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This chapter provides context for the consideration of the political engagement of young adults. The Millennial Generation’s place in history is marked by laying out the succession of generations preceding it. By comparing such generational milestones as reaching the voting age to the corresponding top news events, the historical context in which this age cohort has matured also is offered. Using multiple sources of secondary data, the key demographic features of the Millennial Generation are outlined including current and projected size, ethnic diversity, educational attainment, and social media habits. This consideration of the realities of the generation is then juxtaposed against perceptions of young adults through content analysis of a database of over 300 news articles regarding the Millennial Generation. The media frame through which Millennials are viewed depicts young adults as forceful when it comes to business and entertainment but elusive and uncertain politically with little evidence of their impact.

This chapter takes up some of the zombie's most pressing genre concerns. In the main, the chapter describes the recent controversy over delimitation of the category of the zombie, as filmmakers have begun to play with the accepted conventions, and audiences have expanded their definitions of what counts as a zombie. One of the central concerns has been termed “the fast vs. slow zombie debate.” Here the chapter describes the origins of the conflict, and ties the issue to other recent developments: most notably, the explosion of technology use in the everyday. The chapter seeks to explain how the fast zombie may be a reflection of the Millennial Generation's sped up expectations in a world of instant downloads and immediate gratification. The chapter also looks at the persistence of the slow zombie, particularly in a mainstay of the genre, amateur filmmaking, and the nostalgia it preserves.

This chapter explores how the term “post-racial” became widespread in dominant news discussions of politics and culture. Drawing on an exhaustive analysis of news items collected in the Lexis-Nexis news database, it illustrates how the term went from obscurity in the 1990s to a widely used framing device in the mid-2000s. Although “post-racial” is now a commonplace adjective used by journalists and pundits, what the term means remains controversial and in flux. The term accompanies discussions of whether pop culture consumption and racial intermarriage are clear markers of an imminent post-racial era, as commentators debated whether “Generation Millennial” would achieve “Dr. King's Dream” of a society where skin color is of no consequence. The chapter argues that while the debate over the term is healthy and necessary, applying “post-racial” could shut down many productive avenues for public discussion.