2023. Media Environments, 4th Edition

Barry Vacker

2022

Published by Cognella Academic Publishing (San Diego), ISBN 978-1-7935-2153-8. Previous editions have been adopted at 10 universities and colleges. "Media Environments: Using Movies and Texts to Critique Media and Society" uses popular film as a gateway to critical readings, encouraging students to think creatively and critically about media, society, technology, and popular culture. The text anthology explores media in their totality and provides models and theories for interrogating many universal themes that span media, technology, and planetary civilization. Using popular films about media as lead-ins, students are introduced to the works of well-known thinkers and writers such as Marshall McLuhan, Charlton D. McIlwain, Shoshanna Zuboff, Julia Hildebrand, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Devon Powers, Antonio Lopez, and many others. Chapters span interconnected topics: Memes (original meaning), Networks (McLuhan), Spectacle (Debord), Hyperreality (Baudrillard). Capitalism and Consumerism, Freedom and Protest, Social-Mobile Media, Ecology and the Anthropocene, Science and Our Place in the Universe, Pseudoscience and Conspiracy, Celebrity and Superheroes, New Concepts of "Hot" and "Cool" Media, Land Art, Dark Skies, and Technological Civilization. The fourth edition features 19 new readings that explore Afrofuturism in Black Panther, Avatar and global media ecosystems, Hollywood and climate change, Blade Runner 2049 and future earth scenarios, Avengers and environmental advocacy, #BlackLivesMatter and Black movements in digital culture, and the International Dark Sky movement as a radical media-tech philosophy. Intellectually rigorous and thematically diverse, Media Environments is ideal for courses and programs in media and/or communication studies.