Social Sciences

The BBC Proms is the world’s biggest and longest-running classical music festival and one of the jewels in the crown for the BBC. Held every summer at the Royal Albert Hall in London and across the UK, it is one of the strongest brand names in the music world and attracts a glittering array of artists and orchestras from the UK and around the world. Whether you’re a first-time visitor or an experienced Prommer, watching at home or listening on radio or online, the BBC Proms Guide is an excellent companion to the festival, which you can treasure and return to in years to come.

Filled with concert listings and articles by leading writers, the BBC Proms Guide offers an insight into the performers and repertoire, as well as thought-provoking opinion pieces about music, musicians and music-making.

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‘James Patterson and Mark Seal have brought Sin City to life’ TELEGRAPH

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas – until now.

Whether you’re a Vegas regular or have only heard the city’s tales through whispers, this book will surprise and astound you . . . It’s not just the five-star dining, or the casinos, or the clubs, or the crowds. It’s the electrifying chemistry of America’s most round-the-clock city.

In this dazzling 24-hour journey, James Patterson lifts the lid on America’s notorious hub of gambling and excess. Fuelled by original interviews and in-depth reporting, What Really Happens in Vegas uncovers the vice, crime and entertainment that made Sin City an infamous desert mecca.

This is Vegas as you’ve never seen it before, filled with unbelievable stories from the people who make the city tick, simmer – and even explode.

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PRAISE FOR JAMES PATTERSON

‘Patterson knows where our deepest fears are buried… there’s no stopping his imagination’ NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

‘A writer with an unusual skill at thriller plotting’ GUARDIAN

‘The master storyteller of our times’ HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON

‘No one gets this big without amazing natural storytelling talent – which is what Jim has, in spades’ LEE CHILD

‘Patterson boils a scene down to the single, telling detail, the element that defines a character or moves a plot along. It’s what fires off the movie projector in the reader’s mind’ MICHAEL CONNELLY

‘James Patterson is The Boss. End of.’ IAN RANKIN

‘It’s no mystery why James Patterson is the world’s most popular thriller writer … Simply put: nobody does it better’ JEFFREY DEAVER

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A technical chapter on digital technology explains radio waves, bands and then how audio could be sliced to make it easier to transmit digitally. The needs to get an online radio station on the air are explored with a look at the essential studio equipment, and a hard look at business plans. Funding online radio is discussed and various new forms of revenue that are already revolutionising the medium.

Of interest to anyone in the media, this book is about the FUTURE of broadcasting, which looks certain to include
ONLINE RADIO

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The Advertising Handbook provides a critical introduction to advertising and marketing practices today. Contributions from leading international scholars and practitioners offer extended coverage of the contemporary shifts and pressures reshaping the marketing communications (or advertising and marketing) industries and their relationship to the consumer. Profiles and case studies illustrate innovation and diversification among advertising, marketing and public relations companies. Discussion questions aid learning and encourage debate about the activities and influence of advertising today.

This Fourth Edition explores the growing significance of:

• the influence of ‘Big Data’ and automation in digital advertising;

• tracking and profiling users across digital communications for targeted and personalised marketing communications;

• the rise of media and advertising integration through sponsored content, product placement, native advertising and other forms of branded content;

• the dynamic shifts in ad spending and media–advertising relationships across legacy media, online and social media; and

• the complex profile of consumer behaviour that produces new challenges for brands and branding.

Fully revised and updated, this new edition of The Advertising Handbook is a comprehensive and accessible guide to contemporary advertising and marketing theory and practice, designed to meet the requirements, interests and terms of reference of the most recent generation of media and advertising students.

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Advertising Account Planning teaches students to navigate the complex digital account planning processes. Incorporating insights from current advertising professionals, this core text explains what the account planner does and the research needed for account planning to be successful within the digital landscape.

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Our politics dictate the ads we create and distance us from our audience. The advertising industry has lost interest in selling. According to the IPA, we face “a crisis of effectiveness”. And our politics are to blame. We are now so culturally left-leaning, we’re no longer willing to stoke capitalism’s engine of growth. Instead, we have a new raison d’etre: we’re saving the world. But who are the activists and careerists who are pushing this progressive agenda? And what of the angry mainstream who are alienated by the ideas we’re imposing upon them? Most urgently, as our clients emerge from the pandemic recession, will advertising rediscover its commercial purpose and help them revive the UK economy? Or will our agencies and institutions double down on social purpose and the monoculture that’s suffocating a once brilliantly creative industry and forcing it to the margins of British business and cultural life?

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Advertising has always been a uniquely influential social force. It affects what we buy, what we believe, who we elect, and so much more. We tend to know histories of other massive social forces, but even people working in advertising often have a tenuous grasp of their field’s background.

This book slices advertising’s history into a smörgåsbord of specific topics like advertising to children, political advertising, people’s names as advertisements, 3D advertising, programmatic buying, and so much more, offering a synopsis of how each developed and the role it played in this discipline. In doing so, many firsts are identified, such as the first full-page color magazine advertisement, and the first point-of-purchase advertisement. This book also reaches back farther in search of the earliest advertisements, and it tells the story of the variety of techniques used by our ancestors to promote their products and ideas.

Part textbook, part reference, the book is an advertising museum in portable form suitable for all levels of students, scholars, and arm-chair enthusiasts.

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For several decades the creativity of British campaigns was preeminent around the globe. But Powers of Persuasion is not just about advertisements – it is about advertising. During those years Britain was also a world leader in setting industry benchmarks – innovating the account planning discipline, setting the standard for public service advertising, launching global advertising awards festivals, introducing the best system of advertising regulation, setting up both the world’s largest advertising archive and the world’s most comprehensive on-line advertising research databank. These were the keystones on which British creativity was built. Simultaneously, major British advertising companies – particularly Saatchi & Saatchi and WPP – raced to the top of the global league.

Powers of Persuasion tells the authoritative story of this dynamic, exhilarating era, with pen portraits of the personalities involved, anecdotes, case histories, and essential data. Written (from the inside) by one of the industry’s leaders, this is a book for all interested in advertising and its role in society, business, and the media.

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Transform your advertising practice by learning to harness the power of the industry to tackle the climate crisis. This is the book every advertising professional needs to lead the way to a sustainable future.

Sustainable Advertising is designed to equip advertising and marketing services professionals with the tools and expertise they need to make their daily practices more sustainable whilst improving productivity and saving money. Covering every aspect of advertising, from how ads are made and the way they are distributed to the product, service and behaviour each ad promotes, this book lays out a way forward for the industry that will overcome the current problems faced.

From the Director of Communications for the Advertising Association and Ad Net Zero Matt Bourn, this must-read guide sets out a clear 5-point action plan for the advertising industry and includes case studies and interviews with industry leaders including Cannes Lions, Havas, WPP and Mediacom. Learn from top examples of best practice in the industry and how to avoid greenwashing in this unmissable and practical manifesto for the future of advertising.

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The desire to be recognized is a basic human trait. In contemporary society, social media platforms play a key role in defining how processes of recognition take shape. To post, to like, or to comment have become daily practices of expressing individual recognition. On the one hand, social media platforms make it easier for individuals to be visible and to be recognized; on the other hand, they control the structure of these dynamics.

This timely and original book reflects on processes of recognition on social media platforms. Revisiting traditional discussions on recognition theory, Bruno Campanella investigates how the field of media and communication has used the concept and poses new questions raised by the omnipresence of social media. He argues that existing work does not fully explore the impact of platforms on contemporary processes of recognition. Individuals must learn new skills to make themselves visible online, but how to achieve this changes as a consequence of the role played by platforms: what is seen depends on decisions taken by their algorithms, which impacts how individuals and social groups are valued in society.

Recognition in the Age of Social Media is a key contribution to the field, and a must-read for students and scholars of media and communication, sociology, and politics.

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Daniel Miller spent 18 months undertaking an ethnographic study with the residents of an English village, tracking their use of the different social media platforms. Following his study, he argues that a focus on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram does little to explain what we post on social media. Instead, the key to understanding how people in an English village use social media is to appreciate just how ‘English’ their usage has become. He introduces the ‘Goldilocks Strategy’: how villagers use social media to calibrate precise levels of interaction ensuring that each relationship is neither too cold nor too hot, but ‘just right’.

He explores the consequences of social media for groups ranging from schoolchildren through to the patients of a hospice, and he compares these connections to more traditional forms of association such as the church and the neighbourhood. Above all, Miller finds an extraordinary clash between new social media that bridges the private and the public domains, and an English sensibility that is all about keeping these two domains separate.

Praise for Social Media in an English Village

‘The book has definitely lived up to my expectations and changed the way I think about social media. … a truly illuminating and recommendable [reading] experience.’
New Horizons in English Studies

‘This fine study is located in anthropology, and there
will therefore be some jarring interpretations for scholars in internet,
media, communication and cultural studies. This disciplinary dissonance
is productive and potent. The concept of “polymedia” proposed
throughout the book will hold a currency far beyond this monograph and
series. This concept describes how a network of social media platforms
is used to build a communication system. Further, the key and
under-recognised change in social media in the past five years – the
intensification of visuality in social media through Instagram and
Snapchat – is handled well. Miller also captures the social function of
mobile phone cameras: “Taking a photograph has become rather like
holding a drink – a key mode by which everyone acknowledges how much fun
they are having.” …Delicately textured case studies entwine around
this local study, such as the use of social media for people with
terminal illnesses and resident in hospices. Patients can continue
conversations with family and friends, particularly with the use of a
webcam to offer (digital) face to (digital) face support. Miller’s rich
research unearths how the local use of digital media reveals
opportunities, strategies and challenges for guarding and freeing the
spaces between public and private communication.’
Times Higher Education

‘This thought-provoking publication will appeal to both the curious layperson and media scholars, no doubt igniting introspection about our own use of social media.’
LSE Review of Books

‘Based on rich ethnographic data, the book offers vivid examples of the ground-breaking discoveries made in digital anthropology in the past two decades. Miller – a recognised pioneer in this field of study – is profoundly concerned not only with the change that social media have brought to people’s lives but also the change that people make through and with social media. By situating social media in the practices and socialities of people in a particular locality, this highly readable book achieves both empirical and theoretical depth and offers a valuable piece of social science literature for students and scholars interested in social media as ways of attaining ever new possibilities of human experience and social life.’
Social Anthropology

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