Jason Toynbee – författare

The accompanying Analysing Media Texts DVD-ROM is the winner of the 2006 British Universities Film and Video Council 'Learning on Screen Award' for Interactive Media (Course and Curriculum related content). More about the awards and the shortlist can be found at www.bufvc.ac.uk/conferences/learningonscreen/losawards.html

Visit the Understanding Media series microsite.

This book provides an engaging introduction to analysing media texts. Students learn how to do semiotic, genre and narrative analysis, content and discourse analysis, and engage with debates about the politics of representation. Each chapter provides readings and worked examples, from the classic 1959 film melodrama by Douglas Sirk, Imitation of Life, to contemporary television ads.

The book has an accompanying DVD-ROM for PC users.

“Another exemplary volume from the OU presents a wide range of questions that cab be asked about mediated texts and the complexity of providing adequate answers to such questions. An enjoyable interactive DVD-ROM offers exercises that allow the reader to make the critical language their own." Professor Annabelle Sreberny, Centre for Media and Film Studies, SOAS.

"This is an impressive resource, accessible and user-friendly, but authoritative in its development of established theories of textual analysis. The DVD-ROM offers a series of excellent exercises making this a 'must-have' for all undergraduate media studies courses." Professor Richard Paterson, British Film Institute.

"An excellent introduction to the theory and practice of media analysis [and] a much-needed ‘toolkit’... The DVD-ROM, with its 'cool' design, clips gallery and innovative narrative sequence builder, allows students to put into practice skills acquired throughout the text and offers an important tool for bringing concepts to life… A wonderful addition to a first-rate series." Alison Griffiths, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, Baruch College, The City University of New York.

Is Bob Marley the only third world superstar? How did he achieve this unique status? In this captivating new study of one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, Jason Toynbee sheds new light on issues such as Marley''s contribution as a musician and public intellectual, how he was granted access to the global media system, and what his music means in cultural and political terms.

Tracing Marley''s life and work from Jamaica to the world stage, Toynbee suggests that we need to understand Marley first and foremost as a ''social author''. Trained in the co-operative yet also highly competitive musical laboratory of downtown Kingston, Marley went on to translate reggae into a successful international style. His crowning achievement was to mix postcolonial anger and hope with Jamaican textures and beats to produce the first world music.

However the period since his death has been marked by brutal and intensifying inequality in the capitalist world system. There is an urgent need, then, to reconsider the nature of his legacy. Toynbee does this in the concluding chapters, weighing Marley''s impact as advocate of human emancipation against his marginalisation as a ''Natural Mystic'' and pretext for disengagement from radical politics.

Media studies needs richer and livelier intellectual resources. This book brings together major and emerging international media analysts to consider key processes of media change, using a number of critical perspectives. Case studies range from reality television to professional journalism, from blogging to control of copyright, from social networking sites to indigenous media, in Europe, North America, Asia and elsewhere. Among the theoretical approaches and issues addressed are:

This volume is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers of cultural studies, media studies and social theory.

Media studies needs richer and livelier intellectual resources. This book brings together major and emerging international media analysts to consider key processes of media change, using a number of critical perspectives. Case studies range from reality television to professional journalism, from blogging to control of copyright, from social networking sites to indigenous media, in Europe, North America, Asia and elsewhere. Among the theoretical approaches and issues addressed are:

This volume is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers of cultural studies, media studies and social theory.

Migrating Music considers the issues around music and cosmopolitanism in new ways. Whilst much of the existing literature on ‘world music’ questions the apparently world-disclosing nature of this genre – but says relatively little about migration and mobility – diaspora studies have much to say about the latter, yet little about the significance of music.

In this context, this book affirms the centrality of music as a mode of translation and cosmopolitan mediation, whilst also pointing out the complexity of the processes at stake within it. Migrating music, it argues, represents perhaps the most salient mode of performance of otherness to mutual others, and as such its significance in socio-cultural change rivals – and even exceeds – literature, film, and other language and image-based cultural forms.

This book will serve as a valuable reference tool for undergraduate and postgraduate students with research interests in cultural studies, sociology of culture, music, globalization, migration, and human geography.

Migrating Music considers the issues around music and cosmopolitanism in new ways. Whilst much of the existing literature on ‘world music’ questions the apparently world-disclosing nature of this genre – but says relatively little about migration and mobility – diaspora studies have much to say about the latter, yet little about the significance of music.

In this context, this book affirms the centrality of music as a mode of translation and cosmopolitan mediation, whilst also pointing out the complexity of the processes at stake within it. Migrating music, it argues, represents perhaps the most salient mode of performance of otherness to mutual others, and as such its significance in socio-cultural change rivals – and even exceeds – literature, film, and other language and image-based cultural forms.

This book will serve as a valuable reference tool for undergraduate and postgraduate students with research interests in cultural studies, sociology of culture, music, globalization, migration, and human geography.