news media. Following a current survey of media ownership and news worker routines, in a series of case studies, he shows how recent news discourse has developed an Us/Them narrative. Cases include The New York Times’ accounts of the Bush administration and United Nations in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and analysis of the 2011 riots in the United Kingdom in a comparison between two British broadsheets (The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph). Further case studies demonstrate important, if partial, new media discontinuities with respect to «old» news media. The book’s international reach and sustained attention to new media indicate that it is not simply high-fidelity repetition of Herman & Chomsky, but re-engineers the model’s architecture for the twenty-first century.

Globalization is one of the most widely circulated, high-stakes buzzwords of the past generation; yet discussion of the topic is often encased in paradox and contention over what globalization is, to whom and where it may (or may not) apply, and to what effect. In Talking Back to Globalization: Texts and Practices, contributors provide a series of case studies that stress the interplay between culture, politics, and commerce. Interviews with Natalie Fenton and Radha S. Hegde survey globalization and its interpenetration with the spheres of journalism, activism, social media, and identity. The overview furnished by the interviews is followed by the volume’s two additional extended sections, «Texts» and «Practices.» Chapters in the «Texts» section seek clues about globalization through its insinuation into mediated forms. The diverse selection of cases cover television, films, online travel web pages, blues music, and the political valences of Portuguese neo-fado.Chapters in the «Practices» section address more diffused cases than media texts. Their analyses largely orient toward institutional concomitants of globalization that precede the subject’s experience of it. Chapters cover the trajectory of the European university, campaigns to shape journalistic practice during the Cold War, the posture of intellectuals vis-à-vis globalization, and the ideology that animates the Facebook experience.

The Rise of Weaponized Flak in the New Media Era presents the first book-length examination of flak as a form of political harassment, authored by a seasoned researcher on political discourse and mass media. Flak against news media was a component of the Edward Herman-Noam Chomsky seminal "Propaganda Model." However, in the thirty years since the model was introduced, flak has become an increasingly significant and prevalent sociopolitical force in its own right, in large part for the proliferation of new media platforms. Flak is not simply good faith or tough criticism. Rather, flak discourses and actions go on attack for the purpose of delegitimizing, disabling, and even criminalizing political foes, however tendentiously. The book presents cross-disciplinary appeal for students and scholars of mass media, new media, political science, and sociology—as well as for anyone concerned with today’s sociopolitical environment.Given the book’s seminal examination of the topic, the introductory chapters in Part I extensively map out flak’s current forms and delineate similarities and distinctions from scandal and activism. Newly-minted terminology is introduced to flesh-out contemporary flak (for example, flak-in-discourse, boutique flak, phantom flak). The balance of the book is organized around case studies of flak mills (Part II) and flak issues (Part III). In particular, Part II drills down into the flak discourses and techniques of dedicated flak mills that characterize themselves as, respectively, journalistic and think tank organizations. Part III of the book features case studies of flak around elections and universities in the United States.