Used from Broadway to Britain's West End, QLab software is the tool of choice for many of the world's most prominent sound, projection, and integrated media designers. QLab 4: Projects in Video, Audio, and Lighting Control is a project-based book on QLab software covering sound, video, lighting, and show control. With information on audio, video, and lighting system basics and the more advanced functions of QLab such as show control, network capabilities, projection mapping, video effects, and cue cart integration, each chapter's specific projects will allow you to learn the software's capabilities at your own pace. In addition to the text, a companion website hosts project files, instructional videos, and more.
The Psychology of Entertainment Media provides a cutting-edge look at how entertainment media affects its viewers, both in intended and unintended ways, and the psychological processes that underlie these effects. The collection represents an international, multidisciplinary investigation of an age-old process--persuasion--in a relatively new guise, which includes product placements, brand films, television programs, and sponsorships. The collection covers three broad areas: the potential effects of embedding promotions within entertainment media content; the persuasive power of the entertainment media content itself; and individual differences in the interplay between media usage and media effects. Contributions focus on a variety of topics, including product placement, subliminal perception, narrative impact, cultivation effects on consumers, and individual differences in media use. Virtually all the chapters speak to the issue of how entertainment media are processed, with the conclusion that media consumers do tend to process entertainment and promotional information differently. Providing a broad perspective on how entertainment media may have an effect that goes largely unnoticed or unattended by consumers, this volume makes a substantial contribution toward creating a more knowledgeable field, as well as a more knowledgeable consumer. With its origins in the 21st Annual Advertising and Consumer Psychology Conference, the volume represents scholarship from prominent and emerging scholars in psychology, marketing, and communications. It is appropriate for advanced students and scholars in marketing, advertising, psychology, and mass communication; for research-focused practitioners working in marketing, advertising, and public policy; and for individuals interested in entertainment studies, consumer behavior, attitudes, persuasion, media studies, and consumer psychology.
American democracy is in a period of striking tumult. The clash of a rapidly changing socio-technological environment and the traditional presidency has led to an upheaval in the scope and standards of executive leadership. Yet research on the presidency, although abundant, has been slow to adjust to changing realities associated with digital technologies, diverse audiences, and new elite practices. Meanwhile, journalists and the public continue to encounter and shape emerging presidential efforts in deeply consequential ways. Joshua Scacco and Kevin Coe bring needed insight to this complex situation by offering the first comprehensive framework for understanding contemporary presidential communication in relation to the current socio-technological environment. They call this framework the "ubiquitous presidency." Scacco and Coe argue that presidents harness new opportunities in the media environment to create a nearly constant and highly visible presence in political and nonpolitical arenas. They do this by trying to achieve longstanding presidential goals, namely visibility, adaptation, and control. However, in an environment where accessibility, personalization, and pluralism are omnipresent considerations, the strategies presidents use to achieve these goals are very different from what we once knew. Using this novel framework as a conceptual anchor, The Ubiquitous Presidency undertakes one of the most expansive analyses of presidential communication to date. Scacco and Coe employ a wide variety of approaches--ranging from surveys and survey-experiments, to large-scale automated content and network analyses, to qualitative textual analysis--to uncover new aspects of the intricate relationship between the president, news media, and the public. Focusing on the presidency since Ronald Reagan, and devoting particular attention to the cases of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the book uncovers remarkable shifts in communication that test the institution of the presidency and, consequently, democratic governance itself.
Entertainment Industries is the first book to map entertainment as a cultural system. Including work from world-renowned analysts such as Henry Jenkins and Jonathan Gray, this innovative collection explains what entertainment is and how it works. Entertainment is audience-centred culture. The Entertainment Industries are a uniquely interdisciplinary collection of evolving businesses that openly monitor evolving cultural trends and work within them. The producers of entertainment – central to that practice– are the new artists. They understand audiences and combine creative, business and legal skills in order to produce cultural products that cater to them. Entertainment Industries describes the characteristics of entertainment, the systems that produce it, and the role of producers and audiences in its development, as well as explaining the importance of this area of study, and how it might be better integrated into Universities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.
Balancing provocative criticism with clear explanations of complex ideas, this student-friendly introduction investigates the crucial role global entertainment media has played in the emergence of transitional capitalism. Examines the influence of global entertainment media on the emergence of transnational capitalism, providing a framework for explaining and understanding world culture as part of changing class relations and media practices Uses action adventure movies to demonstrate the complex relationship between international media political economy, entertainment content, global culture, and cultural hegemony Draws on examples of public and community media in Venezuela and Latin America to illustrate the relations between government policies, media structures, public access to media, and media content Engagingly written with crisp and controversial commentary to both inform and entertain readers Includes student-friendly features such as fully-integrated call out boxes with definitions of terms and concepts, and lists and summaries of transnational entertainment media
In this book readers will find technological discussions on the existing and emerging technologies across the different stages of the big data value chain. They will learn about legal aspects of big data, the social impact, and about education needs and requirements. And they will discover the business perspective and how big data technology can be exploited to deliver value within different sectors of the economy. The book is structured in four parts: Part I “The Big Data Opportunity” explores the value potential of big data with a particular focus on the European context. It also describes the legal, business and social dimensions that need to be addressed, and briefly introduces the European Commission’s BIG project. Part II “The Big Data Value Chain” details the complete big data lifecycle from a technical point of view, ranging from data acquisition, analysis, curation and storage, to data usage and exploitation. Next, Part III “Usage and Exploitation of Big Data” illustrates the value creation possibilities of big data applications in various sectors, including industry, healthcare, finance, energy, media and public services. Finally, Part IV “A Roadmap for Big Data Research” identifies and prioritizes the cross-sectorial requirements for big data research, and outlines the most urgent and challenging technological, economic, political and societal issues for big data in Europe. This compendium summarizes more than two years of work performed by a leading group of major European research centers and industries in the context of the BIG project. It brings together research findings, forecasts and estimates related to this challenging technological context that is becoming the major axis of the new digitally transformed business environment.
The modern landscape of American entertainment is filled with commentary on the state of the union. Many people now get their news from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report instead of Fox or CNN, and satirical political films such as Bulworth and Wag the Dog resonate with audiences and reviewers alike. The cartoon sitcom The Simpsons has used American politics to shape its plotlines since its debut in 1989, and many Americans view the current war on terror through the eyes of Jack Bauer, the fictional hero of the controversial action show 24. Politics has always influenced entertainment, and Americans increasingly use popular culture to make sense of the U.S. political system and current debates. There is, however, another facet to the relationship between politics and popular culture: education. Exposure to political ideas through television, film, and music generates interest and increases knowledge among viewers and listeners. The presentation of political ideas in popular media often begins a dialogue through which citizens develop opinions about and interest in political ideas. The resulting discussions of politics and civic life have a significant value as a means to educate Americans about their government. In Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics through Popular Culture, Joseph J. Foy and other contributing scholars offer a variety of perspectives on politics through the framework of popular culture. From the classic film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to the cutting-edge television program Chappelle's Show, the authors use a wide spectrum of entertainment media to explain the complexities of U.S. politics and how audiences engage them. The authors not only explain fundamental concepts such as civil rights, democracy, and ethics but also examine common assumptions about government and explore the use of controversial ideas in entertainment. Jennifer J. Hora uses The West Wing to introduce the heroic-president model of executive leadership, and Dean A. Kowalski presents V for Vendetta as a vehicle for understanding American political thought. Other essays test the impact of entertainment news on political knowledge and investigate the presentation of broadcast news in film to determine how well the media serves the people. The book also looks at folk music's ability to popularize protest and offers an insightful commentary on social movements in U.S. history. Popular culture and politics have never been so intertwined in the American consciousness as they are today, with films, television shows, and songs contributing to the debate over the promises versus the realities of democracy. As political knowledge becomes increasingly valuable, Homer Simpson Goes to Washington explains how popular culture can actually help connect people to their government.
The focus of this book is Strategic Communication. Communication can be defined as strategic if its development and/or dissemination is driven by an expected outcome. These outcomes can be attitudinal, behavioral, persuasive or knowledge-related; they can lead to change or engagement, or they can miss their mark entirely. In looking at strategic communication, one is not limited to a specific context or discipline. Many of the scholars in the volume are generating research that covers strategic communication in ways that are meaningful across fields. This volume collects the work and idea of scholars who cover the spectrum of strategic communication from source to message to audience to channel to effects. Strategic Communication offers news perspectives across contexts and is rooted firmly in the rich research traditions of persuasion and media effects. Spanning multiple disciplines and written to appeal to a large audience, this book will be found in the hands of researchers, graduate students, and students doing interdisciplinary coursework.
Entertainment media are rife with material that touches on the political. The stories with which we entertain ourselves often show us, for better or worse, that everything can be solved by the rise of an individual hero, and that the “best way” to deal with a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Our stories portray individuals along the lines of gender, racial, and ethnic stereotypes; offer us villains that are one-dimensional characters driven by evil; and show us politicians who are almost always corrupt, self-serving, and/or incompetent. They offer up models for how to deal with oppressive authority and they typically portray worlds that are just, where those who do the right thing come out on top. Entire entertainment genres, with their shared story telling conventions and common plot devices, provide lessons and perspectives that are relevant to how the public sees political issues. The stories that entertain us show us all these things and more, but to what effect? Does the pervasive politically relevant content that can be found not just in political entertainment shows, like House of Cards, but also in entertainment like Game of Thrones, that, on the surface, has nothing to do with modern politics, affect people’s perspectives on the political world? That is the central question of this volume. This book discusses the type of content in entertainment media that has the best chance of influencing political beliefs, draws from the work of scholars in a number of disciplines in order to forge a theory explaining how and when entertainment media will affect political perspectives, and presents a series of empirical studies using experiments and surveys that demonstrate the effect of politically relevant content in shows such as Game of Thrones, House of Cards, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, in genres such science fiction, and through pervasive villain and leader character types.
The proliferation of new digital technologies has given rise to an entirely changed media landscape and revolutionized how we seek entertainment. Older entertainment media like novels, radio, and film have been joined by a host of digital media that smartphones allow us to carry almost anywhere and at all times, from video games and social media to video on demand services. This unprecedented ubiquity of entertainment media calls for new and more sophisticated theories that help us understand the fascination that different entertainment media exert on us and how they change the human experience. The Oxford Handbook of Entertainment Theory surveys and furthers the most influential psychology-driven research on media entertainment to illuminate how people are drawn into media experiences. The 41 chapters in this Handbook not only offer fresh perspectives on established theories but also introduce emerging models and highlight the importance of considering the diverse backgrounds of media users when conducting research. They also cover the motivations and reactions of media users in relationship to different types of media, the trend towards interactive media such as video games and virtual reality, and particularly popular media contents like sexuality, violence, sports, and the news. As the most comprehensive overview of psychology-based research on media entertainment available, this Handbook is an invaluable resource for seasoned researchers and those beginning to learn about the field alike.
