Media Theory, Religion and Theology

Author: Franklin Graham
ISBN: 9780785265221
Pages: 240
Summary: Before offering a prayer at the inauguration of President George W. Bush, Franklin Graham was asked by a fellow participant if he intended to pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Graham assured him that he would and encouraged this pastor to do the same. As Graham reminded him, "That's the only thing we've got." In days of religious confusion and cultural relativism, Franklin Graham reminds us that there are absolutes in the kingdom of God. "The Name" explains the significance of names in the Hebrew culture, centering on the meaningfulness of the name "Jesus." Chapters focus on the different aspects of power in the Lord's name, such as "Healing in the Name" and "Salvation in the Name."

Author: Stephen Prothero
ISBN: 9780807857700
Pages: 304
Summary: The United States has long been described as a nation of immigrants, but it is also a nation of religions in which Muslims and Methodists, Buddhists and Baptists live and work side by side. This book explores that nation of religions, focusing on how four religious communities—Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs—are shaping and, in turn, shaped by American values.
For a generation, scholars have been documenting how the landmark legislation that loosened immigration restrictions in 1965 catalyzed the development of the United States as "a nation of Buddhists, Confucianists, and Taoists, as well as Christians," as Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark put it. The contributors to this volume take U.S. religious diversity not as a proposition to be proved but as the truism it has become. Essays address not whether the United States is a Christian or a multireligious nation—clearly, it is both—but how religious diversity is changing the public values, rites, and institutions of the nation and how those values, rites, and institutions are affecting religions centuries old yet relatively new in America. This conversation makes an important contribution to the intensifying public debate about the appropriate role of religion in American politics and society.
Contributors:
Ihsan Bagby, University of Kentucky
Courtney Bender, Columbia University
Stephen Dawson, Forest, Virginia
David Franz, University of Virginia
Hien Duc Do, San Jose State University
James Davison Hunter, University of Virginia
Prema A. Kurien, Syracuse University
Gurinder Singh Mann, University of California, Santa Barbara
Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida
Stephen Prothero, Boston University
Omid Safi, Colgate University
Jennifer Snow, Pasadena, California
Robert A. F. Thurman, Columbia University
R. Stephen Warner, University of Illinois at Chicago
Duncan Ryžken Williams, University of California, Berkeley

Author: C. Stephen Evans
ISBN: 9780830824519
Pages: 779
Summary: The New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics is a must-have resource for professors and students, pastors and laypersons--in short, for any Christian who wishes to understand or develop a rational explanation of the Christian faith in the context of today's complex and ever-changing world. Packed with hundreds of articles that cover the key topics, historic figures and contemporary global issues relating to the study and practice of Christian apologetics, this handy one-volume resource will make an invaluable addition to any Christian library.Editors Gavin McGrath and W. C. Campbell-Jack, with consulting editor C. Stephen Evans, have divided the dictionary into two parts: Part one offers a series of introductory essays that set the framework for the dictionary. These essays examine the practice and importance of Christian apologetics in light of theological, historical and cultural concerns. Part two builds on these essays to present numerous alphabetized articles on individuals, ideas, movements and disciplines that are vital to a rational explanation of the Christian faith. Both essays and articles are written by leading Christian philosophers and theologians. Together, they form an indispensable resource for Christians living in today's pluralistic age.

Author: John R. May
ISBN: 9781556127618
Pages: 294
Summary: Contributors from richly diverse backgrounds explore a wide range of current issues concerning the interrelationship of religion and film.

Author: Meaghan Morris
ISBN: 9780631225690
Pages: 456
Summary: Over 25 years ago, Raymond Williams' Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society set the standard for how we understand and use the language of culture and society. Now, three luminaries in the field of cultural studies have assembled a volume that builds on and updates Williams' classic, reflecting the transformation in culture and society since its publication. New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society is a state-of-the-art reference for students, teachers and culture vultures everywhere.

* Assembles a stellar team of internationally renowned and interdisciplinary social thinkers and theorists

* Showcases 142 signed entries - from art, commodity, and fundamentalism to youth, utopia, the virtual, and the West - that capture the practices, institutions, and debates of contemporary society

* Builds on and updates Raymond Williams's classic Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, by reflecting the transformation in culture and society over the last 25 years

* Includes a bibliographic resource to guide research and cross-referencing

* The book is supported by a website: www.blackwellpublishing.com/newkeywords.

Author: Ben H. Bagdikian
ISBN: 9780807061879
Pages: 368
Summary: "Ben Bagdikian has written the first great media book of the twenty-first century. The New Media Monopoly will provide a roadmap to understanding how we got here and where we need to go to make matters better." —Robert McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy

"No book on the media has proved as influential to our understanding of the dangers of corporate consolidation to democracy and the marketplace of ideas; this new edition builds on those works and surpasses them." —Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media?

Praise for the First Edition of The Media Monopoly:

"A groundbreaking work that charts a historical shift in the orientation of the majority of America's communications media—further away from the needs of the individual and closer to those of big business." —Bruce Manuel, Christian Science Monitor

When the first edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 1983, critics called Ben Bagdikian's warnings about the chilling effects of corporate ownership and mass advertising on the nation's news "alarmist." Since then, the number of corporations controlling most of America's daily newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, book publishers, and movie companies has dwindled from fifty to ten to five.

The most respected critique of modern mass media ever issued is now published in a completely updated and revised twentieth anniversary edition.

Author: Nick Montfort
ISBN: 9780262232272
Pages: 837
Summary: This reader collects the texts, videos, and computer programs—many of them now almost impossible to find—that chronicle the history and form the foundation of the still-emerging field of new media. General introductions by Janet Murray and Lev Manovich, along with short introductions to each of the texts, place the works in their historical context and explain their significance. The texts were originally published between World War II—when digital computing, cybernetic feedback, and early notions of hypertext and the Internet first appeared—and the emergence of the World Wide Web—when they entered the mainstream of public life.

The texts are by computer scientists, artists, architects, literary writers, interface designers, cultural critics, and individuals working across disciplines. The contributors include (chronologically) Jorge Luis Borges, Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, Ivan Sutherland, William S. Burroughs, Ted Nelson, Italo Calvino, Marshall McLuhan, Billy Kl?Jean Baudrillard, Nicholas Negroponte, Alan Kay, Bill Viola, Sherry Turkle, Richard Stallman, Brenda Laurel, Langdon Winner, Robert Coover, and Tim Berners-Lee. The CD accompanying the book contains examples of early games, digital art, independent literary efforts, software created at universities, and home-computer commercial software. Also on the CD is digitized video, documenting new media programs and artwork for which no operational version exists. One example is a video record of Douglas Engelbart's first presentation of the mouse, word processor, hyperlink, computer-supported cooperative work, video conferencing, and the dividing up of the screen we now call non-overlapping windows; another is documentation of Lynn Hershman's "Lorna", the first interactive video art installation.

Author: John P. Jewell Jr.
ISBN: 9780687045471
Pages: 208
Summary: I have just finished reading John P. Jewell's most recent book "New Tools For A New Century" and I must say it is terrific. He is director of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning at The University of Dubuque Theological Seminary where he deals in the latest technology and seeks ways to make it helpful for pastors and churches.

I have been a pastor for 41 years and in the last 15 years we tried to make use of available technologies for ministry at Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, Ct. We had services on radio and television, had our own Web page many years ago, a media center and so forth.I didn't find it easy to get my church to buy into all this new technology. But Dr. Jewell has done four powerful and necessary things in this book: 1st, he makes a persuasive case that it is ESSENTIAL for ALL churches to make use of email, the internet, LCD projectors and laptops, etc. in their whole ministry: in worship, Christian Education, Youth ministry, evangelism and so forth. 2nd, he describes the basics of each technology in a simple, clear fashion so even I could understand it. 3rd, he describes with persuasive illustrations ways in which these technologies can be used to improve the effectiveness of each program of the church. 4th, and finally, he describes how to deal with the human, personal, and political blocks to getting your congregation to give it a fair shake.

I don't know of another book like it and wish I had read it 15 years ago. But I am glad I have read it now and will send it along to a few special pastors I love. I recommend you do the same.

Author: Paul H Weaver
ISBN: 9780684863641
Pages: 252
Summary: a propensity of news organizations to obscure the true meanings of news events and distort the public's conception of reality.

Author: Bonnie Anderson
ISBN: 9780470401774
Pages: 288
Summary: While talking heads debate the media’s alleged conservative or liberal bias, award-winning journalist Bonnie Anderson knows that the problem with television news isn’t about the Left versus the Right-- it’s all about the money. From illegal hiring practices to ethnocentric coverage to political cheerleading, "News Flash" exposes how American broadcast conglomerates’ pursuit of the almighty dollar consistently trumps the need for fair and objective reporting. Along the way to the bottomline, the proud tradition of American television journalism has given way to an entertainment-driven industry that’s losing credibility and viewers by the day.
As someone who has worked as both a broadcast reporter and a network executive, Anderson details how the networks have been co-opted by bottom-line thinking that places more value on a telegenic face than on substantive reporting. Network executives—the real power in broadcast journalism—are increasingly employing tactics and strategies from the entertainment industry. They "cast" reporters based on their ability to "project credibility," value youth over training and experience, and often greenlight coverage only if they can be assured that it will appeal to advertiser-friendly demographics.

Author: Elliot D. Cohen
ISBN: 9781591022329
Pages: 319
Summary: The current climate of American journalism is fraught with incestuous relations between government and a handful of Fortune 500 corporations that own and operate news organizations. From News Corporation’s Fox News, General Electric’s NBC, Viacom’s CBS, Disney’s ABC, and Time Warner’s CNN to Clear Channel’s massive radio empire, what the mainstream media present as "news" has become largely a "paid political announcement" born of favor trading, conflict of interest, and self-serving, bottom-line corporate logic. As a result of such accommodationism, American viewers receive a homogenized, censored version of reality and the watchdog of American democracy, the press, has become a docile instrument of governmental authority and big money.
In this timely collection of essays by more than a dozen of the nation's top media scholars, critics, and journalists, including a preface by Arthur Kent, the present media crisis is carefully exposed. From coverage of the war in Iraq to national security, this book details the manner in which journalists have walked in lockstep to the self-serving quid pro quo of government and corporate media giants. Among the many topics broached are methods of media manipulation and propagandizing; the claim that the media is liberal; media ownership, rules, and deregulation; alternative media; the threat to free access to information on the Internet; the effects of media consolidation on actors, producers, agents, managers, and lawyers in the film industry; and the standardization of music and reduction of localism in radio. The contributors include media critic Danny Schechter, political analyst Michael Parenti, Mother Jones publisher Jay Harris, the ACLU’s Barry Steinhardt and Jay Stanley, former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, and many other distinguished commentators. Not only does this book expose the current crisis, it proposes solutions to it, pinpointing legal and constitutional challenges, reviewing recent FCC rulings and congressional legislation, and proposing structural changes in the ways diverse media currently operate. For any American who prizes democracy, this book is a clear wake-up call to look more carefully behind the superficial slogans of a free America and the stars and stripes strategically displayed on the TV monitor.

Author: W. Lance Bennett
ISBN: 9780321421616
Pages: 304
Summary: This favorite of both instructors and students is a "behind-the-scenes" tour of news in American politics. The core question explored in this book is: How well does the news, as the core of the national political information system, serve the needs of democracy? In investigating this question, the book examines how various political actors—from presidents and members of Congress, to interest organizations and citizen-activists—try to get their messages into the news.

Author: Larry Garrison
ISBN: 9781595550583
Pages: 256
Summary: For twenty-five years, Larry Garrison has been a news broker, operating within the secret side of the news, finding and releasing some of the most sensational stories of the last couple decades. Now, in this riveting account of the news behind the news, Garrison lets readers in on how such headlining stories are found, manipulated, and released to the public, blowing the whistle on the news media, and divulging what really happens when all of the major news agencies compete to report the same top stories. Garrison goes inside some of his biggest cases, providing never-before-released info on the Terri Schiavo case, Michael Jackson, TWA Flight 800, 9/11, the Oklahoma bombing, Andrew Cunanan and the murder of Versace, Jon Benet Ramsey, the Robert Blake murder case, Mary Kay Letourneau, and many, many more. Gutsy and gritty, Larry has uncovered and been exposed to facts of some of the biggest headlines of our times. And now, in "The NewsBreaker", he finally tells the story behind the headlines, how news is made and reported, and why the networks wouldn't, or couldn't, give the full story on some of the most important news events of our time.

Author: Mark Buchanan
ISBN: 9780393324426
Pages: 238
Summary: As "Chaos" explained the science of disorder, "Nexus" reveals the new science of connection and the odd logic of six degrees of separation.
"If you ever wanted to know how many links connect you and the Pope, or why when the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank sneezes the global economy catches cold, read this book," writes John L. Casti (Santa Fe Institute). This "cogent and engaging" ("Nature") work presents the fundamental principles of the emerging field of "small-worlds" theory—the idea that a hidden pattern is the key to how networks interact and exchange information, whether that network is the information highway or the firing of neurons in the brain. Mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, and social scientists are working to decipher this complex organizational system, for it may yield a blueprint of dynamic interactions within our physical as well as social worlds.
Highlighting groundbreaking research behind network theory, "Mark Buchanan's graceful, lucid, nontechnical and entertaining prose" (Mark Granovetter) documents the mounting support among various disciplines for the small-worlds idea and demonstrates its practical applications to diverse problems—from the volatile global economy or the Human Genome Project to the spread of infectious disease or ecological damage. "Nexus" is an exciting introduction to the hidden geometry that weaves our lives so inextricably together.

Author: Ted Koppel And Kyle Gibson
ISBN:
Pages:
Summary:

Author: John Burke
ISBN: 9780310275015
Pages: 336
Summary: This book challenges Christian leaders to engage in the messy art of creating the right culture to reach our postmodern, post-Christian society. Through real stories of God’s perfect work in the lives of imperfect people, you will experience the power of an authentic church community and learn how to deconstruct barriers and bring hope and healing to America’s most unchurched generation.

Author: John Seabrook
ISBN: 9780375704512
Pages: 240
Summary: From John Seabrook, one of our most incisive and amusing cultural critics, comes Nobrow, a fascinatingly original look at the radical convergence of marketing and culture.

In the old days, highbrow was elite and unique and lowbrow was commercial and mass-produced. Those distinctions have been eradicated by a new cultural landscape where “good” means popular, where artists show their work at K-Mart, "Titantic" becomes a bestselling classical album, and Roseanne Barr guest edits "The New Yorker": in short, a culture of Nobrow"." Combining social commentary, memoir, and profiles of the potentates and purveyors of pop culture–entertainment mogul David Geffen, MTV President Judy McGrath, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Nobrow high-priest George Lucas, and others–Seabrook offers an enthralling look at our breakneck society where culture is ruled by the unpredictable Buzz and where even aesthetic worth is measured by units shipped.

Author: Bill Mefford, Greg Leffel
ISBN: 9781439202876
Pages: 84
Summary: The Not On Our Watch Christian Companion provides biblical reflections on the movement to end genocide in Darfur and beyond. The Companion connects churches, fellowships, and individual Christians to the global movement to end genocide in Darfur and other crimes against humanity in Africa. The Companion expands on New York Times bestseller Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond by actor Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda) and Africa expert John Prendergast, co-founder of the ENOUGH Project. The book is based on eight weeks of study. Each chapter constitutes a weekly study session designed to guide group discussion and reflection about Darfur and the movement to end genocide. Each session includes a biblical passage for reflection, a lesson applying the passage to Darfur, a weekly action step, and vignettes by refugees, activists and Christians who have awakened to the problem of genocide and become active in the Darfur movement.

Author: John R. May
ISBN: 9781580511063
Pages: 138
Summary: An examination of how the films we see and the books we read affect our faith and our view of the world. With the Apostles' Creed as his foundation, author May interprets popular works such as The Grapes of Wrath, Cool Hand Luke, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Saving Private Ryan through the lens of religious faith.

Author: R. Terry Ellmore
ISBN: 9780844231860
Pages: 679
Summary: