Douglas Rushkoff: Media virus!: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture (1996)

Bold, daring, and provocative, Media Virus! examines the intricate ways in which popular media both manipulate and are manipulated by those who know how to tap into their power. Douglas Rushkoff shows that where there’s a wavelength, there’s a way to “infect” those on it – from the subtly, but intentionally, subversive signals broadcast by shows like “The Simpsons,” to the O.J. media frenzy surrounding the Nicole Brown Simpson murder case, chase, and trial. What does it all mean? Unless you’ve been living in a cave that isn’t cable-ready, you’re already infected with the media virus. But don’t worry, it won’t make you sick. It will make you think.

Publisher Ballantine Books, 1996
ISBN 0345397746, 9780345397744
Length 344 pages

Keywords and phrases
memes, meta-media, Ren & Stimpy, counterculture, smart drugs, Beavis and Butt-head, Negativland, L.A. Law, zines, Futureculture, Swamp Thing, Rodney King, Amy Fisher, Genesis P-Orridge, cyberpunk, Ice-T, flyposters, R. U. Sirius, Willie Horton, NYPD Blue

More info (publisher)
More info (google books)

PDF

Theodor W. Adorno: The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (2001)

“The creation of the Frankfurt School of critical theory in the 1920s saw the birth of some of the most exciting and challenging writings of the twentieth century. It is out of this background that the great critic Theodor Adorno emerged. His finest essays are collected here, offering the reader unparalleled insights into Adorno’s thoughts on culture. He argued that the culture industry commodified and standardized all art. In turn this suffocated individuality and destroyed critical thinking. At the time, Adorno was accused of everything from overreaction to deranged hysteria by his many detractors. In today’s world, where even the least cynical of consumers is aware of the influence of the media, Adorno’s work takes on a more immediate significance. The Culture Industry is an unrivalled indictment of the banality of mass culture.”

Editor J. M. Bernstein
Publisher Routledge, 2001
ISBN 0415253802, 9780415253802
210 pages

Key terms: fascist, mass music, virme, culture industry, mass media, Dialectic of Enlightenment, mass culture, ego ideal, Adorno, acmally, critical theory, jazz, reified, psychoanalysis, astrology, Simone Weil, Freud, Erich Fromm, Gillian Rose

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2013-6-11)

Journal of Media Sociology 1(1/2) (Winter/Spring 2009)

This peer-reviewed scientific journal publishes theoretical and empirical papers and essays and book reviews that advance an understanding of the role and function (and dysfunctions) of mass media and mass communication in society or the world.

With contributions by Robin R. Means Coleman, Mark Deuze, John Hatcher, Amani Ismail, Mervat Youssef and Dan Berkowitz, Leo W. Jeffres, Kimberly Neuendorf, Cheryl Campanella Bracken and David J. Atkin, Ruben P. Konig, Hans C. Rebers, and Henk Westerik.

Edited by Michael R. Cheney
ISSN 1940-9397
130 pages

PDF (updated on 2014-8-28)