Our Media & Communications Studies Collection includes four titles:
Requiem for the American Dream,
Digital Disconnect,
Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse, and
Mean World Syndrome. We selected the videos in this collection with an eye toward some of the major cultural and political issues of the moment.
Requiem for the American Dream: Noam Chomsky & the Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power traces the corrosive impact of economic inequality on democracy, placing special emphasis on how U.S. news media serve elite interests and reinforce the status quo.
In Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy, renowned media scholar Robert McChesney shows how the democratizing potential of the internet has been undercut by the unaccountable power of a handful of telecom and tech monopolies.
In Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse, communication scholar Sut Jhally explores how the consumer values promoted by the advertising industry have shaped virtually every aspect of U.S. media culture, and lays bare the devastating social and environmental costs.
In The Mean World Syndrome: Media Violence & the Cultivation of Fear, the late media scholar George Gerbner examines how narratives of violence and danger in news and entertainment media cultivate irrational fears of crime and terror, and reactionary attitudes toward minorities.
