Piotr Siuda – författare

This volume offers a comprehensive outlook on the convergences between media and drug research. Bringing together media scholars and drug researchers to highlight the intricate interconnections of these two dynamic domains, the book explores the mutual entanglements, overlaps, and intersections between mediated practices and substance use, from representations and narratives to technologies, stigma, identity work, and policy regimes.Through original contributions that traverse theoretical, empirical, and methodological terrains, the book highlights how media technologies and discourses, market structures, identities, and policies are co-produced across both fields. The collection opens with a cluster of chapters tackling language of moral panics and stigma, emphasizing how media narratives fuel or challenge dominant framings of drugs and people who use them, before moving to discuss media representations—both legacy and digital—and their entanglement with narratives of criminality, celebrity, and harm. The volume then interrogates post-prohibition imaginaries, mapping out alternative visions and creative appropriations of drug cultures in digital spaces, and the blurring of online and offline worlds.Theoretical innovations and methodological reflections are interwoven throughout the collection, contributing to a transdisciplinary dialogue that spans media and cultural studies, linguistics, sociology, criminology, and drug policy. In doing so, this volume not only reflects the state of the art in two distinct fields but carves out a new, shared territory—one where media studies meets drug research to map the terrain of mediated intoxication, regulation, resistance, and care.

Gotta Study ’Em All: Understanding the Cultural Impact of 30 Years of Pokémon is a scholarly edited volume that attempts to explain the Pokémon brand’s cultural significance on the occasion of its 30th anniversary.Originally launched in Japan in February 1996, Pokémon has become the world’s most valuable media franchise, a combination of video games, an animated series, trading cards, merchandise, and mobile applications, earning lifetime revenues exceeding 105 billion USD.This book brings together fourteen original chapters from scholars around continents and disciplines (media studies, game studies, cultural studies, sociology, and the humanities) to discuss how and why Pokémon has held its extraordinary cultural and commercial importance over three decades and across multiple generations of fans.The volume is divided into three thematic segments. The first analyzes Pokémon as a sustained cultural phenomenon and studies media coverage and intergenerational transmission of fandom. The second part looks at the foundations of the franchise—its narrative ethics, transmedia characters, cultural geography, popular music, and the enduring success of Pokémon GO. The third section explores fandom practices—from online communities and fan-made games to competitive play cultures in Latin America and the appropriation of Pokémon iconography for political protest. Collectively, the chapters provide a comprehensive analysis of Pokémon as an integrated media franchise whose appeal spans cultural, economic, and psychological dimensions. Though the book is largely a work in which non-Japanese scholars consider and analyze an inherently Japanese product, it provides insight into the unprecedented global impact of Pokémon and its current resonance with modern digital culture.

This edited collection brings in multiple scholarly perspectives to examine the impact of the pandemic and resulting government policies, especially lockdowns, on one particular cultural sphere: games.The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted virtually every aspect of our lives, regardless of where we live. In the initial months, many industry reports noted the unexpected positive impact on online digital game sales. Games were not just lockdown-proof, but boosted by lockdowns. Stay-at-home orders triggered a rush toward games as an alternative form of entertainment, and the ubiquity of mobile phones allowed wider than ever participation. Gaming and Gamers in Times of Pandemic studies how the COVID-19 pandemic affected game players, game developers, game journalists and game scholars alike in many other ways, starting with the most direct – illness, and sometimes death. Some effects are temporary, others are here to stay.

This edited collection brings in multiple scholarly perspectives to examine the impact of the pandemic and resulting government policies, especially lockdowns, on one particular cultural sphere: games.The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted virtually every aspect of our lives, regardless of where we live. In the initial months, many industry reports noted the unexpected positive impact on online digital game sales. Games were not just lockdown-proof, but boosted by lockdowns. Stay-at-home orders triggered a rush toward games as an alternative form of entertainment, and the ubiquity of mobile phones allowed wider than ever participation. Gaming and Gamers in Times of Pandemic studies how the COVID-19 pandemic affected game players, game developers, game journalists and game scholars alike in many other ways, starting with the most direct – illness, and sometimes death. Some effects are temporary, others are here to stay.

This edited collection brings in multiple scholarly perspectives to examine the impact of the pandemic and resulting government policies, especially lockdowns, on one particular cultural sphere: games.The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted virtually every aspect of our lives, regardless of where we live. In the initial months, many industry reports noted the unexpected positive impact on online digital game sales. Games were not just lockdown-proof, but boosted by lockdowns. Stay-at-home orders triggered a rush toward games as an alternative form of entertainment, and the ubiquity of mobile phones allowed wider than ever participation. Gaming and Gamers in Times of Pandemic studies how the COVID-19 pandemic affected game players, game developers, game journalists and game scholars alike in many other ways, starting with the most direct – illness, and sometimes death. Some effects are temporary, others are here to stay.