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This chapter highlights the patterns of communication that existed within families before digital and mobile media technologies appeared and that continue to shape the uses of these technologies. It argues that there are differences in how parents understand the relationship of communication technologies to risk, with upper income families concerned about the risk of mediated leisure that might undermine educational and economic goals, some middle income families worried about the risks of a polluting cultural environment and failing schools, and lower income families worried about risks of even more decrepit social structures that create failed opportunities for their children. The chapter demonstrates that whereas media are implicated in the risks of upper income families’ goals, lower income families can instead sometimes view media as a means to meet familial goals such as finding ways to avoid neighborhood-related risks and seeking productive outlets for time.

Public health branding has existed for as long as social marketing, but has only recently been effectively harnessed and applied. Lessons from successful branding efforts in HIV, tobacco control, and nutrition/physical activity can be used in other health domains. Promising new domains for PH branding include health care (prescribers and consumers) and children's media use, among other health risk behaviours. More branded messages, use of new media and technologies, and research in this area are needed.

This chapter outlines the media use patterns of news consumers before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. The evacuees, labeled “early responders,” “caught in the middle,” and “caught in the storm,” exhibited different media use caused in part by the decimation of the communication infrastructure in New Orleans. Radio once again became important, the New Orleans media had a digital maturation, and local news became an invaluable lifeline. Media use and science literacy are important factors in decision-making, especially during times of crisis. This chapter continues with a survey conducted four years after Hurricane Katrina that found Gulf Coast residents get a B-minus in hurricane knowledge. Findings also showed African Americans have significantly less hurricane knowledge than whites. A survey conducted while the BP oil was spewing into the Gulf found the public knows even less about the processes of oil exploration and the effects the spill may have on the sea’s ecosystems.

This chapter argues that a model of communication based on demographic-targeted marketing and strategic political communication has become a dominant force in the United States, and that this development has profound consequences for the patterns of social identification in late modern society. In particular, over the past twenty years television news content has trended toward fewer displays of collective representations, fewer positive portrayals of government, and fewer stories about policy issues. The move toward a more personalized and consumer-oriented news format, charged with negative emotional images, has numerous political implications. The chapter argues that changes in the media have engendered a sense of isolation, failing to connect citizens who might share a collective sense of concern and need for action. The implications of this dynamic are explored, as well as the potential for internet communication to correct for the shortcomings of mainstream news.

In Chapter 4, data collected through ethnographic research and structured interviews are used to argue that new media tools when used, can profoundly alter social and political practices in Kuwait. Internet use removes inhibitions, gives the public a voice, encourages people to demand access to current, transparent news and information, and enables citizens to become more engaged and active in the world. In the words of one 55 year old female Kuwaiti participant, the Internet “opens the eyes of the younger generation and because of this, they find more freedom to exercise and they can compare freedom in their countries to that in other countries” (Interview, July 2009, Kuwait City). Explanations for the increasingly volatile political and social environment in Kuwait are explored in light of new media use. The persistence of patriarchy in spite of enhanced civic engagement reveals the puzzling nature of oppositional compliance in the emirate.

The spectacular changes in the human body and brain during the period of adolescence have a huge influence on adolescents' behavior and their interest in media. This chapter considers these developmental processes in order to understand how best to appeal to younger and older adolescents. What, for example, interests young teens (ages 12–15) and how does this differ (or not) from what interests their older teenage peers (16–19)? What specific developmental characteristics typify these age groups, and how do these characteristics influence their media use and preferences? Why do teens enjoy sarcasm and fast-paced, humorous banter in media? Why do social media have such a “Pied Piper effect” on adolescents? And finally, how does teens' developing autonomy influence their media preferences?

Given the abundance of time they devote to their digital diversions, no account of the lives of emerging adults would be complete without attention to their media uses. This chapter begins with an elucidation of their rates of media use and how those rates compare to other age groups, in areas including listening to music, using social media, watching television, texting, and playing electronic games. Then follows an examination of the role that media play in emerging adults’ lives and in their development, particularly their identity development. At the end of the chapter is an exploration of the contentious question of whether all this media use is a positive or negative force in their development. It is concluded that today’s emerging adults integrate their media use into their lives in ways that promote more than undermine their social connectedness and their enjoyment of life.

Reconciling large scale political and social change with everyday lived experience has always been a fundamental problem for understanding social and political change. This chapter offers a conceptual framework that recognizes the intricacy of interaction between mediation and revolutionary social change by looking at the lived experience of Egyptians during the Egyptian revolution. The experience of collective events is mediated through information and communication technologies; these mediated experiences are both collective, in that people are connected by media uses and practices and by common activities and spaces, and yet they are also deeply personal and individualized, in that specific sets of technologies, interpersonal relationships and embodied practices that comprise one person’s unfolding experience are different from another’s. The chapter argues that these two dimensions could be theorized using the concepts of network and assemblage. On a broader scale, we can understand the relationship between mediated experiences of events and agent-driven uses of media technologies by turning to processual analysis of the sort called field theory, which allows us to see the revolution as a series of struggles over the symbolic meaning of revolutionary activities, in which media practices play a crucial part.

More frequently than ever before, collective and individual placemaking involve routine engagement with digital media texts and practices. As the amount of accessible information about place proliferates, so, too, does the desire to “know one’s place” within space and society. The notion of “spatial reality” has become more personalized, customized, and shareable and at the same time more cartographic, quantifiable, and legible. Noted in several of the case studies presented in this book, digital technologies and practices are, in fact, key elements employed in humanizing the environment of urban spaces. The return to place, urban embodiment and embeddedness are activated and maintained through mediated, symbolic, and networked technologies and practices. This book encourages readers to think of digitally mediated placemaking not as a paradox but as something that populations across the globe habitually and strategically do in their performances of place. Throughout this book, the author calls attention to place and placemaking as integral to analyses of digital media use and relationships between media, bodies, and urban environments.

This chapter explores the multidimensional relationship between computer games and education. More specifically, it considers game playing within the broader context of adolescents' orientation to and experience of schooling. It presents the results of Flemish studies that examined the role of education in structuring media use, the relationship between education and media use by different types of students, computer game playing in education, and how computer games promote the transfer of learning.

Tensions between feminist and biological theories applied to human behavior have generated extended debate. The debate has been multifaceted, with threads focusing on, for instance, particular forms of evolutionary theorizing, the relationship between scholarly and popular discourses, and the relative appropriateness of scientific and humanistic methods of inquiry into human experience. Although many issues remain contentious, in recent years feminist researchers have been making a strong case for the integration of scientific insights into feminist paradigms. Theoretical innovations in evolution, development, and neuroscience point to ways of addressing long-standing tensions between scientific and feminist theory in a manner that honors and requires contributions from both. This chapter focuses on the relevance and complementarity of affective neuroscience to feminist theory.

This chapter describes the development of the infant in the seventh month of life. Now that her son is beginning to sit up on his own, he has begun to notice and watch screens whenever they are in use around him. Revisiting her initial promise to herself to keep her child away from screens for the first 2 years of life, the author reviews research on whether it is harmful for babies to look at screens and whether infants and young children can learn from these media. She concludes with some practical recommendations based on the research she reviews for deciding how much screen time is too much.