This collection represents a systematic exploration of media entertainment from an academic perspective. Editors Zillmann and Vorderer have assembled scholars from psychology, sociology, and communication to provide a broad examination of the primary function of media entertainment--the attainment of gratification. Chapters included here address vital aspects of media entertainment and summarize pertinent findings, providing an overview of what is presently known about the appeal and function of the essential forms of media entertainment, and offering some degree of integration. Written in a clear, non-technical style, this volume provides a lively and entertaining study of media entertainment for academic study and coursework.
Winner, 2020 Outstanding Book Award, given by the International Communication Association Honorable Mention, 2020 Nancy Baym Book Award, given by the Association of Internet Researchers How the transformation of social media platforms and user-experience have redefined the entertainment industry In a little over a decade, competing social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, have given rise to a new creative industry: social media entertainment. Operating at the intersection of the entertainment and interactivity, communication and content industries, social media entertainment creators have harnessed these platforms to generate new kinds of content separate from the century-long model of intellectual property control in the traditional entertainment industry. Social media entertainment has expanded rapidly and the traditional entertainment industry has been forced to cede significant power and influence to content creators, their fans, and subscribers. Digital platforms have created a natural market for embedded advertising, changing the worlds of marketing and communication in their wake. Combined, these factors have produced new, radically shifting demands on the entertainment industry, posing new challenges for screen regimes, media scholars, industry professionals, content creators, and audiences alike. Stuart Cunningham and David Craig chronicle the rise of social media entertainment and its impact on media consumption and production. A massive, industry-defining study with insight from over 100 industry insiders, Social Media Entertainment explores the latest transformations in the entertainment industry in this time of digital disruption.
The American Musical is a comprehensive history of an American art form. It delivers a detailed and definitive portrait of the American musical’s artistic evolution over the course of seven distinct, newly defined eras, with a unique perspective gleaned from research at more than twenty different archives across the United States. Individual in both its approach and coverage, The American Musical traces the form’s creative journey from its 19th century beginnings, through its 20th century maturation, and to the turn of the 21st century, shedding new light on a myriad of authors, directors, and craftspeople who worked on Broadway and beyond. This book actively addresses the form’s often overlooked female and African-American artists, provides an in-depth accounting of such outside influences as minstrelsy, vaudeville, nightclubs, and burlesque, and explores the dynamic relationship between the form and the consciousness of its country. The American Musical is a fascinating and insightful read for students, artists, and afficionados of the American musical, and anyone with an interest in this singular form of entertainment.
Why the future of popular culture will revolve around ever bigger bets on entertainment products, by one of Harvard Business School's most popular professors What's behind the phenomenal success of entertainment businesses such as Warner Bros., Marvel Entertainment, and the NFL—along with such stars as Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, and LeBron James? Which strategies give leaders in film, television, music, publishing, and sports an edge over their rivals? Anita Elberse, Harvard Business School's expert on the entertainment industry, has done pioneering research on the worlds of media and sports for more than a decade. Now, in this groundbreaking book, she explains a powerful truth about the fiercely competitive world of entertainment: building a business around blockbuster products—the movies, television shows, songs, and books that are hugely expensive to produce and market—is the surest path to long-term success. Along the way, she reveals why entertainment executives often spend outrageous amounts of money in search of the next blockbuster, why superstars are paid unimaginable sums, and how digital technologies are transforming the entertainment landscape. Full of inside stories emerging from Elberse's unprecedented access to some of the world's most successful entertainment brands, Blockbusters is destined to become required reading for anyone seeking to understand how the entertainment industry really works—and how to navigate today's high-stakes business world at large.
The ABA Journal serves the legal profession. Qualified recipients are lawyers and judges, law students, law librarians and associate members of the American Bar Association.
This collection of essays is driven by the question of how we know what we know, and in particular how we can be certain about something even when we know it is an illusion. The contention of the book is that this age-old question has acquired a new urgency as certain trends in science, technology and ideas have taken the discussion of consciousness out of the philosophy department and deposited it in the world at large. As a consequence, a body of literature from many fields has produced its own sets of concerns and methods under the rubric of Consciousness Studies. Each contribution in this collection deals with issues and questions that lots of people have been thinking about for many years in many different contexts, things such as the nature of film, cinema, world, mind and so on. Those of us fascinated by these diverse yet related issues may have often felt we were working in a disciplinary no-man's-land. Now suddenly, it seems with Consciousness Studies we have a coherent intellectual home - albeit one that is self-consciously eclectic. The essays included in Screen Consciousness: Cinema, Mind and World are from a range of disciplines — art, philosophy, film theory, anthropology and technology studies — each represented by significant international figures, and each concerned with how their field is being transformed by the new discipline of Consciousness Studies. Together they attempt to reconcile the oncoming rush of new data from science and technology about how we know what we know, with the insights gained from the long view of history, philosophy and art. Each of the contributions seeks to interpose Consciousness Studies between film and mind, where for cultural theorists psychoanalysis had traditionally stood. This is more than simply updating Film Studies or nodding in the direction of cognitive film theory. Film, with all its sentient, sensuous and social qualities, is a common reference point between all these forces, and Consciousness Studies provides the intellectual impetus for this book to revisit familiar problems with fresh insight.
What does it mean to develop true community in our churches—and how do we get there? For all the vast talk about the nature of the church over the years, our understanding of the actual relationship we euphemistically call "Christian community" is rather thin and incomprehensible. Peel away the institutional hard shell around what we understand to be the church and what fleshy relationship lies within? In Soulmates, David Horn addresses the above questions with creativity, wisdom, and pastoral love, equipping you with a practical roadmap to achieving deeper relationships within your church community. By setting the utterly unique relationship, fellowship, against the backdrop of another important relationship that serves most often as its chief counterfeit, friendship, Horn seeks to give definition and understanding to true Christian community. Covering such topics as the many faces of relationship, the nature of friendship, the making of community, the hospitality of sojourners and aliens, and more, Soulmates invites readers to understand and move into the uncommon relationship that we, as the body of Christ, are to engender in one another in our life together—a relationship that is far more unique and radical than we often imagine.
The way we live, work, and die-alone and with other Americans-have so many hidden layers that we might as well say that there are two Americas: one we think we know and the other virtually unknown to us. Such a thought is compelling enough to motivate a sociologist to start writing down what he thinks about the hidden America. Then, what emerges from this effort is a picture of America that is at once so familiar and so alien. It is the alien part of America that troubles us, that scares us, and that pushes us to escape into louder, more colorful, and more pleasant unreality. As our escapism becomes more urgent each day, so does its testimony to the emptiness and loneliness of our solitary existence. Huer discusses this alien part of America in American Paradise.
