Digitization carries the utopian promise of archival access unlimited by constraints of space and time, and with it, of new forms of research and historiographies. In reality, digital image archives pose a complex set of technical, legal, ethical and methodological challenges, particularly for film and media studies and adjacent fields. In a series of studies and interviews with practitioners, …
Video games permeate our everyday existence. They immerse players in fascinating gameworlds and exciting experiences, often inviting them in various ways to reflect on the enacted events. Gerald Farca explores the genre of dystopian video games and the player's aesthetic response to their nightmarish gameworlds. Players, he argues, will gradually come to see similarities between the virtual dys…
The COVID-19 pandemic has reorganized existing methods of exchange, turning comparatively marginal technologies into the new normal. Multipoint videoconferencing in particular has become a favored means for web-based forms of remote communication and collaboration without physical copresence. Taking the recent mainstreaming of videoconferencing as its point of departure, this anthology examines…
The Actes Sud Junior catalogue is the fruit of a concerted effort to maintain a diverse selection of titles so as to assure a multi-faceted collection which includes picture books, activity books, novels, non-fi ction and books with cds. For over twenty years, we have been committed to publishing high quality content, with strong voices and to the highest production standards. Striving for exc…
Media literacy is the ability to use, understand and create media and communications in a variety of contexts. Our 2017 Children’s and Parents’ Media Use and Attitudes report is part of Ofcom’s media literacy research programme. It provides detailed evidence on media use, attitudes and understanding among children and young people aged 5-15, as well as in-depth information about media acc…
Using the digital turn as a starting point, the essays in this volume explore the materiality of sacred texts in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, along with transitions between various media cultures and material forms. The essays explore how material factors have shaped the production and transmission of sacred texts, as well as impacting the way in which people engage with, use, and perform …
As the dominant narrative forms in the age of media convergence, films and games call for a transmedial perspective in narratology. Games allow a participatory reception of the story, bringing the transgression of the ontological boundary between the narrated world and the world of the recipient into focus. These diverse transgressions - medial and ontological - are the subject of this transdis…
Fictional Practices of Spirituality provides critical insight into the implementation of belief, mysticism, religion, and spirituality into worlds of fiction, be it interactive or non-interactive. This first volume focuses on interactive, virtual worlds - may that be the digital realms of video games and VR applications or the imaginary spaces of life action role-playing and soul-searching prac…
Food is more than just nutrition. Its preparation, presentation and consumption is a multifold communicative practice which includes the meal's design and its whole field of experience. How is food represented in cookbooks, product packaging or in paintings? How is dining semantically charged? How is the sensuality of eating treated in different cultural contexts? In order to acknowledge the ma…
This open access book examines the conversations around gendered mental health in contemporary Western media culture. While early 21st century-media was marked by a distinct focus on happiness, productivity and success, during the 2010s negative feelings and discussions around mental health have become increasingly common in that same media landscape. This book traces this turn to sadness in wo…