Full Description
This collection of new work by international scholars on media imaginaries explores the concept as a tool for reflection. Media imaginaries are shape shifters, taking multiple forms as make believe, as thinking outside the box and as social practices.
The term media imaginaries refers to the cultural and infrastructural work of texts and artefacts, audience engagement and experiences and commercial and civic organisations. Authors in the collection empirically and conceptually examine media imaginaries as multiform, providing space for dialogue on themes of political-social imaginaries, cultural-technological imaginaries and reflecting imaginaries.
Media Imaginaries explores how media shapes both real and imagined experiences, examining the interplay of media practice, culture, and imagination across past, present, and future contexts. It highlights the impact of AI-enabled content and media ecologies on everyday life globally, offering fresh insights for media studies. The collection bridges multiple academic traditions, making it an important and widely relevant contribution to the field.
Contents
Introduction
Annette Hill, Joke Hermes, Simon Dawes: Media Imaginaries: An Introduction
PART 1: SOCIAL-POLITICAL IMAGINARIES
1. The Liberal Media Imaginary
Simon Dawes
2. Imagining the Democratic Role of News: A Comparative Study of UK and German News Websites during COVID-19
Imke Henkel and Tim Markham
3. 'Everybody Frames': Uncovering the Media Imaginaries Beneath Divergent News Repertoires
Maria Bakardjieva and Jian Chung Lee
4. 'Meme-aginaries' of Political Violence: Analysing Audience Engagement with Memetic Imaginaries of Northern Ireland
Martin Lundqvist
PART 2: CULTURAL-TECHNOLOGICAL IMAGINARIES
5. Imagining, Layering and Streaming Infrastructures
Annette Hill, Niloufar Hajirahimikalhroudi, and Long Nguyen
6. The AI Popular Music Imaginary: Issues of Copyright, Agential Creativity, and Anthropocentric Creativity in YouTube Discourse
Melissa Avdeeff
7. Like Unfulfilling Work: Swedish Parents, Everyday Life and the Media Imaginary around Screen Time
Magnus Johansson
8. Researching 'Imaginaries' in Media, Communication and Cultural Studies: Emerging Methodological Reflections
Rebecca Bramall and Mercè Oliva
PART 3: REFLECTING IMAGINARIES
9. Reaction Media Imaginaries
Michael Rubsamen and Joanna Doona
10. Probing Our Memory Ecology
Christian Mortensen
11. The Decolonial Imaginaries: Work of Indigenous Futurisms
Ian Reilly
12. Queering Media Suggestion from Mass Hysteria to AI Deception: Inventing Imaginaries for More Just and Equitable Media Futures
Lisa Blackman
Index
