Provides an authoritative treatment of the life, work, and legacy of Charles Dickens

A Companion to Charles Dickens is an essential resource for understanding one of the most celebrated authors in English literature. This extensively revised edition features a wealth of new essays alongside select, updated essays from the first edition. Written by leading Dickensian scholars from around the world, these contributions offer critical insights into Dickens's life, works, and lasting influence. The Companion places Dickens's writings within their literary, historical, and ideological contexts, equipping readers with the knowledge to engage with his fiction in a more informed and meaningful way.

New chapters examine Dickens's attitudes to the city and to Europe, as well as his evolving literary reputation. Each of his fifteen novels, his Christmas Books, and his sketches is explored in depth, with scholars offering contemporary perspectives on their themes, style, and cultural impact. The contributors also consider Dickens's engagement with visual culture, his use of history in fiction, and the ways his works continue to resonate in modern studies.

An indispensable guide for those seeking a deeper understanding of Dickens's world and literary contributions, A Companion to Charles Dickens:

• Presents newly commissioned essays offering fresh critical perspectives on Dickens's life and works
• Explores Dickens's evolving reputation and critical reception over time
• Contains dedicated chapters exploring key themes and interpretations of all of Dickens's novels
• Discusses Dickens's literary style, narrative techniques, and innovations in storytelling
• Presents a broad range of perspectives, from biographical studies to thematic and ideological analyses
• Includes updated references, bibliographies, and recommendations for further reading

A Companion to Charles Dickens, Second Edition is an invaluable reference for undergraduate and graduate students studying English literature, Victorian studies, or cultural history. It is also a must-have for scholars, researchers, educators, and professionals engaged in Dickens studies, as well as general readers with a deep interest in his life and works.

Narrative Theory in Journalistic Practice provides innovative analytical frameworks for examining journalistic narratives in today's digital, multimodal media landscape. The volume expands beyond traditional models focused on linear texts to address contemporary formats across multiple platforms.

Through empirical analyses of genres such as immersive long-form stories, live news reports, social media news, podcasts, and still images, the book explores the dual function of journalistic narratives: they are suited to engage readers in both trivial and complex events and issues, but will also advance certain interpretations of reality and downplay others. The book conveys a critical and constructivist view on narratives, showing how journalistic stories contribute to shaping people's understanding of reality but also how media users play an active role in interpreting the narratives.

The volume will interest students and scholars of journalism, media studies, and narrative studies. It is intended for use by graduate students as well as by established researchers.

Current perspectives on artificial intelligence (AI) tend to focus on the wide parameters between fear and hope. Realistic and Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence provides some (ethical) hope with realistic solutions. It deals with the complexities of AI, unpacking specific challenges presented by the AI problem and suggesting what we do about them.

This book is written by an experienced researcher and a young innovator, with expert reflections from researchers and practitioners. It promotes community-focused, collective values and ethical uses of AI, and it challenges ideologies based on capitalist modes of consumption, privilege and exploitation. Chapters explain current understandings of AI, how it has developed since its inception and the various types of AI. The text explores issues such as scraping of data, privacy, unethical corporate practices, trust and AI abuse, as well as outlining the potential environmental, social and psychological impact of AI - for better and for worse. Discussions across this book are underpinned by both research and media perspectives that introduce concerns and offer suggestions and explanations about ways to use AI in realistic and ethical ways.

This up-to-date text is ideal for anyone looking for a deeper understanding of what counts as AI, the moral questions troubling both researchers and the general public and how AI can be a fantastic tool if built and used ethically.

Post-Mass Media redefines media in the 21st century, viewing it as a pervasive environment rather than just tools or platforms.

Systematically examining the media environment and its key issues, this book considers the multidimensional conceptualization of media and differentiation between the mass media era and the post-mass media era. It explores media-tools, content, institutions, people, and spaces-and traces the evolution from the era of centralized mass media to today's participatory and fragmented media environment, which also reveals new forms of exploitation and manipulation. This shift into the "post-mass media era" has created both opportunities and challenges, particularly around the concept of "relevance" in media. It examines how the mass media era created a "crisis of relevance" by delivering standardized content that was often disconnected from individual lives. In the post-mass media era, this has morphed into a "hyper-crisis of relevance," conceptualizing media as constantly in flux, never fixed, where personal and local stories gain visibility but risk commodification and distortion by global platforms. By reshaping how we conceptualize the role of media, this book empowers readers to critically assess the impact of the media environment on our collective and personal realities.

Ideal for media scholars, cultural theorists, sociologists, students, and general readers interested in the impact of the digital age on identity, society, and culture, Post-Mass Media offers a new framework for understanding media influence. Readers will gain insight into the ethical concerns of the current media environment and strategies for thoughtfully navigating it. This engaging and resourceful work will interest upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, and early-career researchers working in the areas of media and society, media sociology, new media technologies, cultural studies, urban studies, and digital humanities.

Interrogating three core assumptions made within the field of media literacy-that media literacy practices empower individuals, support communities, and contribute to engaged citizenship within a democracy-this book presents a new framework for equitable media literacy practices.

Using the results of a large-scale research project to interrogate these long-held assumptions and explore the connection between impactful media literacy practices and equity, the authors demonstrate the crucial need to shift the focus of media literacy practices from that of individual skill transfer to that of equity-driven community-oriented media practices. They offer a clear framework for embracing equity and inclusion at the outset of media literacy intervention, focusing on the Six E's Framework, the Equitable Media Literacy Practice Model, and a Field Guide with the five categories for practice: Where Do I Stand, Who Cares, Imagining Inclusive Futures, With Community, and Where Do We Stand. Each category repositions media literacies with explicit focus on inclusion, justice, and the pursuit of equitable futures.

This book will appeal to students and scholars studying and researching in the space of media literacy, digital culture, social justice, and equity in media and communication studies departments and beyond, as well as those working at the educational and policy level around issues of media literacy, media education, and civic engagement.

This book explores the changing portrayal of leading female characters in 21st-century security TV shows set behind the scenes of democratic regimes facing multifaceted threats, from jihadist terrorism to health risks.

Offering an in-depth examination of several case studies, the authors speak to a larger debate on the differences of women's representations in security TV series within and between geographical and cultural areas. Beginning with a definition of this popular genre of TV series and highlighting its specificities, the book brings together researchers from media studies, humanities, philosophy, and gender studies to interrogate new forms of visibility of female figures in popular culture.

This book will appeal to scholars, postgraduate students, and research students working in film studies, media studies, popular culture studies, gender studies, philosophy, and sociology.