Image Brokers" is an in-depth ethnography of the labor and infrastructure behind news images and how they are circulated. Zeynep Gursel presents an intimate look at the ways image brokers - the people who manage the distribution or restriction of images - construct and culturally mediate the images they circulate. Through this framework, news images become visual commodities that impact how politics and culture are visualized in the world. Set against the backdrop of the War on Terror and the industry-wide transition from analog to digital technologies, Image Brokers is a multi-sited ethnography based on fieldwork conducted at the industry's centers of power in New York and Paris. It also explores how new digital and social media platforms continue to change photojournalism and create ever-widening distribution networks. The book is a powerful investigation of the processes of decision making amid the changing infrastructures of representation.

Much of what journalism scholars thought they knew about gatekeeping—about how it is that news turns out the way it does—has been called into question by the recent seismic economic and technological shifts in journalism. These shifts come with new kinds of gatekeepers, new routines of news production, new types of news organizations, new means for shaping the news, and new channels of news distribution. Given these changing realities, some might ask: does gatekeeping still matter? In this internationally-minded anthology of new gatekeeping research, contributors attempt to answer that question. Gatekeeping in Transition examines the role of gatekeeping in the twenty-first century from organizational, institutional, and social perspectives across digital and traditional media, and argues for its place in contemporary scholarship about news and journalism.

Powerful and often controversial, news pictures promise to make the world at once immediate and knowable. Yet while many great writers and thinkers have evaluated photographs of atrocity and crisis, few have sought to set these images in a broader context by defining the rich and diverse history of news pictures in their many forms. For the first time, this volume defines what counts as a news picture, how pictures are selected and distributed, where they are seen and how we critique and value them. Presenting the best new thinking on this fascinating topic, this book considers the news picture over time, from the dawn of the illustrated press in the nineteenth century, through photojournalism’s heyday and the rise of broadcast news and newsreels in the twentieth century and into today’s digital platforms. It examines the many kinds of images: sport, fashion, society, celebrity, war, catastrophe and exoticism; and many mediums, including photography, painting, wood engraving, film and video. Packed with the best research and full colour-illustrations throughout, this book will appeal to students and readers interested in how news and history are key sources of our rich visual culture.

The cultural politics creating and consuming Latina/o mass media. Just ten years ago, discussions of Latina/o media could be safely reduced to a handful of TV channels, dominated by Univision and Telemundo. Today, dramatic changes in the global political economy have resulted in an unprecedented rise in major new media ventures for Latinos as everyone seems to want a piece of the Latina/o media market. While current scholarship on Latina/o media have mostly revolved around important issues of representation and stereotypes, this approach does not provide the entire story. In Contemporary Latina/o Media, Arlene Dávila and Yeidy M. Rivero bring together an impressive range of leading scholars to move beyond analyses of media representations, going behind the scenes to explore issues of production, circulation, consumption, and political economy that affect Latina/o mass media. Working across the disciplines of Latina/o media, cultural studies, and communication, the contributors examine how Latinos are being affected both by the continued Latin Americanization of genres, products, and audiences, as well as by the whitewashing of "mainstream" Hollywood media where Latinos have been consistently bypassed. While focusing on Spanish-language television and radio, the essays also touch on the state of Latinos in prime-time television and in digital and alternative media. Using a transnational approach, the volume as a whole explores the ownership, importation, and circulation of talent and content from Latin America, placing the dynamics of the global political economy and cultural politics in the foreground of contemporary analysis of Latina/o media.

How are events turned into news pictures that define them for the audience? How do events become commodified into pictures that both capture them and reiterate the values of the agencies that sell them? This book looks at every stage of the production of news photographs as they move to and from the ground and are sold around the world. Based on extensive fieldwork at a leading international news agency that includes participant observation with photographers in the field, at the agency’s local and global picture desks in Israel, Singapore, and the UK, in-depth interviews with pictures professionals, and observations and in-depth interviews at The Guardian’s picture desk in London, the findings in this book point to a wide cultural production infrastructure hidden from – and yet also nurtured and thus very much determined by – the consumer’s eye.

If everyone with a smartphone can be a citizen photojournalist, who needs professional photojournalism? This rather flippant question cuts to the heart of a set of pressing issues, where an array of impassioned voices may be heard in vigorous debate. While some of these voices are confidently predicting photojournalism's impending demise as the latest casualty of internet-driven convergence, others are heralding its dramatic rebirth, pointing to the democratisation of what was once the exclusive domain of the professional. Regardless of where one is situated in relation to these stark polarities, however, it is readily apparent that photojournalism is being decisively transformed across shifting, uneven conditions for civic participation in ways that raise important questions for journalism’s forms and practices in a digital era. This book's contributors identify and critique a range of factors currently recasting photojournalism's professional ethos, devoting particular attention to the challenges posed by the rise of citizen journalism. This book was originally published as two special issues, in Digital Journalism and Journalism Practice.

In Manufacturing Celebrity Vanessa Díaz traces the complex power dynamics of the reporting and paparazzi work that fuel contemporary Hollywood and American celebrity culture. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, her experience reporting for People magazine, and dozens of interviews with photographers, journalists, publicists, magazine editors, and celebrities, Díaz examines the racialized and gendered labor involved in manufacturing and selling relatable celebrity personas. Celebrity reporters, most of whom are white women, are expected to leverage their sexuality to generate coverage, which makes them vulnerable to sexual exploitation and assault. Meanwhile, the predominantly male Latino paparazzi can face life-threatening situations and endure vilification that echoes anti-immigrant rhetoric. In pointing out the precarity of those who hustle to make a living by generating the bulk of celebrity media, Díaz highlights the profound inequities of the systems that provide consumers with 24/7 coverage of their favorite stars.

A provocative new reading of the great American avant-garde arist Marsden Hartley's late work.

Aaron Copland and His World reassesses the legacy of one of America's best-loved composers at a pivotal moment--as his life and work shift from the realm of personal memory to that of history. This collection of seventeen essays by distinguished scholars of American music explores the stages of cultural change on which Copland's long life (1900 to 1990) unfolded: from the modernist experiments of the 1920s, through the progressive populism of the Great Depression and the urgencies of World War II, to postwar political backlash and the rise of serialism in the 1950s and the cultural turbulence of the 1960s. Continually responding to an ever-changing political and cultural panorama, Copland kept a firm focus on both his private muse and the public he served. No self-absorbed recluse, he was very much a public figure who devoted his career to building support systems to help composers function productively in America. This book critiques Copland's work in these shifting contexts. The topics include Copland's role in shaping an American school of modern dance; his relationship with Leonard Bernstein; his homosexuality, especially as influenced by the writings of André Gide; and explorations of cultural nationalism. Copland's rich correspondence with the composer and critic Arthur Berger, who helped set the parameters of Copland's reception, is published here in its entirety, edited by Wayne Shirley. The contributors include Emily Abrams, Paul Anderson, Elliott Antokoletz, Leon Botstein, Martin Brody, Elizabeth Crist, Morris Dickstein, Lynn Garafola, Melissa de Graaf, Neil Lerner, Gail Levin, Beth Levy, Vivian Perlis, Howard Pollack, and Larry Starr.

This book presents selected international research on journalism and safety with a focus on digital threats against journalists and their professional practices. It offers an overview of ongoing developments in the field of journalism and safety from diverse regions around the world. From various theoretical, conceptual and empirical perspectives, the chapters address the escalating global concern of pervasive phenomena such as cyber-surveillance, orchestrated attacks, trolling and online harassment and underscore the precariousness of journalists' work in various geographical locations. A section of the book examines the safety conditions of female journalists, focusing on their responses to gendered online attacks and hate speech, whereas another section analyses and discusses institutional and cultural responses to journalists’ safety. The chapters draw on data from diverse geo-cultural regions globally, and collectively the volume provides a comprehensive overview of recent research on digital threats to journalists’ safety and responses to some of the challenges. Additionally, it presents valuable concepts for further scholarly reflection on these issues. The second of two volumes, this book will be a key resource for scholars, practitioners and researchers of journalism, media and cultural studies, communication studies, and sociology. The chapters in the book were originally published in Digital Journalism, Journalism Studies, and Journalism Practice.