Product Description: This volume explores the vast and endlessly growing subject of popular culture, mass culture, the public arts, and mass-mediated culture. They cover such varied forms of mass communication as television, the comics, advertising, humor, and fads, foods, and artifacts...read more

Is television a cultural wasteland, or a medium that has brought people more great art, music, dance, and drama than any previous media? How do we study and interpret television? What are the effects of television on individuals and society, and how do we measure them? What is the role of television in our political and economic life? Television in Society explores these issues in considering how television both reflects and affects society.The book is divided into two sections. The first focuses on programming and deals with commercials, ceremonial events, important series (such as "MASH" and "Lou Grant"), significant programs (a production of Brave New World on television), and the images of police on the medium. The second part of the book deals with important issues and topics related to the medium: the impact of television violence, values found on television, the impact of television on education, the significance of new technological developments, and the always thorny issue of freedom of the press. The articles are drawn together by a brilliant introductory essay by Arthur Asa Berger, who examines television as culture.

This text is a methodology book which discusses some fundamental principles of semiotics in a manner that makes the subject accessible to ordinary readers. But it is more than a methodology book because it applies semiotics to a wide range of subjects - everything from digital watches to pop art, from comics to baseball.

Seeing Is Believing uses semiological and psychological concepts to help readers gain an understanding of the way we find meaning in visual phenomena and the way our minds process images. These concepts are presented in a readable, fun style; numerous illustrations are offered to show how the principles discussed have been applied.

Product Description: Scripts is a book which provides instruction on writing for television and radio broadcasting. Presented in a lively, entertaining style, the book offers a firsthand description of writing editorials, public service announcements, commercials, feature stories, reviews and documentaries...read more

Product Description: Revised and updated, this text features a collection of articles centred on the relationship between the mass media and American society and culture. The articles are written by some of America's most distinguished and renown scholars, practitioners, critics and media insiders...read more

Arthur Asa Berger's essential guide to undertaking applied or practical research in media studies is designed to provide introductory techniques that allow students to engage immediately in their own research projects. In so doing, students learn various ways of conducting communication research both in theory and practice. In response to suggestions from users of the First Edition, Berger has added new chapters in each of the following areas: experimentation, historical research, comparative research and participant observation. (view table of contents)

Product Description: An introduction to genre analysis, this highly readable volume presents key concepts in an accessible manner for undergraduate courses in film, TV, media criticism and cultural studies. The texts are representative of horror, science fiction, spy, classic detective, and tough guy detective genres, and readers may make their own analyses of texts based on the methods explained and the examples offered...read more

Humor permeates every aspect of society and has done so for thousands of years. People experience it daily through television, newspapers, literature, and contact with others. Rarely do social researchers analyze humor or try to determine what makes it such a dominating force in our lives. The types of jokes a person enjoys contribute significantly to the definition of that person as well as to the character of a given society. Arthur Asa Berger explores these and other related topics in An Anatomy of Humor. He shows how humor can range from the simple pun to complex plots in Elizabethan plays. Berger examines a number of topics—ethnicity, race, gender, politics—each with its own comic dimension. Laughter is beneficial to both our physical and mental health, according to Berger. He discerns a multiplicity of ironies that are intrinsic to the analysis of humor. He discovers as much complexity and ambiguity in a cartoon, such as Mickey Mouse, as he finds in an important piece of literature, such as Huckleberry Finn. An Anatomy of Humor is an intriguing and enjoyable read for people interested in humor and the impact of popular and mass culture on society. It will also be of interest to professionals in communication and psychologists concerned with the creative process.

Product Description: This brief, practical guide illustrates the most common kinds of business correspondence that a university professor is required to produce and offers useful advice to make these communications as effective as possible. The author also offers general suggestions on effective writing, including brainstorming and collaborating, persuasion, outlining and revising, and designing documents...read more

Product Description: In this guide to cultural criticism, Arthur Asa Berger presents complex concepts in jargon-free language, making the book an ideal introductory text. It covers the key theorists, concepts, and subject areas, from literary, sociological and psychoanalytical theories of semiotics and Marxism...read more

Product Description: This comprehensive resource on mass communication theory is structured around the key conceptual areas of text, audience, media, production and society. Using illustrations from popular genres - particularly film and television - Arthur Asa Berger combines his broad knowledge of the mass communications field with his unique ability to translate difficult theories and models into comprehensible terms and accessible language...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Arthur Asa Berger elucidates narrative theory and applies it to readers' everyday experiences with popular forms of mass media. This unique book demonstrates how to interpret narratives while presenting the analysis in an accessible manner.

Offers social commentary in a series of short vignettes on such subjects as digital clock radios, gel toothpaste, pajamas, the morning newspaper, and trash compactors (view table of contents)

Product Description: The Genius of the Jewish Joke focuses on what is distinctive and unusual about Jewish jokes and Jewish humor. Jewish humor is humor by Jews and about Jews, in whatever medium this humor is found. Jokes are defined as short stories, meant to amuse, with a punch line, though Jewish humor exists in many other forms—riddles, comic definitions, parodies—as well...read more

Product Description: You and your students are invited to join the detective, Solomon Hunter, in his hunt for knowledge and a killer. Ettore Gnocchi, the famed postmodern theorist, has been murdered at his own dinner party. To find out who killed Gnocchi, the detective Solomon Hunter must first explore postmodernism itself...read more

Product Description: Just as a distinctive literary voice or style is marked by the ease with which it can be parodied, so too can specific aspects of humor be unique. Playwrights, television writers, novelists, cartoonists, and film scriptwriters use many special technical devices to create humor...read more

Product Description: 'Postmodern' is a popular term, but difficult to define. Is it a movement? Discipline? Lifestyle? Or all these things? What are the limits of its jurisdiction? Instead of summing up the various perspectives of scholars and the variety of ideas to which the term postmodernism has been assigned, Berger lets this diversity speak for itself...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Eliot Glumpe, the president of Mid California State University, is murdered while dining in the middle of a crowded room. A small poison dart is found in his thigh. How did the murderer do it? There were many people who hated Glumpe...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture is an engaging cultural studies critique of advertising and its impacts on American society. Arthur Asa Berger looks at marketing strategies, sex and advertising, consumer culture, political advertising, and communication theory and process to give an accessible overview of advertising in America...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Professor Agostino Glioma murders all six members of editorial board of his journal Shakespeare Studies, but not before each has offered a different interpretation of Hamlet.