Showing results for "Popular Media Cultures" in Politics & Government

The stuff of conspiracy theories makes for great, entertaining stories in movies, books, and television. And there is no shortage of subjects: from who really killed JFK to the truth behind 9/11. And then, there are subjects from alien invasions to the Moon landing was simulated - theories that are truly out of this world, which according to some, is flat. Many of these crazy concepts have jumped off the pages or screens to become so pervasive in our culture that thousands - even millions - subscribe to them as reality.

A different kind of politics for a new kind of society - beyond work, scarcity, and capitalism.

As the world around us increases in technological complexity, our understanding of it diminishes. Underlying this trend is a single idea: The belief that our existence is understandable through computation, and more data is enough to help us build a better world. In reality, we are lost in a sea of information, increasingly divided by fundamentalism, simplistic narratives, conspiracy theories, and post-factual politics. Author James Bridle surveys the history of art, technology, and information systems and reveals the dark clouds that gather over our dreams of the digital sublime.

Cookbooks are not political in conventional ways. Yet, as repositories of human taste, cookbooks transmit specific blends of flavor, texture, and nutrition across space and time. Cookbooks both form and reflect who we are. Cookbook Politics argues that cookbooks highlight aspects of our lives we rarely recognize as political - taste, production, domesticity, collectivity, and imagination - and considers the ways in which cookbooks have or do politics, from the most overt to the most subtle.

Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon - one that is at odds with our heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern, secular knowledge and science. With mordant wit, Jacoby surveys an antirationalist landscape extending from pop culture to a pseudo-intellectual universe of "junk thought".

In Sensible Politics, William A. Callahan uses his expertise in theory and filmmaking to explore not only what visuals mean, but also how visuals can viscerally move and connect us in "affective communities of sense." The book's rich analysis of visual images (photographs, film, art) and visual artifacts (maps, veils, walls, gardens, cyberspace) shows how critical scholarship needs to push beyond issues of identity and security to appreciate the creative politics of social-ordering and world-ordering.

Anyone who observes the skyrocketing number of incendiary political opinion shows on television and radio might conclude that political vitriol on the airwaves is fueled by the increasingly partisan American political system. But in The Outrage Industry Jeffrey M. Berry and Sarah Sobieraj show how the proliferation of outrage says more about regulatory, technological, and cultural changes, than it does about our political inclinations.

Recent years have seen a revival of the heated culture wars of the 1990s, but this time its battleground is the Internet. On one side the alt-right ranges from the once obscure neo-reactionary and white separatist movements, to geeky subcultures like 4chan, to more mainstream manifestations such as the Trump-supporting gay libertarian Milo Yiannopolous. On the other side, struggle sessions and virtue signaling lurk behind a therapeutic language of trigger warnings and safe spaces. The feminist side of the online culture wars has its equally geeky subcultures.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank takes a fair and balanced look at the unsettling rise of the silly Fox News host Glenn Beck. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. In America in 2010, Glenn Beck provides the very refreshment Jefferson had in mind: Whether he's the patriot or the tyrant, he's definitely full of manure.

"Egypt's Interior Ministry, in Error, Releases Memos on Restricting News Media" is from the May 3, 2016 World section of The New York Times. It was written by Declan Walsh and Nour Youssef and narrated by Caroline Miller.

"The Mutual Dependence of Trump and the News Media" is from March 20, 2016, The Upshot section of The New York Times. It was written by Jim Rutenberg and narrated by Fleet Cooper.

As the dust settles on Russian interference in the U.S. election, journalists are confronting an aspect that has received less scrutiny than the hacking but poses its own thorny questions: Moscow’s ability to steer Western media coverage by doling out hacked documents.

The Chinese state news media lashed out at Rex W. Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, on Friday, warning that his call to deny China access to islands it has constructed in the South China Sea could provoke a conflict.

"Chinese State Media Denounce Tillerson’s Call to Block Island Access" is from the January 13, 2017 World section of The New York Times. It was written by Javier C. Hernández and narrated by Corey M. Snow.

"Warning: Social Media May Be Harmful to Your Career" is from the November 18, 2016 Business section of The New York Times. It was written by Cal Newport and narrated by Keith Sellon-Wright.