Cultural Protest in Journalism, Documentary Films and the Arts: Between Protest and Professionalisation entails a comprehensive account of the history and trajectory of contemporary journalistic, (documentary) film, and arts and cultural actors rooted (partially or wholly) in radical, alternative, community, voluntary, participatory and independent movements primarily in Britain and Germany. It focuses particularly on the examination of production and organisational contexts of selected case studies, some of which date from the countercultural era. The book takes a transnational and interdisciplinary approach encompassing a range of theoretical perspectives – drawn from the political economy of communication tradition; alternative media scholarship; journalism studies; critical sociological and cultural studies of media industries; cultural industries research; and critical and social theory – in conjunction with extensive ethnographic fieldwork. It does so to reveal the obscure nature of media and cultural production and organisation at seventeen media and cultural actors based in Britain and Germany, including South Africa and Nigeria. A particular focus is placed on how such actors balance competing imperatives of a civic/socio-political, professional, artistic and commercial nature as well as various systemic pressures, and on how they navigate the resultant ambivalences, paradoxes and tensions in their day-to-day work. In essence, the book highlights key insights into a changing nature and quality of engagement with social and political realities in protest cultures.

Through his influential work on cultural capital and social mobility, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has provided critical insights into the complex interactions of power, class, and culture in the modern era. Ubiquitous though Bourdieu’s theories are, however, they have only intermittently been used to study some of the most important forms of cultural production today: cinema and new media. With topics ranging from film festivals and photography to constantly evolving mobile technologies, this collection demonstrates the enormous relevance that Bourdieu’s key concepts hold for the field of media studies, deploying them as powerful tools of analysis and forging new avenues of inquiry in the process.

The entries are designed to be relatively brief with clear, accessible, and current information.

Well before the far-right resurgence that has most recently transformed European politics, Austria’s 1999 parliamentary elections surprised the world with the unexpected success of the Freedom Party of Austria and its charismatic leader, Jörg Haider. The party’s perceived xenophobia, isolationism, and unabashed nationalism in turn inspired a massive protest movement that expressed opposition not only through street protests but also in novels, plays, films, and music. Through careful readings of this varied cultural output, The Art of Resistance traces the aesthetic styles and strategies deployed during this time, providing critical context for understanding modern Austrian history as well as the European protest movements of today.

A collection of works by Asian scholars looking at different ways in which relatively recent traumas have been memorialized in their various countries, often while the traumas themselves are ongoing, or the memories of them contested. Memory studies typically focuses on the study of memorialization after traumatic incidents are overcome, in Asia, however, the past and the present remain closely intertwined. Between the legacies of the Japanese Empire, the respective suppressions by the Kuomintang and the People’s Republic of China, and the ongoing protests in much of Southeast Asia against oppressive governments and laws, memorialization is occurring while the histories are still being contested. The contributors to this book are Asian scholars examining the memorializing of events in the countries of Asia, including China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Thailand and the Philippines, using local language sources. They look at a broad range of media of memorialization, encompassing statues, cemeteries, testimonial literature, and film among others. An insightful resource for scholars of memory and cultural studies, as well as those of twentieth and twenty-first century Asian history.

Documentary's Expanded Fields: New Media and the Twenty-First-Century Documentary offers a theoretical mapping of contemporary non-standard documentary practices enabled by the proliferation of new digital imaging, lightweight and non-operator digital cameras, multiscreen and interactive interfaces, and web 2.0 platforms. These emergent practices encompass digital data visualizations, digital films that experiment with the deliberate manipulation of photographic records, documentaries based on drone cameras, GoPros, and virtual reality (VR) interfaces, documentary installations in the gallery, interactive documentary (i-doc), citizens' vernacular online videos that document scenes of the protests such as the Arab Spring, the Hong Kong Protests, and the Black Lives Matter Movements, and new activist films, videos, and archiving projects that respond to those political upheavals. Building on the interdisciplinary framework of documentary studies, digital media studies, and contemporary art criticism, Jihoon Kim investigates the ways in which these practices both challenge and update the aesthetic, epistemological, political, and ethical assumptions of traditional film-based documentary. Providing a diverse range of case studies that classify and examine these practices, the book argues that the new media technologies and the experiential platforms outside the movie theater, such as the gallery, the world wide web, and social media services, expand five horizons of documentary cinema: image, vision, dispositif, archive, and activism. This reconfiguration of these five horizons demonstrates that documentary cinema in the age of new media and platforms, which Kim labels as the 'twenty-first-century documentary, ' dynamically changes its boundaries while also exploring new experiences of reality and history in times of the contemporary crises across the globe, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

Artists and writers examine the bombardment of information, misinformation, emotion, deception, and secrecy in online and offline life in the post-digital age. Every day we are bombarded by information, misinformation, emotion, deception, and secrecy in our online and offline lives. How does the never-ending flow of data affect our powers of perception and decision making? This richly illustrated and boldly designed collection of essays and artworks investigates visual culture in the post-digital age. The essays, by such leading cultural thinkers as Douglas Coupland and W. J. T. Mitchell, consider topics that range from the future of money to the role of art in a post-COVID-19 world; from mental health in the digital age to online grieving; and from the mediation of visual culture to the thickening of the digital sphere. Accompanying an ambitious exhibition conceived by the Sharjah Art Foundation and volume editor and curator Omar Kholeif, the book is a work of art and a labor of love, emulating the labyrinthine corridors of the exhibition itself. Created by a group of writers, artists, designers, photographers, and publishers, Art in the Age of Anxiety calls upon us to consider what our collective future will be and how humanity will adapt to it.

Asian Popular Culture: New, Hybrid, and Alternate Media, edited by John A. Lent and Lorna Fitzsimmons, is an interdisciplinary study of popular culture practices in Asia, including regional and national studies of Japan, China, South Korea, and Australia. The contributors explore the evolution and intersection of popular forms (gaming, manga, anime, film, music, fiction, YouTube videos) and explicate the changing cultural meanings of these media in historical and contemporary contexts. At this study's core are the roles popular culture plays in the construction of national and regional identity. Common themes in this text include the impact of new information technology, whether it be on gaming in East Asia, music in 1960s' Japan, or candlelight vigils in South Korea; hybridity, of old and new versions of the Chinese game Weiqi, of online and hand-held gaming in South Korea and Japan that developed localized expressions, or of United States culture transplanted to Japan in post-World War II, leading to the current otaku (fan boy) culture; and the roles that nationalism and grassroots and alternative media of expression play in contemporary Asian popular culture. This is an essential study in understanding the role of popular culture in Asia's national and regional identity.

Drawing on international examples, this book interrogates the relationship between the arts, culture and community development. Contributors from six continents, reimagine community development as they consider how aesthetic arts contribute to processes of peacebuilding, youth empowerment, participatory planning and environmental regeneration.

Over the last decade, images have become a key feature of digital culture; at the same time, they have made a mark on a wide range of research practices. Visual Methods for Digital Research is the first textbook to bring the fields of visual methods and digital research together. Presenting visual methods for digital and participatory research, the book covers both the application of existing digital methods for image research and new visual methodologies developed specifically for digital research. It encompasses various approaches to studying digital images, including the distant reading of image collections, the close reading of visual vernaculars of social media platforms, and participatory research with visual materials. Offering a theoretical framework illustrated with hands-on techniques, Sabine Niederer and Gabriele Colombo provide compelling examples for studying online images through visual and digital means, and discuss critical data practices such as data feminism and digital methods for social and cultural research. This textbook is an accessible and invaluable guide for students and researchers of digital humanities, social sciences, information and communication design, critical data visualization and digital visual culture.