Set against the backdrop of 9/11 and the war in Iraq, and positioned in the midst of a fast-changing media infrastructure, the collected essays reflect upon the complicated interplay of media and culture at a particularly intense historical juncture. Written by prominent media specialists and cultural critics from Germany and North America, the essays use a case-study approach to provide a framework for comparative analysis across media forms, historical moments, and cultural contexts. Interdisciplinary in approach, the chapters draw on media studies, literary and cultural studies, history, audience analysis, and aesthetics for their findings. Together, they raise far-reaching questions about the nature of representation and reality at a moment when global flows of information, enhanced by new media technologies, threaten to outpace our traditional strategies for comprehension and control.Table of Contents Introduction (Susanne Kinnebrock and William Uricchio) Convergence and Diffusion (William Uricchio) XXXXXX (Liss Jeffrey) The Information Empire (Mark Poster) The Conundrum of Communication Technologies and Power (Dagmar Eberle) The Audience's Perspective on Global Media Landscapes (Uwe Hasebrink) The Changing Role of the Foreign Correspondent (Tom Heneghan) The Culture and Cult of the New York Times (Carlos Widmann) The Role of the Media in the Construction and Deconstruction of Heroes in Canada (Donna Coates) Visual Images of War in Early American Film (Horst Tonn) War, Media and Identity Construction in North America." (Karin Ikas) The Deep Structures of Democracy: The Nexus of Communications Policy and Public Culture (Patricia Aufderheide) Political Culture and Media Culture: Constructing Political Identities in the US and Germany (Andreas Dörner) Self-Induced 'Americanization" - the Role of Journalists in the Collapse of Democratic Confidence (Oliver Bange) Fearful Thoughts: US Television Post 9/11 and the Wars in Iraq (Patricia Mellencamp) Television as Myth: Poetics of a Narrative Epistemological System (Joan Kristin Bleicher) Plump With Fuel, Ripe to Explode: Media Aesthetics after 9/11 (Bärbel Tischleder) German Mass Media Facing the Crisis: Limits to Normalization (Jürgen Link) XXXXXX Joshua Meyrowitz
