Showing titles in Media Studies

Emma Gannon was born in 1989, the year the World Wide Web was conceived, so she's literally grown up alongside the Internet. There've been late night chat room experiments, sexting from a Nokia and dubious webcam exchanges. And let's not forget catfishing, MSN, digital friendships and #feminism. She was basically social networking way before it was a thing - and she's even made a successful career from it.

Alexander Litvinenko: Mr Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian living in London, was poisoned by Polonium-210, traced by alpha detectors to a British Airways flight from Moscow to Heathrow. A Champions League match between Arsenal and CKSA Moscow had brought thousands of Russian fans to London. Was one of them responsible for Litvinenko's death?

Bar Codes Mark Relfe's book 'The New Money System: 666' implies that the average barcode has satanic significance. Can it really be that these codes apparently indicate 666; the mark of the devil and his coming cashless economy?

How did we get from an age of dignified nightly news broadcasts on three national networks to the age of 24-hour channels and constantly breaking news? The answer - thanks to Ted Turner and an oddball cast of cable TV visionaries, big league rejects, and nonunion newbies - can be found in the basement of an abandoned country club in Atlanta. Because it was there, in 1980, that this motley crew somehow, against all odds, launched CNN. Up All Night is an inside look at the founding of the upstart network that set out to change the way news was delivered and consumed.

Silicon Valley is imperializing the planet. With nearly bottomless supplies of cash and ambition, a small group of companies have been gradually seizing symbolic and practical civic leadership in America and worldwide. But Silicon Valley does not answer to the electorate; nor have they been voted into office. And the perils of their influence are only now making themselves known.

Are you bored of the endless scroll of your social media feed? Do you swipe left before considering the human being whose face you just summarily rejected? Do you skim articles on your screen in search of intellectual stimulation that never arrives? If so, this book is the philosophical lifeline you have been waiting for. Offering a timely meditation on the profound effects of constant immersion in technology, also known as the Interface, Wish I Were Here draws on philosophical analysis of boredom and happiness to examine the pressing issues such as screen addiction....

Why do facts fail to change people’s minds? In this audiobook, we examine how we form our beliefs and maintain them with a host of cognitive biases, the difference between intelligence and thinking rationally, and some solutions for how to overcome these obstacles both in reasoning with others and in dealing with our own prejudices.

Conspiracy theories pop up surrounding every major national and global event-some are possible, some are not. TikTok influencer and psychology professor Casey Lytle will teach you how to be an intelligent consumer of 'alternative' theories. Lytle's trademark 'project management approach' will help you discern possible from impossible in the popular and controversial theories surrounding 10 national and global events.

The Facebook Narcissist is the first book dedicated to exploring the relationship between narcissism and social media. Lena Derhally, a licensed psychotherapist certified in Imago therapy, delves into how social media enhances individual and cultural narcissism and how it may create or exacerbate toxic narcissistic tendencies in people who use it. Social media is here to stay, but with education and awareness on how it makes us and the world more narcissistic, we can change the narrative and focus on the ways in which social media can be positive, and even improve the world.

What is a conspiracy theory? Well the Google definition defines it as a political belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for a circumstance or event. We will be looking at 25 of the most controversial and popular conspiracy theories that exist today. Who is responsible for these so called circumstances and events? What lead up to such things occurring? Are these theories proven to be true, or have they since been proven to be false, or are they still a mystery today?

Investigative journalist Peter Tremblay suggests that COVID-19 is essentially a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) unleashed against humanity because of ideological goals. COVID-19 was spawned from the minds of evil men who seek to depopulate our planet Earth and pursue unlimited control over the remainder of a population that will no longer be the "humans" we are presently.

Journalist, doctor, professor, and CDC-trained disease detective Seema Yasmin, driven by a need to set the record straight, dissects some of the most widely circulating medical myths and pseudoscience. Exploring how epidemics of misinformation can spread faster than microbes, Dr. Yasmin asks why bad science is sometimes more believable and contagious than the facts.

Why Is This Lying Bastard Lying To Me? – a question famously asked by grand inquisitor Jeremy Paxman – is Rob Burley’s deliciously irreverent and gossipy insider’s account of 25 years working at the very top of British political television – and the unique insight he’s gained on the country’s politicians on the way. In this unique book Rob Burley sets out to explore the state of democracy and accountability in an era when voters have come to expect untruthfulness from their leaders.

Social media on the internet can be a nightmarish place. A primary shield against hateful language, violent videos, and online cruelty uploaded by users is not an algorithm. It is people. Mostly invisible by design, more than 100,000 commercial content moderators evaluate posts on mainstream social media platforms: enforcing internal policies, training artificial intelligence systems, and actively screening and removing offensive material. Roberts, an award-winning social media scholar, offers the first extensive ethnographic study of the commercial content moderation industry.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed and powerless after watching the news? Does it make you feel sad about the world, without much hope for its future? Take a breath. The world is not as bad as the headlines would have you believe! In You Are What You Read, campaigner and researcher Jodie Jackson helps us understand how our current 24-hour news cycle is produced, who decides what stories are selected, why the news is mostly negative, and what effect this has on us, as individuals and as a society.

The Teutonic Knights are said to be the toughest warriors the Catholic church ever had during the crusades. Discover how this Catholic order has influenced our history and even present times. The Teutonic Knights may receive less attention than the other two Catholic orders of Crusaders - the Hospitallers and the Knights Templar - but their history is just as storied and complex as that of their monastic peers.

The Knights Templar treasure is one the world's most enduring mysteries. Is it a myth or a reality? Where could it possibly be hidden?

Want to learn the secrets of secret societies? Have you or a family member been trapped in a secret society? Are secret societies really dangerous or just a group of like-minded people trying to accomplish something important for the betterment of the world? In this book, Notorious Secret Societies, you'll everything you want and need to know!

Combining the deft social analysis of Where Good Ideas Come From with the optimistic arguments of Everything Bad Is Good for You, New York Times best-selling author Steven Johnson's Future Perfect makes the case that a new model of political change is on the rise, transforming everything from local governments to classrooms, from protest movements to health care. Johnson paints a compelling portrait of this new political worldview.

Lance deHaven-Smith asks tough questions and connects the dots among five decades' worth of suspicious events, including the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, the attempted assassinations of George Wallace and Ronald Reagan, the crimes of Watergate, the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deal, the disputed presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, the major defense failure of 9/11, and the subsequent anthrax letter attacks.