Make / Believe: We and They on a Digital Planet
Jan 2025 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Ebook
312
Pages
About this ebook
This book illustrates that mediated popular culture and science-based knowledge systems, entangled and compromised as both have become, are still a robust crucible for system change for the future when they combine forces.
Planetary crises require responses from everyone. This means that collective action is not simply a scientific or political problem. It is a problem of culture and media. But modern politics, journalism, and science were not designed for global climate action. They've divided humans into competitive and often hostile 'we' and 'they' groups. Identity, news, and knowledge are all weaponized. Culture makes groups, groups make knowledge, and knowledge makes enemies.
What can be done to prevent global conflict and the drift to war? Make/Believe turns to popular culture and social media to argue for an alternative storyline. While the Great Powers are making new enemies, emergent 'classes' – led by children – are using planetary connectivity to make new worlds. A digital planet generates new kinds of strategic stories for pan-human action, based on difference, intersectionality, and cooperation for a sustainable Earth system.
Make/Believe shows how alternatives to the 'Great Game' of global contestation are gathering strength in unlikely places, among women, children, lifestyle, and pop culture. Popular digital media literacy is now a prerequisite for the remediation of the planet.
Planetary crises require responses from everyone. This means that collective action is not simply a scientific or political problem. It is a problem of culture and media. But modern politics, journalism, and science were not designed for global climate action. They've divided humans into competitive and often hostile 'we' and 'they' groups. Identity, news, and knowledge are all weaponized. Culture makes groups, groups make knowledge, and knowledge makes enemies.
What can be done to prevent global conflict and the drift to war? Make/Believe turns to popular culture and social media to argue for an alternative storyline. While the Great Powers are making new enemies, emergent 'classes' – led by children – are using planetary connectivity to make new worlds. A digital planet generates new kinds of strategic stories for pan-human action, based on difference, intersectionality, and cooperation for a sustainable Earth system.
Make/Believe shows how alternatives to the 'Great Game' of global contestation are gathering strength in unlikely places, among women, children, lifestyle, and pop culture. Popular digital media literacy is now a prerequisite for the remediation of the planet.
This book illustrates that mediated popular culture and science-based knowledge systems, entangled and compromised as both have become, are still a robust crucible for system change for the future when they combine forces.
Planetary crises require responses from everyone. This means that collect...
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About the author
John Hartley is an elected Fellow of the International Communication Association, USA, the Learned Society of Wales, UK, and the Royal Society of Arts, UK. He is Honorary Associate of the University of Sydney, Australia, and previously worked at Curtin University, Australia, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, as Dean of Creative Industries and ARC Federation Fellow, and Cardiff University, UK, as head of the School of Journalism and Media. He has published over 30 books and many articles on media, journalism, creative industries and digital culture.
John Hartley is an elected Fellow of the International Communication Association, USA, the Learned Society of Wales, UK, and the Royal Society of Arts, UK. He is Honorary Associate of the University of Sydney, Australia, and previously worked at Curtin University, Australia, Queensland University...
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