[ecrea] New in Paperback: Media Witnessing - Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication

Out now in paperback from Palgrave Macmillan:


Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication

Edited by Paul Frosh and Amit Pinchevski (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

‘Why are witnesses to salient socio-political events so important in our age of
global media reporting? Testimonies are sometimes the only chance to arrive
at more information which would, otherwise, have been swept under the
carpet. This excellent book elaborates on, and challenges, the complex and
difficult roles of eye witnesses and of the media in truly innovative interdisciplinary
ways. Everybody who deals with media in their everyday lives will be able to
gain new insights.’ — Professor Ruth Wodak, Lancaster University, UK

‘This is a most valuable collection of essays. Innovative, engrossing and
rewarding, it provides an excellent exploration of media witnessing and is
definitely to be recommended.’ — European Journal of Communication

Do mass media turn us all into witnesses, and what might this mean? From
the Holocaust to 9/11, modern communications systems have incessantly
exposed us to reports of far flung and often horrifying events, experienced by
people whom we do not know personally, and mediated by a range of changing
technologies. What is the truth status of such ‘media witnessing’, and how
does it depend on journalists and media organizations? What are its social,
cultural and political ramifications, and what kind of moral demands can it
make of audiences to act on behalf of suffering strangers? What are its
connections to historical forms of witnessing in other fields: legal, religious
and scientific? And how is it tied to technological transformations in media,
transformations that bridge distances in space and time and can make
ordinary people the sources of extraordinary footage?

These are the themes taken up within this unique volume, now available for
the first time in paperback with a special preface written by Professor Elihu
Katz. Contributors include John Durham Peters, John Ellis, Günter Thomas,
Tamar Liebes, Menahem Blondheim, Tamar Ashuri, Carrie Rentschler, Joan Leach,
Roy Brand, and the editors, Paul Frosh and Amit Pinchevski. Together they not only make a crucial
intervention in ongoing debates about media witnessing and the representation
of strangers, but present original conceptualizations of the relationship
between knowledge, discourse and technology in the era of mass communications.

Available from http://www.palgrave.com/products/Title.aspx?pid=280405 and booksellers.


Paul Frosh Ph.D
Department of Communications and Journalism
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(msfrosh /at/ mscc.huji.ac.il)




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