Author: David Craig File Type: epub How the transformation of social media platforms and user-experience have redefined the entertainment industryIn 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. **ReviewIts easy to say everythings changed. But its monumental to actually develop a map of the changing economic and cultural dynamics of entertainment production in the age of social media. Cunningham and Craigs masterful book will be foundational for scholars and students for years to come.-Tarleton Gillespie,author of Custodians of the Internet Provides a remarkably broad, detailed, and necessary guide to these new organizations, economies, and personalities that rival the mass media. This book will guide the future of Media Studies.-Nancy Baym,author of Playing to the Crowd If you really want to understand the convergence between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, read this book. Stuart Cunningham and David Craig have written a superb book on the global transition towards online screen culture.-Jose van Dijck,author of The Culture of Connectivity and The Platform Society This is a bold, important book full of thoughtfully researched arguments about how to move the field of media studies forward to address the forms and delivery systems of today.-Ellen Seiter,author of The Creative Artists Legal Guide A seminal book that captures and contextualizes the rapid emergence of an evolutionary media form by connecting the past with the present, while successfully arguing for the legitimacy of Social Media Entertainment as a foundation of our future.-Jordan Levin,Former CEO of Awesomeness and The WB television network About the Author David Craig is Clinical Associate Professor at USC Annenbergs School for Communication and Journalism and a Fellow at the Peabody Media Center. Craig is also a veteran media producer and executive nominated for many Emmy Awards and responsible for over thirty critically-acclaimed films, TV programs, and stage productions.

Author: Bron Taylor File Type: pdf A love of green may be a human universal. Deepening the palette of green scholarship, Bron Taylor proves remarkably to be both an encyclopedist and a visionary.--Jonathan Benthall, author of Returning to Religion Why a Secular Age is Haunted by FaithThis important book provides insight into how a profound sense of relation to nature offers many in the modern world a vehicle for attaining a spiritual wholeness akin to what has been historically associated with established religion. In this sense, Dark Green Religion offers both understanding and hope for a world struggling for meaning and purpose beyond the isolation of the material here and now.--Stephen Kellert, Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental StudiesIn this thought-provoking volume, Bron Taylor explores the seemingly boundless efforts by human beings to understand the nature of life and our place in the universe. Examining in depth the ways in which influential philosophers and naturalists have viewed this relationship, Taylor contributes to the further development of thought in this critically important area, where our depth of understanding will play a critical role in our survival.--Peter H. Raven, President, Missouri Botanical GardenCarefully researched, strongly argued, originally conceived, and very well executed, this book is a vital contribution on a subject of immense religious, political, and environmental importance. Its also a great read.--Roger S. Gottlieb, author of A Greener Faith Religious Environmentalism and our Planets FutureA fascinating analysis of our emotional and spiritual relationship to nature. Whether you call it dark green religion or something else, Bron Taylor takes us through our spiritual relationship with our planet, its ecosystems and evolution, in an enlightened and completely undogmatic manner.--Dr. Claude Martin, Former Director General, World Wildlife FundAn excellent collection of guideposts for perplexed students and scholars about the relationships of nature religions, spirituality, animism, pantheism, deep ecology, Gaia, and land ethics--and for the environmentalist seeking to make the world a better place through green religion as a social force.--Fikret Berkes, author of Sacred Ecology Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource ManagementDark Green Religion shows conclusively how nature has inspired a growing religious movement on the planet, contesting the long reign of many older faiths. Taylor expertly guides us through an astonishing array of thinkers, past and present, who have embraced, in part or whole, the new religion. I was thoroughly convinced that this movement has indeed become a major force on Earth, with great potential consequences for our environmental ethics.--Donald Worster, University of KansasIn this exceptionally interesting and informative book, Bron Taylor has harvested the fruits of years of pioneering research in what amounts to a new field in religious studies the study of how religiousspiritual themes show up in the work of people concerned about nature in many diverse ways. Taylor persuasively argues that appreciation of natures sacred or spiritual dimension both informs and motivates the work of individuals ranging from radical environmentalists and surfers, to eco-tourism leaders and museum curators. I highly recommend this book for everyone interested learning more about the surprising extent to which religiousspiritual influences many of those who work to protect, to exhibit, or to represent the natural world.--Michael E. Zimmerman, Director, Center for Humanities and the Arts, University of Colorado at Boulder

Author: Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval File Type: pdf In the 1990s three college campuses in California exploded as Chicanoa and Latinoa students went on hunger strikes. Through courageous self-sacrifice, these students risked their lives to challenge racial neoliberalism, budget cuts, and fee increases. The strikers acted and spoke spectacularly and, despite great odds, produced substantive change. Social movement scholars have raised the question of why some people risk their lives to create a better world. In Starving for Justice, Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval uses interviews and archival material to examine peoples willingness to make the extreme sacrifice and give their lives in order to create a more just society. Popular memory and scholarly discourse around social movements have long acknowledged the actions of student groups during the 1960s. Now Armbruster-Sandoval extends our understanding of social justice and activism, providing one of the first examinations of Chicanao and Latinao student activism in the 1990s. Students at University of California, Los Angeles University of California, Santa Barbara and Stanford University went on hunger strikes to demand the establishment and expansion of Chicanao studies departments. They also had even broader aspirationsto obtain dignity and justice for all people. These students spoke eloquently, making their bodies and concerns visible. They challenged anti-immigrant politics. They scrutinized the rapid growth of the prison-industrial complex, racial and class polarization, and the universitys neoliberalization. Though they did not fully succeed in having all their demands met, they helped generate long-lasting social change on their respective campuses, making those learning institutions more just. **

Author: Stephen P Randolph File Type: pdf As America confronts an unpredictable war in Iraq, Randolph returns to an earlier conflict that severely tested our civilian and military leaders. In 1972, America sought to withdraw from Vietnam with its credibility intact, with President Nixon and National Security Advisor Kissinger hoping that gains on the battlefield would strengthen their position at the negotiating table. Randolphs intimate chronicle of the commander-in-chief gains us unprecedented access to how these strategic assessments were made and played out. **Review The climactic Easter Offensive, the last major campaign of the American war in Vietnam, serves as Stephen Randolphs focus for this fine study of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissingers foreign policy and use of military power. Using a wide range of sources, Vietnamese as well as American, Randolph convincingly details how Hanois armies were stopped. Powerful and Brutal Weapons is the most comprehensive history of this crucial campaign yet written. It should not be missed. (John Prados, author of Valley of Decision The Siege of Khe Sanh) Stephen Randolph has produced a tour de force. He skillfully takes us inside the White House and over the skies of Vietnam. His analysis of Nixons role in managing the war during the critical year of 1972--when the president was pursuing detente with the USSR, the opening to China, and his reelection bid--is brilliant. Randolph has produced a book that should be read not just by scholars and students of military history and foreign policy decision-making, but by anyone working at the highest levels of the U.S. government today. (James Goldgeier, George Washington University) An outstanding and eminently readable account of the penultimate battle of the American phase of the Vietnam War - the 1972 Easter Offensive and of President Nixons decisive reaction to this massive North Vietnamese surprise attack. Colonel Randolph takes the reader inside the corridors of power, the Oval Office in Washington, and the Vietnamese Communist Party Politburos conference room in Hanoi, and explains how the decisions made at those lofty levels were translated into action at the tactical level. This book belongs on the bookshelves of every serious student of military history and Presidential leadership. (Merle Pribbenow, translator of Victory in Vietnam The Official History of the Peoples Army of Vietnam, 1954-1975) For all of those who long for the good old days before the Iraq imbroglio, Stephen Randolph has written a spectacular study on the dismal processes through which the United States began to disentangle itself from the Vietnam War. In effect, Randolph has done for the end of the war what H.R. McMaster managed to do for the wars beginning. (Williamson Murray, co-author with Major General Robert H. Scales Jr. of The Iraq War A Military History) A detailed but lucid account. Randolph tells the tale from three sides (American, South Vietnamese and North Vietnamese) and three perspectives--military, of course, but also diplomatic and political. And it works. Randolph has done deep research--for example, into the military archives of the North Vietnamese, who candidly noted what theyd done wrong. Unlike many military writers, Randolph pays attention to the staggering importance of logistics. (He says the U.S. surge of 1972 was unprecedented and a major feat for its time.) And as a retired colonel who once flew fighters, he knows all about military culture and military turf battles. (Harry Levins St. Louis Post-Dispatch 2007-04-01) Drawing on extensive research and newly declassified materials, Randolph tells the story of how the White House overrode the objections of the Pentagon brass and the field command in Vietnam--which resulted in a display of shock-and-awe that was as impressive in the realm of realpolitik as it was on the battlefield. (The Atlantic 2007-06-01) [A] brilliant if scary account of a White House running its own military show. (Tony Maniaty Weekend Australian 2007-05-19) The beauty of Powerful and Brutal Weapons is that it seamlessly melds the domestic, political, diplomatic, cultural, technical, tactical, and strategic factors affecting the air war in 1972. Meticulously researched, it depends heavily on primary sources from all sides of the fight-American, North and South Vietnamese, Soviet, and Chinese. Randolph uses a chronological organizing scheme, starting with the Easter Offensive in the South and moving on to the mounting of Linebacker One. (David R. Mets Air and Space Power Journal 2007-09-01) Powerful and Brutal Weapons is far more than the story of a single big campaign. It sketches out the broad architecture of the Nixon administrations effort to extricate itself from Vietnam and Nixons larger aspirations in Sino-Soviet-American affairs, making clear his simultaneous willingness to use force in ways beyond what Lyndon Johnson had allowed and his keen sense that Congressional and public patience was all but gone...Randolph has made a major and important contribution to the study of the American war effort in Vietnam, of civil-military relations, and of the interplay of war making and diplomacy. It is an indispensable part of the core literature on the place of Vietnam within the larger context of U.S. policy objectives in the 1970s. (Donald J. Mrozek Journal of Military History 2008-04-01) Randolph uses not only an impressive range of U.S. records but also some important fresh sources from Hanoi such as official histories and proceedings of the Politburo. The result is a remarkable achievement that brings together multiple perspectives...It is an indispensable part of the core literature on the place of Vietnam within the larger context of U.S. policy objectives in the 1970s. (Donald J. Mrozek Journal of Military History 2008-04-01) About the Author ?Stephen P. Randolph is the Historian at the U.S. Department of State.