Susan Wiesinger – författare

The second edition of Digital Literacy provides a highly focused exploration of key critical concepts in understanding digital media in a clear, engaging, and accessible way for an introductory audience.This updated edition explores a variety of approaches to digital literacy, including prescient work by media theorists, the historical influences of legacy media, the contemporary transformations of the digital environment, and the way our communication ecology is constructed. The book argues for an understanding of the changes in traditional media, the rise of Big Tech, and the challenges these pose to privacy and to democratic ideals.Important themes explored in chapters across the book include digital identity, the internet as infrastructure, the web as a collaborative tool, and domestic and global digital divides. The new edition also explores digital literacy and the pandemic, as well as the growing body of research around the effects and impact of the digital technologies we use every day. Also included are useful Applied Skills Appendices outlining core areas of digital practice.The text is an ideal resource for students and scholars of mass communication, media literacy, digital information literacy, and digital technology courses, as well as for all those wanting to know more about the deep on-going impact of communication technologies on our lives.

Journalism is in crisis. The rise of the internet through social media and citizen journalism and the financial crisis of 2008 have taken their toll. Thousands of reporters and editors have been laid off; nightly news on the major networks is losing close to one million viewers a year; newspapers have seen declining ad revenues and circulation figures cut in half; and the old business model for newspapers based on advertising and subscriptions appears to be collapsing.Filling the void is commentary, punditry, and even bigotry. It may have an audience, but it’s not journalism in the professional sense: a commitment to objectivity and a separation of news and opinion. At this important juncture in the evolution of journalism, Media Smackdown takes a close look at the history of the news media in America in order to address the historical, legal, economic, theoretical, and political issues that affect the practice as well as the changing face and future of journalism.