Nick Couldry - Böcker

Nick Couldry is one of the world’s leading analysts of media power and voice, and has been publishing widely for 25 years. This volume, published 20 years after The Place of Media Power, brings together a rich collection of essays from his earliest to his latest writings, some of them hard to access, plus two previously unpublished chapters. The book’s 15 chapters cover a variety of themes from voice to space, from Big Data to democracy, and from art to reality television. Taken together, they give a unique insight into the range of Couldry’s interests and passions. Throughout, Couldry’s commitment to connecting media research to wider debates in philosophy and social theory is clear. A substantial Afterword reflects on the common themes that run throughout his work and this volume, and the particular challenges of grasping media’s contribution to social order in an age of datafication. A preface by leading US media scholar Jonathan Gray sets these essays in context. The result is an exciting and clearly-written text that will interest students and researchers of media, culture and social theory across the world.

Nick Couldry is one of the world’s leading analysts of media power and voice, and has been publishing widely for 25 years. This volume, published 20 years after The Place of Media Power, brings together a rich collection of essays from his earliest to his latest writings, some of them hard to access, plus two previously unpublished chapters. The book’s 15 chapters cover a variety of themes from voice to space, from Big Data to democracy, and from art to reality television. Taken together, they give a unique insight into the range of Couldry’s interests and passions. Throughout, Couldry’s commitment to connecting media research to wider debates in philosophy and social theory is clear. A substantial Afterword reflects on the common themes that run throughout his work and this volume, and the particular challenges of grasping media’s contribution to social order in an age of datafication. A preface by leading US media scholar Jonathan Gray sets these essays in context. The result is an exciting and clearly-written text that will interest students and researchers of media, culture and social theory across the world.

This fascinating study focuses on an area neglected in previous studies of the media: the meetings between ordinary people and the media. Couldry explores what happens when people who normally consume the media witness media processes in action, or even become the object of media attention themselves.

This fascinating study focuses on an area neglected in previous studies of the media: the meetings between ordinary people and the media. Couldry explores what happens when people who normally consume the media witness media processes in action, or even become the object of media attention themselves.

Media Rituals rethinks our accepted concepts of ritual behaviour for a media-saturated age. It connects ritual directly with questions of power, government, and surveillance and explores the ritual space which the media construct and where their power is legitimated.Drawing on sociological and anthropological approaches to the study of ritual, Couldry applies the work of theorists such as Durkheim, Bourdieu and Bloch to a number of important media arenas: the public media event; reality TV; Webcam sites; talk shows and docu-soaps; media pilgrimages; the construction of celebrity. In a final chapter, he imagines a different world where the media's ritual power is less, because the possibilities of participation in media production are more evenly shared.

Media Rituals rethinks our accepted concepts of ritual behaviour for a media-saturated age. It connects ritual directly with questions of power, government, and surveillance and explores the ritual space which the media construct and where their power is legitimated.Drawing on sociological and anthropological approaches to the study of ritual, Couldry applies the work of theorists such as Durkheim, Bourdieu and Bloch to a number of important media arenas: the public media event; reality TV; Webcam sites; talk shows and docu-soaps; media pilgrimages; the construction of celebrity. In a final chapter, he imagines a different world where the media's ritual power is less, because the possibilities of participation in media production are more evenly shared.

Media Space explores the importance of ideas of space and place to understanding the ways in which we experience the media in our everyday lives. Essays from leading international scholars address the kinds of space created by media and the effects that spacial arrangements have on media forms. Case studies focus on a wide variety of subjects and locales, from in-flight entertainment to mobile media such as personal stereos and mobile phones, and from the electronic spaces of the Internet to the shopping mall.

Media Space explores the importance of ideas of space and place to understanding the ways in which we experience the media in our everyday lives. Essays from leading international scholars address the kinds of space created by media and the effects that spacial arrangements have on media forms. Case studies focus on a wide variety of subjects and locales, from in-flight entertainment to mobile media such as personal stereos and mobile phones, and from the electronic spaces of the Internet to the shopping mall.

"This volume assembles an estimable range of critical analyses of one of the most important mediated artifacts of the modern world—the media event. The authors challenge the construct, extend its usefulness, expand its theoretical basis and application, and examine media events in a far larger and richer context than ever before. Students of global media today are well served by this superb collection of essays."David Morgan, Duke University, USA"A welcome and worthy successor to Dayan and Katz’s path-breaking study that expands and enriches the discourse on global media events." Daya Thussu, University of Westminster, UK"This is an excellent collection, that will enable new kinds of argument about, and hopefully research into, the spectacular functions of the contemporary media." Graeme Turner, University of Queensland, AustraliaWe live in an age where the media is intensely global and profoundly changed by digitalization. Not only do many media events have audiences who access them online, but additionally digital media flows are generating new ways in which media events can emerge. In times of increasingly differentiated media technologies and fragmented media landscapes, the ‘eventization’ of the media is increasingly important for the marketing and everyday appreciation of popular media texts. The events covered include Celebrity Big Brother, 9/11, the Iraq war and World Youth Day 2005 to give readers an understanding of the major debates in this increasingly high-profile area of media and cultural research.

"This volume assembles an estimable range of critical analyses of one of the most important mediated artifacts of the modern world—the media event. The authors challenge the construct, extend its usefulness, expand its theoretical basis and application, and examine media events in a far larger and richer context than ever before. Students of global media today are well served by this superb collection of essays."David Morgan, Duke University, USA"A welcome and worthy successor to Dayan and Katz’s path-breaking study that expands and enriches the discourse on global media events." Daya Thussu, University of Westminster, UK"This is an excellent collection, that will enable new kinds of argument about, and hopefully research into, the spectacular functions of the contemporary media." Graeme Turner, University of Queensland, AustraliaWe live in an age where the media is intensely global and profoundly changed by digitalization. Not only do many media events have audiences who access them online, but additionally digital media flows are generating new ways in which media events can emerge. In times of increasingly differentiated media technologies and fragmented media landscapes, the ‘eventization’ of the media is increasingly important for the marketing and everyday appreciation of popular media texts. The events covered include Celebrity Big Brother, 9/11, the Iraq war and World Youth Day 2005 to give readers an understanding of the major debates in this increasingly high-profile area of media and cultural research.

Contesting Media Power is the most ambitious international collection to date on the worldwide growth of alternative media that are challenging the power concentration in large media corporations. Media scholars and political scientists develop a broad comparative framework for analyzing alternative media in Australia, Chile, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, Sweden, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Topics include independent media centers, gay online networks and alternative web discussion forums, feminist film, political journalism and social networks, indigenous communication, and church-sponsored media. This important book will help shape debates on the media's role in current global struggles, such as the anti-globalization movement.

Media are fundamental to our sense of living in a social world. Since the beginning of modernity, media have transformed the scale on which we act as social beings. And now in the era of digital media, media themselves are being transformed as platforms, content, and producers multiply. Yet the implications of social theory for understanding media and of media for rethinking social theory have been neglected; never before has it been more important to understand those implications. This book takes on this challenge.Drawing on Couldry's fifteen years of work on media and social theory, this book explores how questions of power and ritual, capital and social order, and the conduct of political struggle, professional competition, and everyday life, are all transformed by today's complex combinations of traditional and 'new' media. In the concluding chapters Couldry develops a framework for global comparative research into media and for thinking collectively about the ethics and justice of our lives with media. The result is a book that is both a major intervention in the field and required reading for all students of media and sociology.

Media are fundamental to our sense of living in a social world. Since the beginning of modernity, media have transformed the scale on which we act as social beings. And now in the era of digital media, media themselves are being transformed as platforms, content, and producers multiply. Yet the implications of social theory for understanding media and of media for rethinking social theory have been neglected; never before has it been more important to understand those implications. This book takes on this challenge.Drawing on Couldry's fifteen years of work on media and social theory, this book explores how questions of power and ritual, capital and social order, and the conduct of political struggle, professional competition, and everyday life, are all transformed by today's complex combinations of traditional and 'new' media. In the concluding chapters Couldry develops a framework for global comparative research into media and for thinking collectively about the ethics and justice of our lives with media. The result is a book that is both a major intervention in the field and required reading for all students of media and sociology.

Social theory needs to be completely rethought in a world of digital media and social media platforms driven by data processes. Fifty years after Berger and Luckmann published their classic text The Social Construction of Reality, two leading sociologists of media, Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp, revisit the question of how social theory can understand the processes through which an everyday world is constructed in and through media.Drawing on Schütz, Elias and many other social and media theorists, they ask: what are the implications of digital media�s profound involvement in those processes? Is the result a social world that is stable and liveable, or one that is increasingly unstable and unliveable?

Social theory needs to be completely rethought in a world of digital media and social media platforms driven by data processes. Fifty years after Berger and Luckmann published their classic text The Social Construction of Reality, two leading sociologists of media, Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp, revisit the question of how social theory can understand the processes through which an everyday world is constructed in and through media.Drawing on Schütz, Elias and many other social and media theorists, they ask: what are the implications of digital media�s profound involvement in those processes? Is the result a social world that is stable and liveable, or one that is increasingly unstable and unliveable?

Your life online is their product.In the past, colonialism was a landgrab of natural resources, exploitative labour and private property from countries around the world. It promised to modernise and civilise, but actually sought to control. It stole from native populations and made them sign contracts they didn’t understand. It took resources just because they were there.Colonialism has not disappeared – it has taken on a new form.In the new world order, data is the new oil. Big Tech companies are grabbing our most basic natural resources – our data – exploiting our labour and connections, and repackaging our information to control our views, track our movements, record our conversations and discriminate against us. Every time we unthinkingly click ‘Accept’ on Terms and Conditions, we allow our most personal information to kept indefinitely, repackaged by big Tech companies to control and exploit us for their own profit.In this searing, cutting-edge guide, two leading global researchers – and founders of the concept of data colonialism – reveal how history can help us both to understand the emerging future and to fight back.

Inside Culture offers a fresh and stimulating reassessment of the direction of cultural studies. Nick Couldry argues without apology for cultural studies as a discipline centred around the interrelations of culture and power, with a clear focus on accountable empirical research that deals with the real complexities of contemporary lives - `inside' culture.

Chapters discuss the broad conceptual issues around `cultures', `texts', `the self', and the individual. There are detailed discussions of a range of cultural studies authors which demystify the elaborate language of contemporary cultural studies, with suggestions for further thinking at the end of chapters.

Inside Culture offers a fresh and stimulating reassessment of the direction of cultural studies. Nick Couldry argues without apology for cultural studies as a discipline centred around the interrelations of culture and power, with a clear focus on accountable empirical research that deals with the real complexities of contemporary lives - `inside' culture.

Chapters discuss the broad conceptual issues around `cultures', `texts', `the self', and the individual. There are detailed discussions of a range of cultural studies authors which demystify the elaborate language of contemporary cultural studies, with suggestions for further thinking at the end of chapters.

Just about any social need is now met with an opportunity to "connect" through digital means. But this convenience is not free—it is purchased with vast amounts of personal data transferred through shadowy backchannels to corporations using it to generate profit. The Costs of Connection uncovers this process, this "data colonialism," and its designs for controlling our lives—our ways of knowing; our means of production; our political participation.Colonialism might seem like a thing of the past, but this book shows that the historic appropriation of land, bodies, and natural resources is mirrored today in this new era of pervasive datafication. Apps, platforms, and smart objects capture and translate our lives into data, and then extract information that is fed into capitalist enterprises and sold back to us. The authors argue that this development foreshadows the creation of a new social order emerging globally—and it must be challenged. Confronting the alarming degree of surveillance already tolerated, they offer a stirring call to decolonize the internet and emancipate our desire for connection.

Just about any social need is now met with an opportunity to "connect" through digital means. But this convenience is not free—it is purchased with vast amounts of personal data transferred through shadowy backchannels to corporations using it to generate profit. The Costs of Connection uncovers this process, this "data colonialism," and its designs for controlling our lives—our ways of knowing; our means of production; our political participation.Colonialism might seem like a thing of the past, but this book shows that the historic appropriation of land, bodies, and natural resources is mirrored today in this new era of pervasive datafication. Apps, platforms, and smart objects capture and translate our lives into data, and then extract information that is fed into capitalist enterprises and sold back to us. The authors argue that this development foreshadows the creation of a new social order emerging globally—and it must be challenged. Confronting the alarming degree of surveillance already tolerated, they offer a stirring call to decolonize the internet and emancipate our desire for connection.

From TV bulletins to social media newsfeeds, the media plays a massive role in shaping the world as we see it. In fact, different media have helped make possible our world of independent nations, binding together disparate communities through shared cultural touchstones, such as the press and national broadcasters. With the transfer of people’s lives to the online world, the media has become crucial to almost every aspect of how human beings live. A new social order is being built through our relations with media, but what power over us does this give to corporations and governments? Nick Couldry explains the significance of five core dimensions of media: representing, connecting, imagining, sharing and governing. He shows that understanding these dynamics is a vital skill that every person needs in the digital age, when the fate of our political worlds and social environment may rest on how we communicate with each other.

From TV bulletins to social media newsfeeds, the media plays a massive role in shaping the world as we see it. In fact, different media have helped make possible our world of independent nations, binding together disparate communities through shared cultural touchstones, such as the press and national broadcasters. With the transfer of people’s lives to the online world, the media has become crucial to almost every aspect of how human beings live. A new social order is being built through our relations with media, but what power over us does this give to corporations and governments? Nick Couldry explains the significance of five core dimensions of media: representing, connecting, imagining, sharing and governing. He shows that understanding these dynamics is a vital skill that every person needs in the digital age, when the fate of our political worlds and social environment may rest on how we communicate with each other.

Over the past thirty years, humanity has made a huge mistake. We handed over to big tech decisions that have allowed them to build what has become our "space of the world" – the highly artificial space of social media platforms where much of our social life now unfolds. This has proved reckless and has huge social consequences.The toxic effects on social life, young people’s mental health, and political solidarity are well known, but the key factor underlying all this has been missed: the fact that humanity allowed business to construct our space of the world at all and then exploit it for profit. In the process, we ignored two millennia of political thought about the conditions under which a healthy or even a non-violent politics is possible. We endangered the one resource that is in desperately short supply in the face of catastrophic climate change: solidarity. Is human solidarity possible in a world of continuous digital connection and commercially managed platforms, and what if it isn’t?In the first book of his trilogy, Humanising the Future, Nick Couldry offers a radical new vision of how to design our digital spaces so that they build, rather than erode, both solidarity and community. This trenchant and vividly written book stresses that we cannot afford not to care for our space of the world. We need to rebuild it together.

Over the past thirty years, humanity has made a huge mistake. We handed over to big tech decisions that have allowed them to build what has become our "space of the world" – the highly artificial space of social media platforms where much of our social life now unfolds. This has proved reckless and has huge social consequences.The toxic effects on social life, young people’s mental health, and political solidarity are well known, but the key factor underlying all this has been missed: the fact that humanity allowed business to construct our space of the world at all and then exploit it for profit. In the process, we ignored two millennia of political thought about the conditions under which a healthy or even a non-violent politics is possible. We endangered the one resource that is in desperately short supply in the face of catastrophic climate change: solidarity. Is human solidarity possible in a world of continuous digital connection and commercially managed platforms, and what if it isn’t?In the first book of his trilogy, Humanising the Future, Nick Couldry offers a radical new vision of how to design our digital spaces so that they build, rather than erode, both solidarity and community. This trenchant and vividly written book stresses that we cannot afford not to care for our space of the world. We need to rebuild it together.

In this book Nick Couldry, media and cultural theorist from the London School of Economics, asks what are the priorities for media and cultural research today - at a time of the intensified mediation of all fields of social life, threats to democratic legitimacy, and serious instability on the global political stage. The book calls for a "decentered" media research that rejects easy assumptions about media's role in holding societies together and instead looks more critically at the difference media make on the ground to the material conditions of our lives. In what detailed ways do media transform knowledge and agency in daily life? How do media contribute to the culture of democratic politics? And, most difficult of all, how can we live, ethically, with and through media? Couldry's previous work is well known for its breadth, ranging across media sociology, media theory and cultural theory. Here he draws also on political theory and ethics to develop a tightly-argued account of how media and cultural research must now reorient itself if it is to remain relevant and critical. Nick Couldry is Reader in Media, Communications and Culture at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author or editor of five books including Media Rituals: A Critical Approach (Routledge 2003), The Place of Media Power (Routledge 2000) and (coedited with James Curran) Contesting Media Power (Rowman and Littlefield 2003).

In this book Nick Couldry, media and cultural theorist from the London School of Economics, asks what are the priorities for media and cultural research today - at a time of the intensified mediation of all fields of social life, threats to democratic legitimacy, and serious instability on the global political stage. The book calls for a "decentered" media research that rejects easy assumptions about media's role in holding societies together and instead looks more critically at the difference media make on the ground to the material conditions of our lives. In what detailed ways do media transform knowledge and agency in daily life? How do media contribute to the culture of democratic politics? And, most difficult of all, how can we live, ethically, with and through media? Couldry's previous work is well known for its breadth, ranging across media sociology, media theory and cultural theory. Here he draws also on political theory and ethics to develop a tightly-argued account of how media and cultural research must now reorient itself if it is to remain relevant and critical. Nick Couldry is Reader in Media, Communications and Culture at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author or editor of five books including Media Rituals: A Critical Approach (Routledge 2003), The Place of Media Power (Routledge 2000) and (coedited with James Curran) Contesting Media Power (Rowman and Littlefield 2003).

One of the best books I have read in years about what it means to engage neoliberalism through a critical framework that highlights those narratives and stories that affirm both our humanity and our longing for justice. It should be read by everyone concerned with what it might mean to not only dream about democracy but to engage it as a lived experience and political possibility. - Henry Giroux, McMaster University "An important and original book that offers a fresh critique of neoliberalism and its contribution to the contemporary crisis of ‘voice’. Couldry’s own voice is clear and impassioned - an urgent must-read." - Rosalind Gill, King’s College London

For more than thirty years neoliberalism has declared that market functioning trumps all other social, political and economic values. In this book, Nick Couldry passionately argues for voice, the effective opportunity for people to speak and be heard on what affects their lives, as the only value that can truly challenge neoliberal politics. But having voice is not enough: we need to know our voice matters. Insisting that the answer goes much deeper than simply calling for 'more voices', whether on the streets or in the media, Couldry presents a dazzling range of analysis from the real world of Blair and Obama to the social theory of Judith Butler and Amartya Sen. Why Voice Matters breaks open the contradictions in neoliberal thought and shows how the mainstream media not only fails to provide the means for people to give an account of themselves, but also reinforces neoliberal values. Moving beyond the despair common to much of today's analysis, Couldry shows us a vision of a democracy based on social cooperation and offers the resources we need to build a new post-neoliberal politics.