Faced with what many were calling a dying medium, US network television producers became much more aggressive in seeking out alternative business and artistic models in the beginning of this century. Most significantly, many of these producers turned to the emerging field of transmedia (ancillary texts in comicbooks, novels and new media) as a way to bolster and support television products. In this book, the author examines four such programs (24, Alias, Heroes and Lost) and investigates how transmedia was incorporated into both the work and the art of network television production. Split into two complementary parts, the book first paints a picture of how transmedia producers were, or were not, incorporated into creative decision-making centers of these serialized programs. The second section explains how the presence of off-site transmedia texts begins to alter the very narrative construction of the on-air series themselves. Including interviews with the transmedia workers, this groundbreaking study extends the field of television studies into brand new areas, and brings a 'dying medium' into the 21st Century.

The early years of the twenty-first century have seen dramatic changes within the television industry. The development of the internet and mobile phone as platforms for content directly linked to television programming has offered a challenge to the television set’s status as the sole domestic access point to audio-visual dramatic content. Viewers can engage with ‘television’ without ever turning a television set on. Whilst there has already been some exploration of these changes, little attention has been paid to the audience and the extent to which these technologies are being integrated into their daily lives. Focusing on a particular period of rapid change and using case studies including Spooks, 24 and Doctor Who, Transmedia Television considers how the television industry has exploited emergent technologies and the extent to which audiences have embraced them. How has television content been transformed by shifts towards multiplatform strategies? What is the appeal of using game formats to lose oneself within a narrative world? How can television, with its ever larger screens and association with domesticity, be reconciled with the small portable, public technology of the mobile phone? What does the shift from television schedules to online downloading mean for our understanding of ‘the television audience’? Transmedia Television will consider how the relationship between television and daily life has been altered as a result of the industry’s development of emerging new media technologies, and what ‘television’ now means for its audiences.

For nearly two decades, Television: Critical Methods and Applications has served as the foremost guide to television studies. Designed for the television studies course in communication and media studies curricula, Television explains in depth how television programs and commercials are made and how they function as producers of meaning. Author Jeremy G. Butler shows the ways in which camera style, lighting, set design, editing, and sound combine to produce meanings that viewers take away from their television experience. He supplies students with a whole toolbox of implements to disassemble television and read between the lines, teaching them to incorporate critical thinking into their own television viewing. The fourth edition builds upon the pedagogy of previous editions to best accommodate current modes of understanding and teaching television. Highlights of the fourth edition include: New chapter and part organization to reflect the current approach to teaching television—with greatly expanded methods and theories chapters. An entirely new chapter on modes of production and their impact on what you see on the screen. Discussions integrated throughout on the latest developments in television’s on-going convergence with other media, such as material on transmedia storytelling and YouTube’s impact on video distribution. Over three hundred printed illustrations, including new and better quality frame grabs of recent television shows and commercials. A companion website featuring color frame grabs, a glossary, flash cards, and editing and sound exercises for students, as well as PowerPoint presentations, sample syllabi and other materials for instructors. Links to online videos that support examples in the text are also provided. With its distinctive approach to examining television, Television is appropriate for courses in television studies, media criticism, and general critical studies.

A comprehensive and sustained analysis of the development of storytelling for television Over the past two decades, new technologies, changing viewer practices, and the proliferation of genres and channels has transformed American television. One of the most notable impacts of these shifts is the emergence of highly complex and elaborate forms of serial narrative, resulting in a robust period of formal experimentation and risky programming rarely seen in a medium that is typically viewed as formulaic and convention bound. Complex TV offers a sustained analysis of the poetics of television narrative, focusing on how storytelling has changed in recent years and how viewers make sense of these innovations. Through close analyses of key programs, including The Wire, Lost, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Veronica Mars, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Mad Men the book traces the emergence of this narrative mode, focusing on issues such as viewer comprehension, transmedia storytelling, serial authorship, character change, and cultural evaluation. Developing a television-specific set of narrative theories, Complex TV argues that television is the most vital and important storytelling medium of our time.

How did we get from Hollywood to YouTube? What makes Wikipedia so different from a traditional encyclopedia? Has blogging dismantled journalism as we know it? Our media landscape has undergone a seismic shift as digital technology has fostered the rise of "participatory culture," in which knowledge is originated, created, distributed, and evaluated in radically new ways. The Participatory Cultures Handbook is an indispensable, interdisciplinary guide to this rapidly changing terrain. With short, accessible essays from leading geographers, political scientists, communication theorists, game designers, activists, policy makers, physicists, and poets, this volume will introduce students to the concept of participatory culture, explain how researchers approach participatory culture studies, and provide original examples of participatory culture in action. Topics include crowdsourcing, crisis mapping, grid computing, digital activism in authoritarian countries, collaborative poetry, collective intelligence, participatory budgeting, and the relationship between video games and civic engagement. Contributors include: Daren Brabham, Helen Burgess, Clay Calvert, Mia Consalvo, Kelly Czarnecki, David M. Faris, Dieter Fuchs, Owen Gallagher, Clive Goodinson, Alexander Halvais, Cynthia Hawkins, John Heaven, The Jannissary Collective, Henry Jenkins, Barry Joseph, Christopher Kelty, Pierre Lévy, Sophia B. Liu, Rolf Luehrs, Patrick Meier, Jason Mittell, Sarah Pearce, W. James Potter, Howard Rheingold, Suzanne Scott, Benjamin Stokes, Thomas Swiss, Paul Taylor, Will Venters, Jen Ziemke

Torchwood started its life on television as a spin-off from Doctor Who, bringing Captain Jack to join new colleagues in a television series that quickly established itself as fresh and watchable television. It's fourth series, subtitled 'Miracle Day', continued its move from the niche channel of BBC3 to metamorphose into an international production between the BBC and the US network Starz. Torchwood has continued to entertain, provoke and attract large audiences and an expanding fandom. This is the first critical celebration of Torchwood across it four series, considering issues of representation, the fandom that surrounds the show and its complex, institutional contexts. Focusing in particular on how the meanings and understandings of cult television have shifted and become subject to technological, industry and marketing changes in recent years, Torchwood Declassified explores topics including the show's aesthetics and branding, its use of tropes from the horror genre, vast tie-in merchandise, status as a spin off, the nature of a celebrity that is both cult and mainstream, as well as the use of sound and music and of cult writers, and Torchwood's connection to place and location. The book will appeal to fans of the series, researchers and scholars, and anyone interested in ongoing questions over what cult television is, what it means, and why it continues to be of importance.

With growth in access to high-speed broadband and 4G, and increased ownership of smartphones, tablets and internet-connected television sets, the internet has simultaneously begun to compete with and transform television. Online TV argues that these changes create the conditions for an emergent internet era that challenges the language and concepts that we have to talk about television as a medium. In a wide-ranging analysis, Catherine Johnson sets out a series of conceptual frameworks designed to provide a clearer language with which to analyse the changes to television in the internet era and to bring into focus the power dynamics of the online TV industry. From providing definitions of online TV and the online TV industry, to examining the ways in which technology, rights, interfaces and algorithms are used to control and constrain access to audiovisual content, Online TV is a timely intervention into debates about contemporary internet and television cultures. A must-read for any students, scholars and practitioners who want to understand and analyse the ways in which television is intertwining with and being transformed by the internet.

Go beyond Kurosawa and discover an up-to-date and rigorous examination of historical and modern Japanese cinema In A Companion to Japanese Cinema, distinguished cinematic researcher David Desser delivers insightful new material on a fascinating subject, ranging from the introduction and exploration of under-appreciated directors, like Uchida Tomu and Yoshimura Kozaburo, to an appreciation of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema from the point of view of little-known stars and genres of the 1950s. This Companion includes new resources that deal in-depth with the issue of gender in Japanese cinema, including a sustained analysis of Kawase Naomi, arguably the most important female director in Japanese film history. Readers will appreciate the astute material on the connections and relationships that tie together Japanese television and cinema, with implications for understanding the modern state of Japanese film. The Companion concludes with a discussion of the Japanese media’s response to the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the nation. The book also includes: A thorough introduction to the History, Ideology, and Aesthetics of Japanese cinema, including discussions of Kyoto as the cinematic center of Japan and the Pure Film Movement and modern Japanese film style An exploration of the background to the famous story of Taki no Shiraito and the significant and underappreciated contributions of directors Uchida Tomu, as well as Yoshimura Kozaburo A rigorous comparison of old and new Japanese cinema, including treatments of Ainu in documentary films and modernity in film exhibition Practical discussions of intermediality, including treatments of scriptwriting in the 1930s and the influence of film on Japanese television Perfect for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students studying Japanese and Asian cinema, A Companion to Japanese Cinema is a must-read reference for anyone seeking an insightful and contemporary discussion of modern scholarship in Japanese cinema in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) exert a great influence on global activities. ITC has affected the structure of governments, economies, cultures, and even human health. Another area in which ICT has had a tremendous impact is within the developing world and nations where women face repression and fewer opportunities. Overcoming Gender Inequalities through Technology Integration is a critical source for understanding the role of technology adoption within female empowerment and equality in developing nations and beyond. This publication examines the strategies applicable to the use of technology in the purist of societal recognition of women in addition to the trajectory and visibility of women in developing as well as developed countries in which they have access to ICTs. This book is an essential reference source for students and teachers of gender studies or information technology, women’s advocacy groups, policy makers, NGOs, and technology developers.