New Books in Communications
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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1776
Lawrence M. Friedman, “The Big Trial: Law as Pu...
In the first legal history course I took as an undergraduate, I read Lawrence M. Friedman‘s A History of American Law and American Law in the 20th Century and have been fascinated with the subject ever since. His most recent work,
39 min
1777
Joseph M. Reagle, “Reading the Comments: Likers...
What do we know about the individuals who make comments on online news stories, blogs, videos and other media? What kind of people take the time to post all manner of information and context to material created by others? Joseph M. Reagle,
30 min
1778
Sonja D. Williams “Word Warrior: Richard Durham...
Sonja D. Williams‘ book Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom (University of Illinois Press, 2015) connects its subject to some of the most important events and social movements of his time, including what we now call the Civil Rights Moveme...
70 min
1779
Nicole Starosielski, “The Undersea Network” (Du...
Nicole Starosielski‘s new book brings an environmental and ecological consciousness to the study of digital media and digital systems, and it is a must-read. The Undersea Network (Duke University Press, 2015) looks carefully and imaginatively at the ge...
67 min
1780
Randy Nichols, “The Video Game Business” (Briti...
Video games have become an important cultural and economic force in our media environment. In his new book, The Video Game Business (British Film Institute, 2014), scholar Randy Nichols provides an overview of the increasingly diverse global market for...
49 min
1781
Christopher Vitale, “Networkologies: A Philosop...
Networks seem to be the dominant metaphor for contemporary society. In Networkologies: A Philosophy of Networks for a Hyperconnected Age (Zero Books, 2014), Christopher Vitale sets out a manifesto for understanding and using networks as the basis of a ...
41 min
1782
Michael Ray FitzGerald, “Native Americans on Ne...
In his new book Native Americans on Network TV: Stereotypes, Myths, and the ‘Good Indian’ (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), Michael Ray FitzGerald reviews how television represented Native Americans, including in both positive and negative stereotypes.
53 min
1783
Jonathan Coopersmith, “Faxed: The Rise and Fall...
Jonathan Coopersmith‘s new book takes readers through the century-and-a-half-long history of the fax machine and the technologies that shaped and were shaped by it, from Alexander Bain’s 1843 patent to the computer-based faxing of the end of the 20thce...
60 min
1784
James A. Secord, “Visions of Science: Books and...
James A. Secord‘s new book is both deeply enlightening and a pleasure to read. Emerging from the 2013 Sandars Lectures in Bibliography at the Cambridge University Library, Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age (Universi...
64 min
1785
Christian Fuchs, “Culture and Economy in the Ag...
Social media is now a pervasive element of many people’s lives. in order to best understand this phenomenon we need a comprehensive theory of the political economy of social media. In Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media (Routledge, 2015),
55 min
1786
Greg Siegel, “Forensic Media: Reconstructing Ac...
Greg Siegel‘s new book is a wonderfully engaging and meticulously researched account of a dual tendency in modern technological life: treating forensic knowledge of accident causation as a key to solving the accident,
65 min
1787
Jon L. Mills, “Privacy in the New Media Age” (U...
That privacy in the digital age is an important concept to be discussed is axiomatic. Cameras in mobile phones make it easy to record events and post them on the web. Consumers post an enormous amount of information on social media sites.
31 min
1788
Timothy Jordan, “Information Politics: Liberati...
Struggles over information in the digital era are central to Tim Jordan‘s new book, Information Politics: Liberation and Exploitation in the Digital Society (Pluto Press, 2015). The book aims to connect a critical theoretical reading of the idea of inf...
50 min
1789
Naomi S. Baron, “Words Onscreen: The Fate of Re...
Screens are ubiquitous. From the screen on a mobile, to that on a tablet, or laptop, or desktop computer, screens appear all around us, full of content both visual and text. But it is not necessarily the ubiquity of screens that has societal implicatio...
37 min
1790
Jason Stanley, “How Propaganda Works” (Princeto...
Propaganda names a familiar collection of phenomena, and examples of propaganda are easy to identify, especially when one examines the output of totalitarian states. In those cases, language and imagery are employed for the purpose of shaping mass opin...
63 min
1791
Christine L. Borgman, “Big Data, Little Data, N...
Social media and digital technology now allow researchers to collect vast amounts of a variety data quickly. This so-called “big data,” and the practices that surround its collection, is all the rage in both the media and in research circles.
35 min
1792
Todd Wolfson, “Digital Rebellion: The Birth of ...
Todd Wolfson’s book, Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left (University of Illinois Press, 2014) examines the impact of new media and communication technologies on the spatial, strategic, and organizational fabric of social movements.
41 min
1793
Robert W. Gehl, “Reverse Engineering Social Med...
Reverse Engineering Social Media: Software, Culture, and Political Economy in New Media Capitalism (Temple University Press, 2014) by Robert Gehl (University of Utah, Department of Communication) explores the architecture and political economy of socia...
41 min
1794
Christina Dunbar-Hester, “Low Power to the Peop...
For the past few decades a major focus has been how the Internet, and Internet associated new media, allows for greater social and political participation globally. There is no disputing that the Internet has allowed for more participation,
40 min
1795
Thomas Leitch, “Wikipedia U: Knowledge, Authori...
Wikipedia is one of the most popular resources on the web, with its massive collection of articles on an incredible number of topics. Yet, its user written and edited model makes it controversial in many circles. In Wikipedia U: Knowledge, Authority,
64 min
1796
Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, “The P...
Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones are the authors of The Politics of Information: Problem Definition and the Course of Public Policy in America (University of Chicago Press, 2014). Baumgartner is the Richard J.
19 min
1797
Steven Fielding, “A State of Play” (Bloomsbury ...
To understand contemporary politics we must understand how it is represented in fiction. This is the main argument in A State of Play: British Politics on Screen, Stage and Page, from Anthony Trollope to The Thick of It (Bloomsbury Academic,
61 min
1798
Johanna Drucker, “Graphesis: Visual Forms of Kn...
Johanna Drucker‘s marvelous new book gives us a language with which to talk about visual epistemology.Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production (Harvard University Press, 2014) simultaneously introduces the nature and function of information grap...
64 min
1799
Beth Driscoll, “The New Literary Middlebrow: Re...
It is a cliche to suggest we are what we read, but it is also an important insight. In The New Literary Middlebrow: Readers and Tastemaking in the Twenty First Century (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2014), Beth Driscoll, from University of Melbourne,
39 min
1800
Victor Pickard, “America’s Battle for Media Dem...
The media system in the United States could have developed into something very different than what it is today. In fact, there was an era in which significant media reform was considered. This was a time when media consumers were tired of constant adve...
28 min