School of Communications Book Launch

School of Communications - Book Launch

Prof. Maire Messenger-Davies of University of Ulster was guest speaker at
an event yesterday everning / during the IAMCR conference in DCU to celebrate
the recent publication of seven books by staff members of the School of Communications.

Prof. Messenger-Davies commented that the richness and diversity of this
work and its contribution to media and communications scholarship in Ireland
and beyond should remind us of the importance of writing and publishing books,
which establish scholars  as experts in our fields.


Debbie Ging - Men and Masculinities in Irish cinema
A timely study which relates the changes in cinematic masculinities to broader
social and cultural debates and shows the importance of images of men to
the construction and ongoing re-negotiation of national identities

Jim Rogers - The Death and Life of the Music industry in the digital age
An important study which challenges the conventional wisdom that the internet
is 'killing' the music industry and deflates much of the transformative hype
and digital 'deliria' surrounding the internet and its alleged impact on
the music industry.

Pat Brereton - Smart Cinema, DVD add-ons and new audience pleasures
An original analysis of 21st Century western cinema's defining feature -
its smartness - providing new insights into the technologies, storytelling
techniques and audience practices that characterise film culture in the digital
age.

Colum Kenny - The power of silence: silent communication in daily life
A fascinating analysis of the use, abuse and meaning of silence in our everyday
lives, which explores silence not only as a complex resource with which we
create meaning but also as a powerful metaphor through which we can gain
a better understanding of the world we live in

Mark O?Brien & Kevin Rafter ?Irish independent newspapers: a history
An original and revealing collection of work which charts the sometimes controversial
history of the Irish Independent, exploring the relationship between proprietors
and the newspapers, the company?s journalists and journalism, and the relationship
between the newspapers and Irish society.

Kevin Rafter - Irish journalism before independence: more a disease than
a profession
An important chronicle of the evolution and development of journalism in
Ireland, and the various challenges confronted by the first generation of
modern journalists in this country, and a major contribution to the history
of the Irish press.

Neil O?Boyle - New vocabularies, Old Ideas: Culture, Irishness and the Advertising
Industry
An original exploration of advertising as a shaper of identities and mediator
of meanings, particularly those related to nationality, which uses Irishness
to investigate the relationship between cultural symbolism in advertising
and the cultural vocabularies of advertising practitioners.