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Understanding Media
Understanding Media
Oct 26, 2024 3:35 PM

Author:James Curran,Joanna Redden

Understanding Media

An authoritative and accessible guide to the world’s most influential force – the contemporary media

Our lives are more mediated than ever before. Adults in economically advanced countries spend, on average, over eight hours per day interacting with the media. The news and entertainment industries are being transformed by the shift to digital platforms. But how much is really changing in terms of what shapes media content? What are the impacts on our public and imaginative life? And is the Internet a democratising tool of social protest, or of state and commercial manipulation?

Drawing on decades of research to examine these and other questions, Understanding Media interrogates claims about the Internet, explores how representations in TV and film may influence perceptions of self, and traces overarching trends while attending to crucial local context, from the United States to China, Norway to Malaysia, and Brazil to Britain. Understanding Mediais an accessible and essential guide to the world's most influential force - the contemporary media.

Reviews

This book is definitely not just for the aspiring graphic designer; it’s a manual for all those needing a little inspired encouragement.

—— Wallpaper

A reminder worth heeding about the sources of creativity and role of the designer to question, improve and probe ... validates, vindicates and inspires the little-represented idea of success – and being nice while you do it.

—— Monocle Magazine

A beautifully designed object featuring examples of significant pieces of work from Burrill’s career as well as ephemera from his life and new, text-based works alongside his writing.

—— Creative Review

An intimate and uplifting reflection of what it is to be a designer ... book-cum-manual for creative thinking and doing.

—— Grafik

An important historical corrective to the myths, fantasies and occlusions that have allowed dystopias such as Dubai to be presented as models for "the west" to learn from. Many of the men whose manifestos and dreams Slobodian surveys simply don't know what they're talking about. One wonders if they ever wanted to learn in the first place.

—— William Davies , The Guardian

Ranging from Liechtenstein to Somalia, and from Hong Kong to Silicon Valley, Quinn Slobodian's Crack-Up Capitalism exposes how zones of exception promise capitalism an escape from the confines of the modern state and the constraints of democracy. Revelatory reading. A worthy successor to Slobodian's brilliant Globalists.

—— Adam Tooze, author of Crashed

Slobodian has written a fascinating account of the sheer hubris of the market radicals who have sought to free capitalism from democracy first by transforming the world's political geography and now by abandoning the material world. He tells this important story with verve and considerable insight.

—— Helen Thompson

Lively ... an engaging and fluently written account of the dreams of many philosophers, economists and, frankly, oddballs who have grown impatient with the shackles of the big state. ... Slobodian is keen to highlight the often anti-democratic impulses of libertarian thinkers. ... While the yearning is simple and admirable, the road map to reaching utopia is quite complicated.

—— Kwasi Kwarteng , The Spectator

Compelling ... a challenge not just to traditional narratives of political power, but also to liberal assumptions about freedom.

—— Kojo Koram , Times Literary Supplement

A fascinating and important book, which brings to the surface some of the deepest political undercurrents of our times. Crack-Up Capitalism is an exemplary use of history to illuminate the present, forcing us to reassess what we thought we knew about the contemporary world.

—— Hari Kunzru, author of Red Pill

Revelatory. In this head-spinner of a book, Quinn Slobodian shows how zones, islands, micronations, gated communities, and cyber realms are remaking our planet. The capitalist future they portend isn't a borderless utopia but a jurisdictional shatter belt, where democracy is a distant dream.

—— Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire

With each new book, Quinn Slobodian adds extraordinary new detail to his ongoing account of 21st-century political and economic arrangements. Crack-up Capitalism is concerned with the "zones" of global space: the micro-divisions and gradations from which the real atomic force of our system derives. It's very convincing: get ready to throw out all previous maps.

—— Rana Dasgupta

In Crack-Up Capitalism, Quinn Slobodian takes us on a wild ride through the fenced-in compounds and failed states of today's capitalist world. This sharp and wickedly entertaining book is a necessary field guide to the LARPers, bloggers, and grifters of the libertarian and anarcho-capitalist world, a warning that they are closer to fulfilling their fantasies than we might think, and a clarion call for collective action to preserve - and greatly expand - democracy as we know it.

—— Sarah Jaffe, author of Work Won’t Love You Back

Richly documented exposé ... An insightful piercing of the veil of nation-states to reveal capitalism's frightening, anti-democratic tendencies.

—— Kirkus

A gifted storyteller ... a critical wake-up call .... revealing the roots of a rot many have hitherto been unable to name and confront. By opening that portal, Slobodian trusts us to take the next steps, confident that in knowing the beast, we might better be able to slay it.

—— Quill & Quire

Slobodian's vivid description of zones shows us why our political system can no longer be said to be democratic ... Slobodian wakes us up to democracy's underthrow: decentralization is a strategy for its unraveling, not its salvation.

—— Jodi Dean , Los Angeles Review of Books

Democracy is already facing numerous threats from factions on the right who question the legitimacy of election results that don't go their way. Crack-Up Capitalism is a reminder that this political challenge is only one of a number of fronts in the sustained attack on American democracy.

—— Adam M. Lowenstein , The Atlantic

A sound intellectual investment, an insightful read ... Would definitely recommend.

—— The British Army Review
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