Delve into the chilling convergence of digital technology and the art of storytelling. "The Impact of Digital Media on Horror Storytelling" unlocks a new chapter in horror, revealing how it has embraced the boundless possibilities of the digital realm. From immersive video games to interactive literature, digital horror has evolved into a gripping force. This groundbreaking analysis explores how technology has revolutionized the way we experience fear, creating psychological tension through VR, eerie soundscapes, and user-generated content. Unveil the fascinating insights into the evolution of horror storytelling. Discover the role of social media in viral horror, the influence of surveillance on psychological dread, and the challenges of ethical storytelling in the digital age. Each chapter provides captivating case studies, illuminating the impact of digital media on our collective fears. Embark on a thrilling journey into the unknown with "The Impact of Digital Media on Horror Storytelling." Embrace the transformative power of technology and delve into the psychological, cultural, and aesthetic implications that shape modern horror. Purchase your copy today and unlock the secrets of digital horror's transformative embrace.

The Slender Man entered the general popular consciousness in May 2014, when two young girls led a third girl into a wooded area and stabbed her. Examining the growth of the online horror phenomenon, this book introduces unique attributes of digital culture and establishes a needed framework for studies of other Internet memes and mythologies.

This two-volume set LNCS 14383 and LNCS 14384 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2023, held in Kobe, Japan, during November 11–15, 2023. The 30 full papers presented in this book together with 11 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 101 submissions. Additionally, the proceedings includes 22 Late Breaking Works. The papers focus on topics such as: theory, history and foundations; social and cultural contexts; tools and systems; interactive narrative design; virtual worlds, performance, games and play; applications and case studies; and late breaking works.

This volume bridges the divide between film and media studies scholarship by exploring audience expectations of film and TV genre in the age of digital streaming, using qualitative thematic and quantitative data-driven analyses. Through four ground-breaking surveys of audience members and content creators, the authors have empirically determined what audiences expect of various genres, the extent to which these definitions match those of scholars and critics, and the overall variation and complexity of audience expectations in the age of media abundance. They also examine audience habits and preferences, drawing from both theory and original empirical analyses, with a view toward the implications for the moving image in a rapidly changing media environment. The book draws from the data to develop a number of new concepts, including genre repertoire, genre hybridity, audience interest maximization, and variety seeking, and a new stage of genre development, genre bending. It is an ideal resource for students and scholars interested in the symbiotic relationship between audiences and the moving image products they consume, as well as the way the current digital media environment has impacted our understanding of film and TV genres.

Through analysis of three case study videogames – Left 4 Dead 2, DayZ and Minecraft – and their online player communities, Digital Zombies, Undead Stories develops a framework for understanding how collective gameplay generates experiences of narrative, as well as the narrative dimensions of players' creative activity on social media platforms. Narrative emergence is addressed as a powerful form of player experience in multiplayer games, one which makes individual games' boundaries and meanings fluid and negotiable by players. The phenomenon is also shown to be recursive in nature, shaping individual and collective understandings of videogame texts over time. Digital Zombies, Undead Stories focuses on games featuring zombies as central antagonists. The recurrent figure of the videogame zombie, which mediates between chaos and rule-driven predictability, serves as both metaphor and mascot for narrative emergence. This book argues that in the zombie genre, emergent experiences are at the heart of narrative experiences for players, and more broadly demonstrates the potential for the phenomenon to be understood as a fundamental part of everyday play experiences across genres.

Cases in Public Relations Strategy draws on original, real-world case studies to provide students with a strategic approach to meeting the needs of a client before, during, and beyond a campaign. Using the RACE (Research, Action Planning, Communication, and Evaluation) model, students explore successful contemporary campaigns and evaluate best practices in all major areas of public relations activity. This practical, client-oriented text shows students how to systematically evaluate and adapt to the needs of a particular client—whether big or small, global or local, for-profit or nonprofit—in order to launch the most effective campaign. Each case includes a brief introduction focused on fundamentals and core competencies, and all cases have been carefully selected to present a wide range of client types. In addition to the lessons from professionals in the case studies, a section on PR consulting and an appendix on advancing your PR career give students the knowledge and skills they need for success in the field. Give your students the SAGE edge! SAGE edge offers a robust online environment featuring an impressive array of free tools and resources for review, study, and further exploration, keeping both instructors and students on the cutting edge of teaching and learning.

Is it true that, in this era of digitization and mass media, reading and writing are on the decline? In a thought-provoking collection of essays and profiles, 30 contributors explore what may instead be a rise in rhetorical activity, an upsurge due in part to the sudden blurring of the traditional roles of creator and audience in participatory media. This collection explores topics too often overlooked by traditional academic scholarship, though critical to an exploration of rhetoric and popular culture, including fan fiction, reality television, blogging, online role-playing games, and Fantasy Football. Both scholarly and engaging, this text draws rhetorical studies into the digital age.

A deep dive into the world of online and multimedia longform storytelling, this book charts the renaissance in deep reading, viewing and listening associated with the literary mind, and the resulting implications of its rise in popularity. David O. Dowling argues that although developments in media technology have enabled the ascendance of nonfictional storytelling to new heights through new forms, it has done so at the peril of these intensely persuasive designs becoming deployed for commercial and political purposes. He shows how traditional boundaries separating genres and dividing editorial from advertising content have fallen with the rise of media hybridity, drawing attention to how the principle of an independent press can be reformulated for the digital ecosystem. Immersive Longform Storytelling is a compelling examination of storytelling, covering multimedia features, on-demand documentary television, branded digital documentaries, interactive online documentaries, and podcasting. This book’s focus on both form and effect makes it a fascinating read for scholars and academics interested in storytelling and the rise of new media.

Why are filmmakers such as J.J. Abrams, Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino continuing to shoot their movies on celluloid in the digital age of cinema? Are these filmmakers choosing the photochemical process of celluloid images purely for aesthetics purposes? Or could their preference for celluloid have something to do with analogue's intimate connection to the subject of lack and desire? Capturing Digital Media: Perfection and Imperfection in Contemporary Film and Television examines the relationship between the perfection of the digital form and the imperfection of the human subject in recent film and television. Using a number of key psychoanalytic terms and new media concepts, Capturing Digital Media shows that the necessity of imperfection is where we locate the human subject of desire within the binary logic of the digital. It argues that the perfection of digital must be wounded by forms of imperfection in order to make media texts such as film and television desirable. But even as films and television texts incorporate forms of imperfection, digital perfection remains a powerful attraction in our engagement with moving images, such as high definition screens, spectacular digital effects, and state-of-the-art sound.

The impact of public narratives has been so broad (including effects on beliefs and behavior but extending beyond to emotion and personality), that the stakeholders in the process have been located across disciplines, institutions, governments, and, indeed, across epochs. Narrative Impact draws upon scholars in diverse branches of psychology and media research to explore the subjective experience of public narratives, the affordances of the narrative environment, and the roles played by narratives in both personal and collective spheres. The book brings together current theory and research presented primarily from an empirical psychological and communications perspective, as well as contributions from literary theory, sociology, and censorship studies. To be commensurate with the broad scope of influence of public narratives, the book includes the narrative mobilization of major social movements, the formation of self-concepts in young people, banning of texts in schools, the constraining impact of narratives on jurors in the court room, and the wide use of education entertainment to affect social changes. Taken together, the interdisciplinary nature of the book and its stellar list of contributors set it apart from many edited volumes. Narrative Impact will draw readership from various fields, including sociology, literary studies, and curriculum policy. Providing new explanatory concepts, this book: *is the first account on the psychology of narrative persuasion and brings together the relevant conceptualizations from within various sectors of psychology together with the major issues that concern cognate disciplines outside of psychology; *focuses on understanding the mechanisms that underlie the power of public narratives to achieve broad historical and social changes; *offers breakthroughs to the future: the role of "presence" in virtual reality narratives; the role of "zines" in females' fashioning of their selves; and the central role of imagery in transportation into narrative worlds; *explains varying roles of emotion in narrative immersion; and *addresses the growing blurring of fact and fiction: mechanisms and implications for beliefs and behavior.