Media & Communication

Thirty-Seven Retweets
Despite its many immaterial qualities the digital world has acquired a certain symbolical authority. In recording and registering all our acts it enacts formal control over what we do. But what is likely to disturb us most is not a lack of control over our digital lives but how we are somehow both passive and instrumental in its symbolic power over us. In this chapter I will argue how the tension resonating between the materiality of the physical and the digital world stems from a difficulty in reconciling how subjectivity emerges from the distance both have from one another. Inevitably as the digital domain leeks further into our physical worlds what we experience is a short-circuiting of subjectivity in which fantasy and reality collide with one another.

Materialities of Spatial Confinement: Trefeglwys Meets Beirut
A personal reflection on the materialities of space written during the first lockdown in Trefeglwys Wales and confronting perspectives of confinement between two very different countries (UK and Lebanon) and realities.

‘Because It Is Not Digital’: The Cultural Value of the Analogue Book in the Digital Age
This chapter explores the materiality of the analogue book. It discusses the limited functionality of the analogue book and how this is related to people's experience of reading the digital age. It considers media nostalgia in relation to the analogue book and the significance of book's materiality in this. Lastly it explores the fears of a particular group of readers and authors that analogue books may disappear in the course of digitization.

Making Order Out of Chaos
How a simple solar powered calculator has provided a narrative to my professional career and as a result. The calculator has followed my journey of mathematical development from failed Maths O'Level to managing millions of pounds.

Location, Agency, and Hashtag Activism During the COVID-19 Pandemic
I have always been torn between my physical home in the UK and my sense of home in Africa. I use ‘Africa’ deliberately because in the last few years I have become increasing connected to a continental outlook and not a national one focused solely on Nigeria where I am from. While I continue to reflect on the word to describe my identity I cogitate ‘Afropolitan’ a word coined by Taiye Selasi (2005) and which Eze (2014; 239) describes as a term used in an “effort to grasp the diverse nature of being African or of African descent in the world today”. For me I use it to describe an empowered stance which does not take its starting point from a resistance to the West and that rejects notions of victimhood.

The Solid State of Radio
The ephemerality of radio is one of its defining characteristics. And yet the artefact of a radio is certainly real enough. This chapter explores the interplay between the physicality of radio and its existence as an intangible medium. It reflects on the attachment that can develop between a listener and their radio before considering how modern radio manufacturers have influenced this relationship through design and functionality. While the proliferation of platforms content and station choice provide an inexhaustible supply of radio via a series of simple swipes or clicks for many listeners there remains a preference for the human-machine interface of traditional knobs and dials. Unpicking this nostalgia for the medium's supposed ‘golden age’ and its associated aesthetics provides insight into the bond between the listener and the materiality of the radio.

Still Angry: Still Feeding
This short take is a nostalgic and reflexive account of my nascent and now life long relationship with punk rock and specifically anarcho-punk a more politically focussed sub-genre of punk rock that emerged in the UK in the late 1970s. Through the story of acquiring British anarcho-punk band Crass’ seminal anarcho-punk album Feeding of the 5000 this short take shows the continuing impact that song lyrics and visual imagery can have on an individual 44 years later.

Stamp of Approval: A Prosopography of the English Midlands Videogame Industry
This chapter examines the formation of the UK Midlands Videogames’ Industry within the scope of the political economy of the region. By using prosopography data points from primary data in the form of interviews and archival resources are tessellated to reveal the network of the early videogames’ industry and its relation to factors of production consumption marketing and distribution. The chapter charts how new technologies built on pre-existing practices found in industrial and textile manufacture in the region and the importance of local regional national international and transnational communication links to its early and continued economic success. It concludes by demonstrating how in spite of the deployment of new technologies parochial andtraditional practices remain embedded in theregion and the ramifications this has for workingpractices in the games’ industry in the 21st century.

Media Materialities
Form, Format, and Ephemeral Meaning
Provides new perspectives on the increasingly complex relationships between media forms and formats materiality and meaning. Drawing on a range of qualitative methodologies our consideration of the materiality of media is structured around three overarching concepts: form – the physical qualities of objects and the meanings which extend from them; format – objects considered in relation to the protocols which govern their use and the meanings and practices which stem from them; and ephemeral meaning – the ways in which media artefacts are captured transformed and redefined through changing social cultural and technological values.
Each section includes empirical chapters which provide expansive discussions of perspectives on media and materiality. It considers a range of media artefacts such as 8mm film board games maps videogames cassette tapes transistor radios and Twitter amongst others. These are punctuated with a number of short takes – less formal often personal takes exploring the meanings of media in context.
We seek to consider the materialities which emerge across the broad and variegated range of the term’s use and to create spaces for conversation and debate about the implications that this plurality of material meanings might have for the study of study of media culture and society.

Media Pluralism and Online News
The Consequences of Automated Curation for Society
The book arises from an international research project that explores the future of media pluralism policies for online news. It investigates the latest European policies and techniques for regulatory intervention and examines the consequences of innovative news practices asking ‘How will automation of news affect public opinion in the age of social media platforms and what are the consequences?’
In Media Pluralism and Online News the authors make the argument that there is an urgent need for revitalised thinking for a media policy agenda to deal with the trends to platform power and concentrated media power which is an ongoing global risk to public interest journalism.
In the transition to a media landscape increasingly dominated by broadband internet distribution and the dominance of US-centric new media behemoths Google Facebook Apple Amazon and Netflix the book investigates measures that can be taken to reduce this ongoing march of concentration and the attenuation of media voices.
Securing the public interest in a vibrant and sustainable news media sector will require that merger decisions assess whether there is a ‘reduction in diversity’ -- calling for a new public interest test and a more expansive policy focus than in the past. This would include consideration of the sustainability of local businesses; the encouragement of original and local news content; quality of content in terms of the promotion of news standards; and new modes of delivery and consumption including the ‘automated curation’ of news content by digital platforms.

The concept of ‘new media’ among Jordanian news producers
The aim of this study is to understand how Jordanian journalists view social media networks as being related to the news industry in Jordan and the extent of their dependence on these networks in producing news. It also explores the opinions of Jordanian journalists on the pros and cons of these networks through the lens of the relationship between these networks and professional journalism. This study uses the qualitative approach by conducting interviews with a number of professional journalists. The findings indicate that Jordanian journalists perceive social networks as an essential and beneficial development. There is optimism among journalists about the relationship between professional journalism and social media. Also social networks have brought several benefits to professional journalism. The results also show that journalists firmly believe that social networks cannot be considered a substitute for traditional media.