New Books in Communications

Agnieszka Helman-WaznyView on AmazonAgnieszka Helman-Wazny's new book is a fascinating contribution to both book history and Tibetan studies, bringing these fields together through careful attention to the physicality of print and manuscript materials. The Archaeology of Tibetan Books (Brill, 2014) explores a wide range of printed works and manuscripts in Tibetan, focusing especially on the nearly 50 Tibetan manuscripts from the Dunhuang "Library Cave," early printed editions of Tibetan Kanjurs, and illuminated manuscripts from Western and Central Tibet. Based on deeply interdisciplinary research in libraries, museums, and private collections, along with interviews with Tibetan artisans and personal experience in "experimental manuscriptology," Helman-Wazny's book focuses on the material components of Tibetan books, including the fiber composition and molding of the paper, the preparation of leaves before writing/printing, the production of inks and pigments, and the format of the most important types of Tibetan books. The Archaeology of Tibetan Books also explores the relationship between manuscript and print culture in Tibet, and guides readers through the stages of production of massive projects like the Tibetan Buddhist Canon. A final chapter discusses the particular challenges posed to the conservation of Tibetan books due to the significance of these books as sacred and ritual objects, where "preserving" the object for one group of people may look like "destroying" it to another. This will reward the attention of anyone interested in the history of and with Tibetan books.

Orit HalpernView on AmazonThe second half of the twentieth century saw a radical transformation in approaches to recording and displaying information. Orit Halpern's new book traces the emergence of the "communicative objectivity" that resulted from this shift and produced new forms of observation, rationality, and economy. Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945 (Duke University Press, 2014) beautifully accomplishes this by creating a dialogue between fields that don't often speak to one another in our scholarship: the history of science and knowledge, and the study of design, planning, and aesthetics. The result is a fascinating history of the construction of vision and cognition after WWII that looks carefully at the impact of early cybernetics on American design, urban planning, psychology, political science, management, and governmentality. Along the way, readers are treated to explorations of the "smart city" of Songdo Korea, the 1964-65 World's Fair, labs at MIT, tricks played on porpoises, images of Marilyn Monroe, experiments on frog eyes, gardens designed by Isamu Noguchi, and much more. It's a deeply thoughtful, wonderfully trans-disciplinary book that's also a lot of fun to read.

Alexander R. GallowayView on Amazon"The chief aim of [philosopher François Laruelle's] life's work is to consider philosophy without resorting to philosophy in order to do so." What is non-philosophy, what would it look like to practice it, and what are the implications of doing so? Alexander R. Galloway introduces and explores these questions in a vibrant and thoughtful new book. Laruelle: Against the Digital (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) uses François Laruelle's non-philosophy as a foundation for considering the philosophical concept of digitality. In a series of ten chapters (plus intro and conclusion) and 14 theses, Galloway offers an exceptionally clear and provocative treatment of digitality as a way of thinking about and with difference. In addition to offering a critical encounter with some of the most fundamental aspects of Laruelle's work as they open up ways of thinking about identity, distinction, and exchange, the book also contains some wonderful discussions of brightness and obscurity, representation and aesthetics, computation, photography, music, ethics, and capitalism, while putting the work of Laruelle into dialogue with Deleuze, Badiou, Marx, Althusser, and others. It's an exciting work, and I will be re-reading and thinking with it for some time to come.

Thomas LeitchView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Education] 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, and Liberal Education in the Digital Age (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), Thomas Leitch of the University of Delaware English Department has written a book that challenges many of the criticisms of Wikipedia. Yet he also reviewed the importance of authority as an issue with all research in the twenty first century.

Deana A. RohlingerView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Political Science] Deana A. Rohlinger has just written Abortion Politics, Mass Media, and Social Movements in America (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Rohlinger is associate professor of sociology at Florida State University. In the last several weeks, the podcast has featured a variety of political scientists who study interest groups and social movements. This week, Deana Rohlinger brings her perspective as a sociologist to the subject. She examines the way four policy organizations with an interest in abortion policy (National Right to Life Committee, National Organization of Women, Planned Parenthood Federation, and Concerned Women for America) interact with the media. Rohlinger finds quite different strategies for how to court the media, but also in how each organization responds to crises. She uses interviews with organizational leaders to deepen what we know about how social movements and interest groups employ a media strategy.

View on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Political Science] 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. Richardson Distinguished Professor of Political Science at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill and Jones is the J. J. "Jake" Pickle Regents Chair in Congressional Studies and Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. The Politics of Information picks up where the authors' last book, The Politics of Attention, leaves off. They explore how information enters into the policy process and how that has evolved over time, focusing on what they call the "paradox of search". They make extensive use of the publicly available data that they have collected over the last decade called the Policy Agendas Project. They argue that: "Information determines priorities, and priorities determine action" (p. 40). They discover is that the policy process is replete with information – not all high quality – and that different policy problems integrate information in different ways. They also find that the government has "broadened" – addressing an ever growing array of issues – rather than just "thickening" – through growth in the overall size of government.

Steven FieldingView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Critical Theory] 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, 2014) a new book by Steven Fielding, Professor of Politics at the University of Nottingham. The book explores how British politics has been represented in fiction from the late Victorian era through to the present. The book identifies a fascinating set of core themes, including how the political class has been defended and attacked, how the idea of populism has developed over time, along with the changing role of women in British political fiction. A State of Play does not over-claim, stressing that although an understanding of fiction is essential to understanding politics, we still don't know the exact relationship between people's political participation and political fiction. However, it does make a convincing case that any understanding of the British political system will be insufficient without understanding how it has been imagined and depicted. Indeed, as later chapters show, the mode of depiction itself has become an important territory for explaining British political culture. The book contains a huge range of examples, from the more well known television series, such as Yes, Minister and The Thick of It, through to obscure and perhaps forgotten books such as The Mistress of Downing Street. Overall it will be of interest to academics and the public alike.

Beth DriscollView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Critical Theory] 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, extends and critiques the work of Pierre Bourdieu to account for modern literary tastes and the literary field in which those tastes are embedded. The book attempts to explore and defend the idea of the middlebrow in literature. 'Middlebrow' is defined by eight characteristics, whereby it is middle class, it has reverence to elite cultures, and it is entrepreneurial, mediated, feminised, emotional, recreational and earnest. In the main it is situated within the tension between the aesthetic and the commercial. The book uses four case studies to explore how this tension, along with the idea of the middlebrow, plays out. In the first case study the role of Oprah Winfrey as a tastemaker and cultural intermediary is explored as part of an analysis of book clubs. The analysis shows how Oprah's book club was important in establishing markets for books as well as being a site for the struggle over what is, and what is not, legitimate taste. This legitimacy is tied to elements of the middlebrow aesthetic, which has earnestness and self improvement as an important component. This component is both the source of struggle with more elite elements of the literary field and a source of changing reading practices, for example in the way Harry Potter is used in schools. The final two case studies, of book prizes and literary festivals, add to the defence of the middlebrow as a vital form of aesthetic production and cultural consumption for both understanding the future of reading and the future of the market for literature in the era of social media.

Rachel MeschView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in French Studies] Rachel Mesch's new book, Having It All in the Belle Epoque: How French Women's Magazines Invented the Modern Woman (Stanford University Press, 2013), is a fascinating study of Femina and La Vie Heureuse, the first French magazines to use photography to depict and appeal to women readers and consumers. Divided into two parts focused on "Readers and Writers" and "Texts and Contexts," the book examines the multiple ways these magazines represented and shaped women's lives in the years prior to the First World War.  Wide-ranging and rich in textual evidence and illustration, Mesch's account reveals much about how ideas and ideals about French women and femininity in these magazines engaged and interrogated both modernity and tradition. The book explores a series of questions raised in and by the pages of these publications: How should women balance work and home? What did marriage mean, and what were the keys its success? What was feminism in France, and how did this compare to other national feminisms? What impact did key female (literary and other) celebrities in France have on broader societal attitudes about women's roles and possibilities as consumers and producers of culture? Asking the question "Did women have a Belle Epoque?" Having It All… is a study that explores some of the early twentieth-century  history of concerns and debates that remain extremely relevant to women's lives into the twenty-first century. Readers will find in this book a rich archive that illuminates the history of women readers and writers before World War I while offering a longer-term perspective on the ways we think about the complexities of femininity and feminism (and their relationships to one another) up to the present day. Along these lines, the author has shared her research more widely in publications such as Slate, and on her blog Plus ça change.

Victor PickardView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Technology] 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 advertising, bias, and control by corporate entities, and instead wanted more "public-oriented" content. Sound at all familiar? In his new book, America's Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Victor Pickard, an assistant professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, examines the debates on media reform and policy from the early 20th century, focusing, in particular, on radio. Pickard revisits the significant media policy conflicts to analyze why the American media is the way it is, and how it could have been. In so doing, he considers what the current American media system means for the Web and other new media.

Bridget ConorView on AmazonBridget Conor's new book, Screenwriting: Creative Labor and Professional Practice (Routledge, 2014), looks closely at the creative practice and profession of screenwriting for film and television in the US and UK.  Situated within the critical media production studies paradigm, Screenwriting analyzes the history, current industrial practices, identities, and cultural milieu that surround this form of creative labor.  Conor examines the professional myths that are often associated with screenwriting by looking back at its history during Hollywood's golden age, beginning with the groundbreaking work of sociologist Hortense Powdermaker.  Then, utilizing theoretical frameworks developed by luminaries of media production studies such as Angela McRobbie, John T. Caldwell, and David Hesmondhalgh, Conor outlines the contemporary labor scene for screenwriters.  Through in-depth interviews with professional screenwriters, Conor underscores some of the commercial and creative tensions in the industry that often challenge these individuals' professional autonomy and claims to authorship in their work.  Lastly, Conor unveils some of the deep social inequalities that persist in this industry, many of which are unfortunately perpetuated though the numerous "how-to" manuals that serve to socialize budding screenwriters in the profession.  Screenwriting also illuminates some of the fascinating changes being wrought by the Internet on screenwriters and their sense of autonomy in a new digital world.

Randal MarlinView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Journalism] It's been 100 years since the start of the First World War, a conflict that cost millions of lives. In his recently revised book, Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion (2013), Randal Marlin writes that Britain pioneered propaganda techniques to sell that war that have been imitated ever since. He tells how the British spread a false story about Germans boiling the bodies of their dead soldiers in corpse factories. It was designed to paint Germany as a uncivilized, ghoulish nation that had to be fought. Marlin also tells how American propaganda during the First World War helped foster the modern public relations and advertising industries. Marlin, who studied with the French propaganda theorist Jacques Ellul, sees propaganda as a manipulative exercise of power and he argues that in order to defend ourselves against it, we need to recognize its methods and techniques. His revised second edition analyzes how the Bush administration used fear to persuade Americans to support the invasion of Iraq. The book traces the history of propaganda from ancient times to its present, post 9/11 forms Randal Marlin is a professor of philosophy at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Alon PeledView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Technology] Failure by government agencies to share information has had disastrous results globally. From the inability to prevent terrorist attacks, like the 9-11 attacks in New York City, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania, to the ill-equipped and ill-fated responses to disasters like the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, and Hurricane Katrina, a common denominator in all of these events, and those similar, was a lack of inter- and intra-government information sharing.  In his new book Traversing Digital Babel: Information, E-Government, and Exchange (MIT 2014), Alon Peled, associate professor of political science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, conceptualizes a platform that would incentivize inter-agency information sharing. Called the Public Sector Information Exchange (PSIE), the platform would not only enable the trading of information, but also offers the valuation of information assets. In this way the PSIE creates an inter-government economic system. In detailing of the opportunities and threats to such a system, Peled offers examples of how similar systems have been implemented in governments throughout the world, and uses interdisciplinary training and experience in information technology and political science to describe a system and rationale that could offer assistance to those looking for simplified and efficient  government.

Ethan ZuckermanView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in World Affairs] In the early days of the Internet, optimists saw the future as highly connected, where voices from across the globe would mingle and learn from one another as never before.  However, as Ethan Zuckerman argues in Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection (Norton, 2013), just because a connection is possible does not mean disparate voices are being heard.  Instead, things and not ideas have become more connected; we now live in a world where is easier to get a bottle of water from a tropical island halfway around the world than it is to get (let alone comprehend) news from that island. Zuckerman, a media scholar and activist based at MIT, suggests despite our perceived "connectedness," the wired world is actually becoming more provincial and narrow, as we shift from professionally curated news and information, to search engines and algorithmically selected information based on previous "likes" and those of our homogeneous social circles.  In other words, we are getting more and more of what we already know we want with ever-greater efficiency, but not what we need to be informed participants in a global world. In an expansive analysis that takes on everything from the global response to modern pandemics, to Greek philosophy, to the "Arab Spring," to musical hybridization across cultures, Zuckerman calls for a world of "digital cosmopolitans," where those who can bridge between communities are called upon to foster deeper, more nuanced conversations around the globe in ways that fulfill the promise of expanding technological opportunities. At once a thoughtful analysis, an engaging history, and a bold call to arms, Rewire offers readers a deep understanding of how media is evolving to shape and be shaped by global voices.  As such, it has vast implications at both  personal and geopolitical levels for the future of information, technology.

Marisol SandovalView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Critical Theory] What would a truly 'social' social media look like? This is the core question of From Corporate to Social Media: Critical Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility in Media and Communication Industries (Routledge, 2014),  the new book by Marisol Sandoval. The text is concerned with the emergence of a seemingly open and democratic space, social media, which is in fact subject to corporate dominance and control. The book aims to provide a political economy of the social relations in which media and communications industries are embedded, to reveal the inequalities of both power and control in social media. This point is illustrated through case studies of major corporations. Sandoval takes an important theme- including net neutrality, e-waste, ideologies, and labour conditions- and compares and contrasts CSR statements and positions with the reality of corporate actions on these themes. Case studies include Google, Apple, Disney and AT&T. The book concludes by considering how social media might become more social by thinking about how it might contribute to the idea of the commons, a concept that has been crucial to much critical theory thinking in recent years. By linking ideas of the commons to the political economy of media and communications, From Corporate to Social Media, gives an important new basis for future theoretical discussion. The book is therefore essential reading for all of us participating in the new world of social media, whether as academics, employees or as citizens.