Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

This open access book discusses political, economic, social, and humanitarian challenges that influence both how people deal with their past and how they build their identities in contemporary Europe. Ongoing debates on migration, on local, national, inter- and transnational levels, prove that it is a divisive issue with regards to understanding European integration and identity. At the same time, the European Union increasingly invests in projects related to European heritage, museums, and cultural memory networks, while having to take dissonant heritages into account. These processes in their combination offer an interesting dynamic and form the complex puzzle that poses challenging questions for anyone involved in academic research, heritage practices, and policy debates. With this puzzle at its core, this book explicitly focuses on slippery and transforming notions of Europe and critically discusses ongoing and transforming power structures of heritage and memory in today’s Europe. The book combines theoretical and methodological contributions to the debates on European heritage and memory studies and in-depth analyses of empirical case studies. Its main aim is to bring research fields concerning memory and heritage into a closer dialogue and thus explore the cultural and political dynamics of contemporary Europe.

Focusing on contemporary crime narratives from different parts of the world, this collection of essays explores the mobility of crimes, criminals and investigators across social, cultural and national borders. The essays argue that such border crossings reflect on recent sociocultural transformations and geopolitical anxieties to create an image of networked and interconnected societies where crime is not easily contained. The book further analyses crime texts’ wider sociocultural and affective significance by examining the global mobility of the genre itself across cultures, languages and media. Underlining the global reach and mobility of the crime genre, the collection analyses types and representations of mobility in literary and visual crime narratives, inviting comparisons between texts, crimes and mobilities in a geographically diverse context. The collection ultimately understands mobility as an object of study and a critical lens through which transformations in our globalised world can be examined.

This book argues that videogames address contemporary, middle-class anxieties about poverty in the United States. The early chapters consider gaming as a modern form of slumming and explore the ways in which titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and World of Warcraft thematize poverty. The argument turns to the field of literary studies to identify analytical frameworks for addressing and understanding these themes. Throughout, the book considers how the academic area of inquiry known as game studies has developed over time, and makes use of such scholarship to present, frame, and value its major claims and findings. In its conclusion, the book models how poverty themes might be identified and associated for the purpose of gaining greater insights into how games can shape, and also be shaped by, the player’s economic expectations.

• Examines how artificial intelligence (AI) and psychology can aid in detecting mis-/disinformation and the language of deceit in digital media content;
• Suggests practical computational means to intervene and curtail the global ‘infodemic’ of fake news;
• Presents how AI can sift, sort, and shuffle digital content, to reduce the amount of content needed to be reviewed by humans.

The 2019 European Electoral Campaign: In the Time of Populism and Social Media examines political advertising during the 2019 elections to the European Parliament, which has become the largest supranational campaign of its kind in the world. Based on a research project funded by the European Parliament, and an archive of more than 11,000 campaign items, the book draws on results from a major content analysis covering every one of the 28 member states involved. The 2019 European Electoral Campaign delivers a unique comparative assessment on the state of political communication within a European Union convulsed by momentous change. This book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and students of political communication, media, political science, history, European (Union) studies as well as a wider readership including politicians, political strategists, and journalists.

This book proposes a new theorisation when studying cyber dissidents in an African digital sphere. It argues that social media dissidents are a recent development in a long lineage of dissidents in African societies. Using Zimbabwe as a case study, the study locates contemporary dissidents in the same family with other historical dissident figures found in African orature, the Chimurenga wars, through music, poetry and other forms of expression. The book argues against techno-deterministic approaches to studying social media-born digital dissidence in Africa. It is aimed at scholars dedicated to studying social media movements in African contexts and the global south generally, prompting them to re-evaluate their earlier conclusions and adopt a more nuanced and contextspecific approach.

The chapters in this volume are a mix ofinterdisciplinary Zimbabwean scholars of linguistics, performance studies, religion, history, communication and media studies, unravelling Mtukudzi as a fighter for human rights and justice who subtly critiqued political systems and practices. It concludes that Mtukudzi strove to be a cultural worker who used the power of language through music to contribute towards the rehabilitation of a battered African identity.

In recent decades the concept of Mediterranean has been cited with increasing frequency in relation to the study of medieval literatures. And yet, in what sense would Dante’s Comedy be ‘Mediterranean’? Is it because of its Greek-Arabic and Islamic sources? Dante and the Mediterranean Comedy analyzes the ideological function of references to the sea in the study of the Comedy undertaken by Enrico Cerulli, a scholar of Somali-Ethiopian languages, and a colonial governor of ‘Italian East Africa.’ Then it presents novel lines of inquiry on the reception and appropriation of the poem, such as the presence of Islamic sources in early commentaries of the Comedy, and cross-cultural allusions to Dante’s Hell in some graffiti on the walls of the Spanish Inquisition prison in Palermo. The image of the Mediterranean that seeps through the poem and through the history of its circulation is vivid yet hardly idyllic.

This book discusses men’s friendships in relation to queer, discursive, and intersectional feminist theories. It analyses stories of intimacy, touch, hugs, and conversations, connecting these with current discussions within feminism and critical masculinity studies on “new” men, men’s political activism, and how friendships are lived and conceptualised in relation to heteronormative relationship ideals. Drawing on individual and dyadic interviews with middle-class Swedish men, all engaged in or sympathetic to feminist issues in some sense, this volume shows that Swedish gender equality ideologies as well as feminist, therapeutic, neo-liberal, and individualist discourses prevalent in the Western world structured the men’s friendships and their engagement with gender politics. Chapters cover friendship temporalities, gendered friendship ideals, friendship as men’s politics, and friendship as performed in interaction. Bridging the literatures of feminist research and friendship, the author points to tensions and contradictions in pro-feminist men’s political projects and in contemporary masculine positions.

This book explores the vast array of animals that populate detective fiction. If the genre begins, as is widely supposed, with Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), then detective fiction’s very first culprit is an animal. Animals, moreover, consistently appear as victims, clues, and companions, while the abstract conception of animality is closely tied to the idea of criminality. Although it is often described as an essentially conservative form, detective fiction can unsettle the binary of human and animal to intersect with developing concerns in animal studies: animal agency, the ethical complexities of human/animal interaction, the politics and literary aesthetics of violence, and animal metaphor. Gathering its 14 essays into sections on ontologies, ethics, politics, and forms, Animals in Detective Fiction provides a compelling and nuanced analysis of the central role creatures play in this enduringly popular and continually morphing literary form.

This book finds that Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Bahrain and Syria has conformed with Qatar’s foreign policy, throughout the last decade (2011-2021). Al-Jazeera Arabic adopted Qatar’s “double standards” policy in both countries in the beginning of the Arab Spring, framing Bahrain’s protests as a “sectarian movement,” while depicting the Syrian armed conflict as a legitimate “revolution” (2011-2013). The book observes that when ties between Qatar and Bahrain worsened during the 2017 Gulf crisis, Al-Jazeera Arabic has shifted its coverage from being “pro-Bahraini regime” to “pro-protesters,” focusing on violations and giving voice to activists (2014-2021). The book concludes that the lack of “Peace Journalism” framing in Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Bahrain’s uprising and Syria’s chemical weapons attacks has represented “claims” as “facts,” and justified military action against Syria. It also reveals distinctive differences between Al-Jazeera Arabic and English, with theformer lacking “objective reporting standards,” and using more sectarian language than the latter.

This open access book deconstructs the core features of online misinformation and disinformation. It finds that the optimisation of emotions for commercial and political gain is a primary cause of false information online. The chapters distil societal harms, evaluate solutions, and consider what must be done to strengthen societies as new biometric forms of emotion profiling emerge. Based on a rich, empirical, and interdisciplinary literature that examines multiple countries, the book will be of interest to scholars and students of Communications, Journalism, Politics, Sociology, Science and Technology Studies, and Information Science, as well as global and local policymakers and ordinary citizens interested in how to prevent the spread of false information worldwide, both now and in the future.

700 years after Dante Alighieri's death, this book intertwines the voice of the great poet with that of an exceptional contemporary, Marco Polo, who was equally curious about the geography of both earthly and celestial worlds. If Polo was the “ordinary genius” of the XIII century, the designation of “sorcerer genius” must go to Alighieri, the man with encyclopedic wisdom, at ease with his era’s philosophy, theology, and science. The sorcerer genius—well versed in this world—must create their own, which he did with The Divine Comedy. On the other hand, The Travels of Marco Polo, the greatest classic in travel literature, offers wonder and provides delight. This book combines the unforgettable characters of both books, the darkness of the infernal landscapes with the immensity of the Asian deserts, the richness of the Mongol empire with the glamor of medieval philosophy, the aspirations and dreams of two great explorers with knowledge of the science of their time, as well as the ever-eternal cosmology. This is an accessible and entertaining book for high school students, scholars of scientific history and the history of ideas, and curious readers who want to know more about Dante and Marco Polo and their unquenchable thirst for knowledge.

This book explores Roman love elegy from postcolonial perspectives, arguing that the tropes, conventions, and discourses of the Augustan genre serve to reinforce the imperial identity of its elite, metropolitan audience. Love elegy presents the phenomena and discourses of Roman imperialism—in terms of visual spectacle (the military triumph), literary genre (epic in relation to elegy), material culture (art and luxury goods), and geographic space—as intersecting with ancient norms of gender and sexuality in a way that reinforces Rome’s dominance in the Mediterranean. The introductory chapter lays out the postcolonial frame, drawing from the work of Edward Said among other theorists, and situates love elegy in relation to Roman Hellenism and the varied Roman responses to Greece and its cultural influences. Four of the six subsequent chapters focus on the rhetorical ambivalence that characterizes love elegy’s treatment of Greek influence: the representation of the domina or mistress assimultaneously a figure for ‘captive Greece’ and a trope for Roman imperialism; the motif of the elegiac triumph, with varying figures playing the triumphator, as suggestive of Greco-Roman cultural rivalry; Rome’s competing visions of an Attic and an Asiatic Hellenism. The second and the final chapter focus on the figures of Osiris and Isis, respectively, as emblematic of Rome’s colonialist and ambivalent representation of Egypt, with the conclusion offering a deconstructive reading of elegy’s rhetoric of orientalism.

This handbook is the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of fantasy outside the Anglo-American hegemony. While most academic studies of fantasy follow the well-trodden path of focusing on Tolkien, Rowling, and others, our collection spotlights rich and unique fantasy literatures in India, Australia, Italy, Greece, Poland, Russia, China, and many other areas of Europe, Asia, and the global South. The first part focuses on the theoretical aspects of fantasy, broadening and modifying existing definitions to accommodate the global reach of the genre. The second part contains essays illuminating specific cultures, countries, and religious or ethnic traditions. From Aboriginal myths to (self)-representation of Tibet, from the appropriation of the Polish Witcher by the American pop culture to modern Greek fantasy that does not rely on stories of Olympian deities, and from Israeli vampires to Talmudic sages, this collection is an indispensable reading for anyone interested in fantasy fiction and global literature. 

This book analyzes the different policy challenges that Pakistani women face and makes regionally relevant policy recommendations across different areas of private and public life, drawing on secondary data from nationally representative surveys and primary data from qualitative interviews. These areas include family safety, housing adequacy, food security and nutritional adequacy, environment and disaster protection, educational development, employment and formal sector inclusion, and health security. The author examines how the history, culture, and political climate of Pakistan have shaped social policy for women, interrogates gaps in social protections for women, and analyzes the limitations for past interventions. This text also looks at collaboration across South Asian countries, as well as using religion, social media, financing, and a new model of governance for comprehensive coverage and sustainable social policy for women. 

This book will be of interest to scholars, students, and policymakers with focus on women’s and gender studies and policy studies in South Asia.

This book looks at television comedy, drawn from across the UK and Ireland, and ranging chronologically from the 1980s to the 2020s. It explores depictions of distinctive geographical, historical and cultural communities presented from the insiders’ perspective, simultaneously interrogating the particularity of the lived experience of time, and place, embedded within the wide variety of depictions of contrasting lives, experiences and sensibilities, which the collected individual chapters offer. Comedies considered include Victoria Wood’s work on ‘the north’, Ireland’s Father Ted and Derry Girls, Michaela Coel’s east London set Chewing Gum, and Wales’ Gavin and Stacey. There are chapters on Scottish sketch and animation comedy, and on series set in the Midlands, the North East, the South West and London’s home counties. The book offers thoughtful reflection on funny and engaging representations of the diverse, fragmentedcomplexity of UK and Irish identity explored through the intersections of class, ethnicity and gender.

This book provides a detailed account, and critique, of diverse approaches to the arts funding question, with a focus on the arm’s length arts councils that are the norm in the Anglo-American world. It builds on economic methods, the liberal-egalitarian framework of John Rawls, the communitarian opposition to the liberal framework, the capabilities approach to equality, and the cultural conservatism of Roger Scruton and others. In each case, the book considers the very practical aspect of public funding of the arts, namely, what are the implications for what ought to receive priority, and what parts of the cultural world are best left to their own, private sector, devices. It is not a work of “arts advocacy”. Rather, the book challenges assumptions, and sparks critical debate in the field.

This book explores issues at the intersection of communication and African electoral politics, taking Ghana’s 2020 general election as a focus of investigation.

This interdisciplinary volume redresses gaps in the literature by highlighting the relevance of language and communication to electoral politics in Sub-Saharan Africa in the period of a global pandemic. The collection accounts for local influences on election discourse and illustrates how the specific context within which such discourse is enacted informs the linguistic, multimodal and technological choices of sociopolitical actors. The non-Western perspective it adopts extends work on political communication in a context underexplored in the literature and contributes to ongoing critical conversations on the decolonial and postcolonial aspects of communication studies. Drawing on a variety of data, including political speeches, political cartoons, election campaigns and social media posts, the volume not only addresses the dearth of scholarly work on African political communication, but also demonstrates the complexity of such scholarship and its importance to a comprehensive understanding of contemporary research on language and politics. This book enriches academic and public discussions on the future of democracy across the globe from a linguistic or communication perspective, expands scholarly work on African rhetoric and underscores the importance of engaging with diverse knowledge systems, especially non-Western epistemologies.

Since its 1967 production of Vanbrugh’s The Relapse, the Royal Shakespeare Company has been the world’s leading producer of Restoration Comedies. This book is the first to document and critique the company’s history of engagement with that repertoire. It reviews the spaces in which productions have been performed, design principles, casting, voicing, textual adaptation, musical direction, actor perspectives, and the problems of how to confront, adopt or depart from received notions of Restoration style. It goes on to posit that, for all the RSC’s explorations of Restoration Comedy, the company has maintained the repertoire as a fringe interest played out in niche spaces, while recycling many of the assumptions it claims to challenge, and that what is needed is the writer-led intervention seen in RSC and National Theatre adaptations of French drama from the same period. Only then can Restoration Comedy begin to engage wider audiences in new sites of political, historical andcultural meaning.

The Grotesque Modernist Body explores how and why modernist authors drew on the traditions of the grotesque body in order to represent modern reality accurately. The author employs the concept of the grotesque body as a theoretical framework with which to examine rigorously a range of modernist novels, poems and visual media by Conrad, Lewis, Eliot and Barnes, alongside their historical contexts and theories of humour and horror. This monograph challenges the prevailing narrative of modernism’s abstract, psychological and impersonal ‘inward turn’ by tracing its mechanical-animal hybrid bodies back to

the medieval carnival satire of Rabelais, the gothic horror of the long nineteenth century, from Hoffmann, Shelley and Poe, to H.G. Wells and Henry James, and the uncanny, dreamlike art of Goya and Rousseau.

In this volume, contributors explore the deep ideological polarization in US society as portrayed in horror narratives and tropes. By navigating this polarized society in their representation of social values, twenty[1]first-century horror films critically frame and engage conflicting and divisive ideological issues. Culture Wars and Horror Movies: Social Fears and Ideology in Post-2010 Horror Cinema analyses the ways in which these “culture wars” make their way into and through contemporary horror films, focusing on the post-2010 US context and its fundamental political divisions.

This book argues for the reconstitution of the cultural in African cultural industries and societies. It posits that African cultural industries face a deep-seated problem of the crisis of normativity that is largely rooted in the coloniality of modern cultural policy and an unconscious, but pervasive anti-Black racism culture in the continent itself. The book places hope for re-animating African agency and national cultural identities in the decolonization of cultural policy and cultural industries as consciousness industries. Only through relevant cultural policy, a higher-order cross-institutional moral and ethical value system for reconstituting the cultural in post-colonies, can Africa build truly democratic, progressive, cosmopolitan, decolonized, and self-respecting citizens and societies. Using decolonial cultural policy studies, the book develops a decolonial cultural critique that locates African culture industries within the racialized power dynamics of capitalist modernity. It explores the decolonization praxis of cultural industries and acknowledges the complexity of cultural decolonization iniatives in a continent that is so diverse, interconnected, globalized, and facing newer modes of colonialism that are aggressive and covert.

In this ground-breaking book, we navigate the uncharted terrain of social virtual reality (VR), a technology that, while offering unprecedented immersive experiences, brings forth significant governance challenges. By merging theoretical insights with practical examples, the book examines the risks of harm in social VR environments, including both content and conduct issues. It charts a course for developing inclusive and safe social VR spaces that are respectful of diverse users’ rights and needs, laying out essential principles for policymakers, developers and regulators. The book is an urgent call to proactively shape the burgeoning field of VR for the betterment of all.

Theatre has long been an art form at the centre of public life in Poland. Whether it is the self-professed poet-prophets of the Romantic era, or the dissident theatre makers working under the strictures of state socialism, the art form has played a vital role in the development of Polish culture and politics in the context of shifting foreign occupations. This book explores the relationship between contemporary Polish theatre makers and contemporary notions of Polishness and argues that queer theory, and specifically a Polish appropriation of queer theory, can be a crucial element to better understand the politicality of the contemporary Polish theatre field. It does this by focusing on critical theatre productions which are produced at the margins of the Polish theatre field, a choice which has been made as the field is dominated by traditional drama theatres which reproduce a Polish variation on the Western canon. This makes smaller, atypical, and independent theatre productions all the more significant, as they signify a refusal to continue the traditional role of the Polish theatre field in reproducing the canon of Polish Romanticism. As such, the book argues that contemporary Polish theatre has been marked by a struggle between those building performances and state authorities that see those creations as a threat to their authority.

This edited collection delves into the multifaceted theme of 'Silenced Voices,' showcasing a diverse array of perspectives from scholars around the globe. From historical reflections to contemporary analyses, the book examines the complex dynamics of voice suppression and enablement across different media landscapes. Divided into four thematic sections, the chapters explore the challenges faced by marginalized and mainstream voices alike. From the portrayal of silenced narratives in the news media to the representation of underrepresented groups in cultural production, the collection spans a wide spectrum of issues. Authors employ varied methodological approaches to investigate the silencing of voices in the realms of politics, society, and professional media practices. Offering fresh insights and critical reflections, this volume serves as a timely contribution to ongoing debates surrounding freedom of expression, fake news, and the complexities of contemporary media environments.

This book proposes a conceptual framework for analyzing and discussing narrative space in comics. Building on Mieke Bal’s phenomenological approach to cultural analysis (2002), Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space (1996), and Geraint D’Arcy’s use of the mise en scène to describe space in the comics format (2020), this book layers in a nuanced approach to the depiction of medieval environments through affect theory and poetics to interrogate the staging of ideas which are associated with the medieval period. Considering the action, setting, and story – as well as affect, atmosphere, and mood – medieval space is contextualized as an ethically complex poetic image. This book also explores the communicative possibilities of the comics format, and seeks to show rather than just tell the methodologies of space in comics-based research through illustrating key sections of the text.

This book offers the first extensive investigation of Italian crime fiction in the period between 1861, the year of Italy’s unification, and 1941, when the famous Mondadori series ‘I libri gialli’, which had published crime novels since 1929, was suppressed by the fascist regime. By exploring the formal and thematic metamorphoses of Italian crime narratives and probing the different socio-political roles that they played in both the liberal and fascist periods, it provides a radical re-conceptualization, in both historical and theoretical terms, of a form of fiction that has been largely marginalized for both aesthetic and ideological reasons, uncovering how it was implicated in the construction of the modern state and in the articulation and shaping of the process of ‘making Italians’.

Jerome Kern’s Jewel Box shows how the integration of spoken and sung performances in Kern's early musicals reveals new connections between musical theater scores and “straight” (spoken) theater. Kern’s scores are foundational to the American musical, and subsequent dramatic music would be unrecognizable without Kern’s innovations. This book argues that Kern’s scores for a group of musicals staged at the Princess Theatre embody a musical corollary to the Realist drama of the Little Theatre Movement. The umbrella term “Princess musicals” includes the four musicals that Jerome Kern composed for New York City’s Princess Theatre: Nobody Home (1915), Very Good Eddie (also 1915), Oh, Boy! (1917), and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), as well as Leave It to Jane (1917), a musical conceived for the Princess. Each separate Princess musical bears distinct hallmarks of Little Theatre sensibility, and that these hallmarks are overwhelmingly represented in the sung/musical portions of the drama. The book’s first chapter explores the influences of WWI and the Little Theatre Movement on the American stage (legitimate and musical). The subsequent chapters are studies of the five so-called “intimate musical comedies” that resulted from Kern’s engagement with these influences. The case studies all demonstrate how the shows’ scores advance the same artistic aims voiced by prominent members of the Little Theatre Movement. Ultimately, this project leads musical theater historians to reconsider the place of musicals in relation to the legitimate theatre and the historiography we  construct around the “integrated” musical.

This book studies the works of Ann Rule, aiming to shed light on her literary career as a largely uncelebrated True Crime writer, in addition to works by other lesser-known female True Crime writers including Alia Trabucco Zerán, Katherine Ellison and Caitlin Rother. Barnes argues that Rule’s works should be regarded as landmarks in True Crime fiction. In so doing, she critically considers how Rules blended non-fiction and fiction to produce character- and plot-driven works through reliance on figurative language and varied but impactful narrative methodologies. Barnes also draws parallels between the success of iconic female writers, such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, in the Golden Age of detective and crime fiction and considers the similarities, differences and connections between these genres.

The book is about comedy, the nation, and resistance in Zimbabwe, following the fall of Robert Mugabe in 2017. It explores how satiric comedies and comic texts in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe contest hegemonic narratives of the nation and authorise alternative narratives from the margins. Drawing on postcolonial theories of the nation, it analyses subversive comedies and social media texts that contest official political narratives in Zimbabwe, including the comedies of four Zimbabwean comedians—Kapfupi and Marabha, Doc Vikela, and Sabhuku Vharazipi—as well as social media texts on President Mnangagwa’s Facebook Page and cartoons published by the Zimbabwean newspaper ZimDaily. Primarily found via social media platforms (Facebook and Youtube), these texts centre alternative views and narratives of ordinary citizens, contesting established truths and providing a counter-narration to official hegemonic discourses of the nation.

Where existing scholarship on post-Mugabe politics in Zimbabwe focuses on issues such as the coup, militarisation, and discourses of "newness", little attention has been paid to the forms of resistance used in everyday discourse by Zimbabweans, and particularly via satire and comedy. These comic texts, shared by comedians and normal citizens on social media, can provide a useful alternative perspective to make sense of the politics and political performances that characterize the new political dispensation after Mugabe.

How Vocaloid Works explores the technical aspects of Vocaloid, the world’s most widely known and commercially successful singing voice synthesis software. Unlike previous Anglophone academic works on the subject, this book provides readers with a deeper understanding of the technological foundations of Yamaha’s concatenative synthesis approach as well as its updated AI synthesis engine. Vocaloid’s ground-breaking ability to generate a range of both life-like and distinctly artificial timbres continues to demonstrate its lasting impact. However, with the advent of machine learning models capable of both music generation and audio deepfakes, the future of Vocaloid’s position at the forefront of the industry is uncertain. The book examines into how Vocaloid can create human(oid) vocal sound, covering the fundamentals of acoustic voice production, auditory perception, analog audio, digital signal processing and deep neural networks in order to account for the effectiveness and appeal of synthesized singing voices.

The digital revolution has sparked a new wave of inequality, particularly in access to technology and its benefits. Understanding these disparities is vital for grasping their impact on contemporary society. One manifestation is through artificial intelligence, algorithms, and misinformation. AI-driven systems, used in decision-making like job applications and loan approvals, can exhibit biases due to skewed datasets. Algorithms also spread false information on social media platforms with minimal oversight.

Digital labor and the platform economy exacerbate inequality. While platforms like Uber and Airbnb offer income opportunities, workers lack basic protections like minimum wage laws. Additionally, personal data is often exploited without consent. Cybersafety and cybercrime further highlight digital inequalities. Some have access to robust security measures, while others lack basic knowledge, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation. Economic barriers also hinder participation in gaming and other digital spaces. Big data collection practices can deepen existing disparities, especially regarding socioeconomic status and demographics. Public policies must address these issues to ensure equal access to technology for all.

This book aims to shed light on these disparities and develop solutions for a more equitable technological landscape.

Staging the Ghost Story is the first book to offer a critical appraisal of the centuries-long relationship between the ghost story and the English stage. The book balances a critical consideration of the ghost story in performance, its history, its cultural politics, and its generic conventions, with practical insight regarding the valency of live representations of the supernatural, the challenges of embodiment, and the power of storytelling. Throughout, it draws upon accompanying interviews with prominent directors, playwrights, performers and stage designers in the industry, including Mark Gatiss, Robin Herford, Michael Holt, Danny Robins, Robert Lloyd Parry, Rebecca Vaughan, Tajinder Singh Hayer, Glen Neath, Adam Z. Robinson, Richard Sutton, Paul Voodini, and Jonathan Goodwin. With a focus upon the seminal elements of theatrical performance: time, space, bodies, devices, and audience, the book invites the elusive shadows of the ghost story to take centre stage.

This collection examines how activism, media, and creative practices shape our understanding of the climate crisis. Bringing together perspectives from media studies, environmental humanities, and artistic research, Confronting the Climate Crisis: Activism, Technology and Ecoaesthetics explores how digital technologies, protest movements, and ecoaesthetic interventions influence ecological discourse. Fifteen chapters interrogate a range of case studies, from student activism and climate-related art to the role of video games, memes, and machine learning in framing and comprehending environmental collapse. The collection also considers how experimental cinema, podcasts, and documentary practices can move beyond entertainment and spectacle to foster lasting and meaningful action against environmental change. Highlighting the intersections of politics, technology, and aesthetics, this book offers a vital resource for scholars, artists, and activists seeking to navigate and challenge contemporary climate narratives. It argues that creative and technological interventions are essential to rethinking our relationship with the planet and shaping new modes of ecological action.

This Open Access book offers a mixed-method approach to analysing anti-Muslim narratives in interactions between the far right and the Western European mainstream. By exploring narratives that portray Islam as inherently other, the essays in this collection interrogate the effects of such narratives on the targeted group and mainstream society. Authors explore mechanisms, such as historical othering, media agenda building, and online mobilization of the far right, and harness historical analysis, media content, social media network analyses and qualitative surveys, to propose that the effects of such media narratives are far from purely symbolic.

This book traces the intertextual genealogy behind Netflix’s new series Ripley, directed by Steve Zaillian, and offers a critical examination of Tom Ripley’s enduring appeal across different media. As the series quickly climbs Netflix’s international charts, this volume provides a timely and insightful contribution to the Ripleyverse, exploring the character’s complex moral and sexual dimensions in today’s cultural context. McEntee investigates Ripley’s role within the televisual antihero genre, engaging with theories from Jason Mittell’s Complex TV and Margrethe Bruun Vaage’s The Antihero in American Television. While Andrew Scott’s portrayal of Ripley aims to generate empathy, this book contends that traditional frameworks for understanding antiheroes are insufficient. Instead, it introduces Eric Leake’s notion of “difficult empathy” as a more appropriate model for analyzing Scott’s Ripley, offering a fresh perspective on the character’s moral ambiguity. This contrasts sharply with Anthony Minghella’s 1999 adaptation, where Matt Damon’s Ripley elicited a more straightforward emotional response. Readers will discover a nuanced discussion of how Ripley both adheres to and subverts the conventions of the antihero genre and comments self-reflexively on the process of adaptation. The book invites scholars and students of television studies, film, and literature to engage with these themes, providing a rich resource for understanding the evolving landscape of media narratives. Whether you are a scholar of media studies or a curious reader intrigued by the complexities of modern narratives, this book promises to deepen your understanding of the cultural significance of Tom Ripley’s latest iteration.