Archive for November 2017

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[ecrea] Book Announcement: Drones: Media Discourse & The Public Imagination

Thu Nov 30 08:32:31 GMT 2017





Book Release November 30, 2017

*Drones: Media Discourse & The Public Imagination*
By Kevin Howley (Peter Lang, 2018)

ISBN-13: 978-1433126406
ISBN-10: 1433126400

/Drones: Media Discourse & The Public Imagination/ starts with a basic premise: technology shapes and is shaped by the stories we tell about it. Stories about drones – at once anxious and hopeful, fearful and awe-inspired – are emblematic of the profound ambivalence that frequently accompanies the introduction of new technologies. Through critical analysis of a variety of cultural forms – from newspaper headlines, nightly newscasts, and documentary films to advertising, entertainment media, and graphic arts — this book demonstrates the prevalence of drones in global battlefields and domestic airspace, public discourse and the popular imagination. Written in a lively, engaging and accessible style, Kevin Howley argues that media discourse plays a decisive role in /shaping/ these new technologies, /understanding/ their application in various spheres of human activity, and /integrating/ them into everyday life. Doing so, Howley highlights the relationship between discursive and material practice in the social construction of technology.

About the Author

Kevin Howley is Professor of Media Studies at DePauw University. His work has appeared in the /Journal of Radio Studies/, /Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism/, /Social Movement Studies/ and /Television and New Media/. He is author of /Community Media: People, Places, and Communication Technologies/ (2005), and editor of /Understanding Community Media/ (2010) and /Media Interventions/ (2013).

Contents

Introduction: “Don’t Call Them Drones”

Part I Perpetual War

1. Technological Dreams and Killing Machines, or Drones and The Sublime

2. A New Kind of War

3. Murder Incorporated


Part II Domesticating Drones

4. Unmanned: Drones for Fun and Profit

5. Eye in the Sky: Regimes of Surveillance

6. Reporting the Drone Wars


Part III Witnessing

7. Survivors Speak

8. Mr. Al-Muslimi Goes to Washington

9. Distributed Intimacies: Robotic Warfare and Drone Whistleblowers


Part IV Resistance

10. Direct Action and Media Activism

11. “I Have a Drone”: Internet Memes and Digital Dissent

12. Think Locally, Bomb Globally: Satirizing Drones

Conclusion: Twenty-First Century Empire and Communication


Endorsements

“/Drones: Media Discourse & The Public Imagination/ is a timely publication that will contribute significant and even urgent perspectives to the burgeoning literature on drones. Locating itself at the intersection where scholarship from media, communication and technology studies enter into a productive interdisciplinary conversation, it is indispensable for its critical attention to a broad field of cultural expressions, demonstrating how media discourse not only shapes our understanding and application of drone technology, but also its very production.”

– Øyvind Vågnes, University of Bergen

“Kevin Howley has put together an impressive chronicle of what the media talks about when it talks about drones. This book will no doubt serve as a key resource for anybody hoping to better understand the complex and shifting dynamics of prevailing public sentiment about US military drone use.”

– Arthur Holland Michel, Co-Director of the Center for the Study of the Drone, Bard College

Available in paperback, hardback and eBook editions at Peter Lang <https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/30894?rskey=cz5UQO&result=1> and wherever fine books are sold.


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