The means by which factions persist are many, including political parties, lobbying, partisan media, passion and prejudice, rent-seeking, the permanent campaign, the politics of identity and principle, and today’s high-tech political campaigns.

The medium is not merely a channel for transmitting information or a passive carrier of content. While we tend to focus on the content, it is the medium that brings about the deeper, transformative effects. Extending McLuhan’s insight, one compelling conclusion emerges: The mind is the medium. The science of the benefits of the written medium for individual minds elucidates the myriad ways in which reading reshapes and enhances human cognition.

How likely it is that literacy, as we have known it, will be preserved in the years ahead? Or, perhaps the question has already shifted, from whether the written medium will fade to how soon that disappearance might occur. Generative artificial intelligence and related technology can support the transition toward new forms of literacy that evolve alongside emerging media. Large language models, in particular, may help preserve some of the cognitive and communicative advantages associated with “traditional” book-based language. In this way, technology could shape future media landscapes, keeping the perks of being a bookworm while softening some of the downsides of newer formats.

This chapter examines how the rhetoric of achievement books is crafted through images and numbers as well as words. I argue that these media have two purposes. On one hand, they act as symbolic fragments of the nation, constituted by a recognisable Nasser-era iconography. Peasants and workers, students and soldiers, factories and machines, land and buildings – all these elements are marshalled to depict a cohesive national mosaic. On the other hand, each photograph and statistic acts as an index of the state’s achievements; the picture and the number become, on their own, an inarguable demonstration of the state’s ability to achieve. After describing the typical content of Nasserist iconography, the chapter moves to analyse it in relation to the master narratives of industrial modernisation and revolutionary responsibility. The chapter concludes with an analysis of what images exclude, what lies beyond their frame, and how these exclusions are telling about what constitutes ‘the state’ under Nasser. Governmental images and numbers are not a peripheral epiphenomenon to Nasser-era politics, but they are symbolically and indexically central to the state’s construction.

The introduction begins with the book’s central argument: Egyptian cultural and media institutions have constructed a coherent state project after the 1952 revolution through a praxis of ‘achievement’ (ingāz, pl. ingazāt). Inspired by the anthropology of bureaucracy and the state, the book intervenes in the longstanding historiography on the Nasser era to show how low- and mid-ranking bureaucrats affiliated to the Ministry of Culture and National Guidance have worked to create a unified state-idea after 1952, while constituting a bureaucratic corps on a similar ideological basis. Such bureaucrats, as well as higher-ranking officials and ministers, are central actors in the book’s narrative. The introduction also reviews the book’s main sources and methods, including ethnographic fieldwork, archival visits in institutional repositories and personal libraries, as well as regular dives into the second-hand book market in Cairo.

This chapter examines how achievement books produced by Egyptian state institutions have narrated and re-narrated the 1952 revolution. These books were centrally published by the Information Department, a crucial yet seldom studied organ in the emerging Ministry of Culture and National Guidance, as well as public relations units across different ministries. After a brief institutional history of the Ministry of Culture and National Guidance as a whole, in which I demonstrate how ‘culture’ and ‘media’ were originally intertwined in administrative terms, I argue that the state’s achievements were narrated according to a changing conception of the revolution between 1954 and 1970. This rhetoric cemented a distinctive version of history among Egyptian bureaucrats, in which long lists of achievements came to articulate the bureaucratic corps’ contributions to the revolution. Moreover, it aimed to counter colonial propaganda via a systematic presentation of ‘the true Egypt’ in numerous European languages. In short, achievement books recorded, disseminated, and embodied the revolution’s accomplishments for a domestic and an international audience.

This essay accounts for the pervasive presence of technology in Elizabeth Bowen’s life and writing, arguing that her work develops a nuanced, often ambivalent engagement with technological modernity. From her first novel, The Hotel, to the late and idiosyncratic Eva Trout, Bowen presents technology not merely as a backdrop but as a dynamic force shaping identity, social interaction, and temporal awareness. The chapter traces how Bowen’s characters interact with technological objects – including cars, telephones, radios, and computers – not only as tools but as extensions of the self and mediators of experience. Drawing on D. W. Winnicott’s theory of transitional objects, it demonstrates how Bowen’s characters use technology to navigate psychological development and social belonging. This culminates in a reading of Eva Trout, in which technology becomes a totalising force, anticipating postmodern concerns with cyborg identity and media saturation, and positioning Bowen as a prescient analyst of the evolving relationship between humans and machines.

While debates may rage around issues of sexuality, sexual identity and sexuality-based rights, if we are to believe what we hear from some of our political leaders and sections of the media, concerns over sexuality itself are to be settled outside of schools. Sexuality, they would argue, is too mature, too controversial and quite simply a biological fact that has no relevance to schooling. However, there are disturbing stories and statistics that point to the significant challenges faced by students, and these surely warrant attention. With this in mind, this chapter examines some of the questions that often arise when talking about sexualities: Are gender and sexuality the same thing? Is sexuality ‘all about sex’? And what has school got to do with any of this? By unpacking some of the emergent literature in the field, the chapter suggests that dominant discourses around sexualities – in this case, heteronormativity – are up for challenge.

It has been a remarkable journey for India from the nation’s independence in 1947 to now. Economic performance has been mixed, with growth remaining sluggish during the first three decades, and picking up only after the mid-1990s. On the political front, with free media, secularism and a vibrant democracy, India was an outlier in the developing world; it resembled some of the most advanced economies in the world. This chapter is a study of this unusual growth path, over the last seventy years, with a focus on how the economy and politics impacted each other. It is argued that, while early political choices may have slowed growth during the early decades, they played a vital role in India rising to be among the world’s fastest-growing nations in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

This chapter traces the role of folk music in the changing mediascape in North America from the 1940s to the 1960s. Beginning from Jürgen Habermas’s well-known notion of the ‘public sphere’, the essay locates the folk revival at the intersection of new spaces (Greenwich Village) and new media (the long-playing record). It shows how the technology of the LP made possible juxtapositions of songs from all over the world. With the Weavers, the Kingston Trio, and Peter, Paul and Mary, we see the emergence of folk music for a largely white college-educated public. This history shifts with the emergence of folk ‘stars’ Joan Baez and then Bob Dylan. At the same time the manipulation of the recording studio, in the work of Paul Simon and the Byrds, gives folk a new relationship to rock music. We then see how the comedy duo of the Smothers Brothers picks up on the political energy of folk music and blends it with the new medium of television at the end of the 1960s. These technological developments shape folk music as a force in the political culture of the era, from Martin Luther King to the Women’s Movement.

There is an established body of research providing clear evidence that certain types of media reporting of suicide, such as sensationalist reporting of celebrity suicides, can produce substantial negative effects. The most notable of these effects is a subsequent increase in the number of suicides. Conversely, emerging evidence also shows that suicide reporting focused on positive narratives of recovery from suicidal thoughts may confer protective benefits and lower subsequent suicide rates. This chapter provides a brief discussion of a possible theoretical mechanism for the impact of media portrayals of suicide on subsequent suicides. It also provides a brief history of research into the effects of fictional and non-fictional media portrayals of suicide, as well as portrayals and discussions of suicide in both traditional and newer media, including social media. The chapter focuses particularly on novel research findings related to suicide and the media. It concludes with a discussion of interventions that attempt to optimize the safety of media portrayals of suicide, and those that attempt to use various types of media proactively for suicide prevention purposes.

In stark contrast to the Mao era, today’s party propaganda has adapted to consumer culture. This chapter argues that ideology and patriotism under Xi have been transformed into commodity and fashion. The chapter examines the mechanism of commodifying ideology from three angles. The first are the more traditional media and popular cultural products such as movies and CCTV New Year’s Gala. The second is through the enterprise of “telling China’s story” exemplified by venture capitalists and technology entrepreneurs such as Eric Xun Li and Rao Jin, whose enterprises support party-endorsed popular intellectuals such as Jin Canrong, Zhang Weiwei, and Hu Xijin. The third is through the we-media, or self-media, flatform, where millions around the globe profit by posting repetitive sensationalized “loving China” videos. The trident principle manifests itself in the Chinese celebration of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s return to China. The party has masterminded a grand-scale ambitious propaganda movement that reaches far beyond the Great Wall of China.

Newspaper obituaries of political figures are a distinctive, deeply British genre of political writing, yet one rarely examined. These obituaries trace the rise and fall of British newsprint around the turn of the millennium, a time when newspapers gained new freedoms in technology and politics, briefly flourishing before the internet signalled their decline. Traditionally, obituary writers were anonymous, though by the 1980s, an ‘obituarial turn’ reshaped the genre, widening its scope to include a broader range of lives and details. Obituaries began to embrace anecdotes, highlighting personal quirks and scandals, and thus reflected a broader shift in mores. A central paradox defines the genre: though obituaries appear authoritative in respected newspapers, they are subject to the editorial biases of the day. Shifts in editorship and political climates can reshape reputations, subtly influencing public memory. In the print era, obituaries seemed permanent, existing as clippings and archives. However, the digital age has transformed them: limitless online space has made their reach wider but less impactful. Today, obituaries serve not only as end-points but as starting points for biographical reflections on political lives.