Showing titles in Media Studies

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?

In True or False, former CIA analyst Cindy Otis takes listeners through the history and impact of misinformation over the centuries, sharing stories from the past and insights that listeners today can gain from them. Then, she shares lessons learned in over a decade working for the CIA, including actionable tips on how to spot fake news, how to make sense of the information we receive each day, and, most importantly, how to understand and see past our own information biases so that we can think critically about important issues and put events happening around us into context.

Brad Steiger, the world-renowned authority on unexplained phenomena, presents a collection of UFO encounters and abductions. His provocative theories provide answers to the most puzzling questions: Why are they here? What do they want? And how will they change the fate of the human race?

Army Wives goes beyond the sound bites and photo ops of military life to bring listeners into the hearts and homes of today's military wives. Biank tells the story of four typical Army wives who, in a flash, find themselves in extraordinary circumstances that ultimately force them to redefine who they are as women and wives.

The 2030 Agenda, proclaimed at the 2015 United Nations Summit in New York, is a "global future contract" which national governments are expected to adhere. This agenda includes 17 so-called "sustainability goals" that look good on the surface. A closer look reveals the same actors who want nothing less than full control over the earth's resources, a single centralized world government, and the enslavement of all human beings on earth.

Our media environment is in crisis. Polarization is rampant. Polluted information floods social media. Even our best efforts to help clean up can backfire, sending toxins roaring across the landscape. In You Are Here, Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner offer strategies for navigating increasingly treacherous information flows. Using ecological metaphors, they emphasize how our individual me is entwined within a much larger we, and how everyone fits within an ever-shifting network map. 

More than a decade ago, counterterrorism expert Rita Katz began browsing white supremacist and neo-Nazi forums. The hateful rhetoric and constant threats of violence immediately reminded her of jihadist militants. Now, years of attacks committed by extremists radicalized online—including at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and mosques in New Zealand, as well as the Capitol siege—have brought home the danger. From ISIS to QAnon, Saints and Soldiers pinpoints the approaches needed for a new era in which arrests and military campaigns alone cannot stop never-before-seen threats.

Sophistry: The Dark Art Undermining Truth is a groundbreaking exploration into one of humanity’s oldest and most dangerous deceptions. This book reveals the insidious techniques of sophistry, exposing how it manipulates thought, divides societies, and erodes trust in an age of unprecedented complexity. Ethan Solace, an interdisciplinary psychologist and thought leader, takes listeners on a powerful journey through the shadows of manipulation, examining how sophistry infiltrates education, media, technology, and public discourse.

Who believes in conspiracy theories, and why are some people more susceptible to them than others?What are the consequences of such beliefs?Has a conspiracy theory ever turned out to be true?The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories debunks the myth that conspiracy theories are a modern phenomenon...

The rules of entertainment have changed. Last year the vlogger PewDiePie made more money from his YouTube videos than high-profile movie stars such as Meryl Streep, Cameron Diaz and Anne Hathaway. And no one knows more about how it works than Robert Kyncl, chief business officer at YouTube. YouTube is the first truly global media platform, reaching 87 percent of all online adults in the UK.

It's tempting to think that we live in an unprecedentedly fertile age for conspiracy theories, with seemingly each churn of the news cycle bringing fresh manifestations of large-scale paranoia. But the sad fact is that these narratives of suspicion - and the delusional psychologies that fuel them - have been a constant presence in American life for nearly as long as there's been an America. In this sweeping book, Thomas Milan Konda traces the country's obsession with conspiratorial thought from the early days of the republic to our own anxious moment. 

Is Twitter a place for sociability and conversation, a platform for public broadcasting, or a network for discussion? Digital platforms have become influential in every sphere of communication, from the intimate and everyday to the public, professional, and political. Since the scrappy start-up days of social media in the mid-2000s, not only has the worldwide importance of platforms grown exponentially, but also their cultures have shifted dramatically, in a variety of directions.

AI Ink: Writing, Publishing, and Misinformation at the Dawn of the AI Age is a groundbreaking exploration of the profound impact of artificial intelligence on the creative industries. Jason Van Tatenhove, a journalist and expert on political extremism, takes listeners on a journey through the rapidly evolving landscape where AI tools are reshaping writing and publishing. From AI-generated content to the ethical dilemmas of misinformation, this book addresses the opportunities and challenges that come with the integration of AI into creative processes.

While generations of young adults used to spend their summers working as lifeguards or camp counselors, college students today are more likely to seek office experience as interns. Blame the Intern takes listeners into the workspaces of the music industry to show how internships, especially unpaid ones, are problematic introductions to the working world that often provide little valuable training and are unlikely to lead to a job.

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 Oscar-nominated actor Elliott Gould narrates this true story of recent developments and brand-new declassified evidence, now clearly showing that there’s much, much more than meets the public eye about the secret life, and purported death, of Yuri Gagarin.

As consumers of art, and especially as fans, we have a host of tricky moral question to navigate: do the moral lives of artists affect the aesthetic quality of their work? In Drawing the Line, Erich Hatala Matthes argues that it doesn't matter whether we can separate the art from the artist, because we shouldn't. Matthes argues both that the lives of artists can play an important role in shaping our moral and aesthetic relationship to the artworks that we love and that these same artworks offer us powerful resources for grappling with the immorality of their creators. 

In the revolutionary excitement of the 1960s, young people around the world called for a radical shift away from the old industrial order, imagining a future of technological liberation and unfettered prosperity. Industrial society did collapse, and a digital economy has risen to take its place, yet many are left feeling marginalized and deprived of the possibility of a better life. The Inglorious Years explores the many ways we have been let down by the rising tide of technology, showing how our new interconnectivity is not fulfilling its promise.

A must-have gift for anyone interested in investigative journalism. The Sunday Times national newspaper is famous for its insight investigative journalist team. This book profiles the major stories from the Thalidomide case to the Coronavirus investigation. News-breaking stories as reported by...

This work was supported, in part, by a fund-raising effort in which approximately 330 persons contributed funds in support of the New Earth technology team and Urban Global Health Alliance. It is released under a Creative Commons license CCBY-NC-SA. Any derivative use of this dossier must be made public for the benefit of others. All documents, references, and disclosures contained herein are subject to an AS-IS representation. The author does not bear responsibility for errors in the public record or references therein.