New Books in Communications

C.W. AndersonView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Journalism] Somewhere along the line, C.W. Anderson became fascinated with digital journalism and the culture that surrounds it: engaged publics, social networks, and the challenges to "legacy" media. Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age (Temple University Press, 2013) is the fascinating product of Anderson's research into the Philadelphia journalism scene during the first decade-plus of the 21st Century. Once a thriving hub of traditional journalism, Philadelphia has become a living case study of the collision of digital media practices. Anderson's ethnographic research and spot-on academic interpretation paints a vivid picture of a sometimes innovative, sometimes meandering journalism scene. Although we are at the beginning of the digital journalism era, in Rebuilding the News Anderson nonetheless walks us through the new ecosystem, what seems to be working, what doesn't, and where we go from here. "Given all of the pain journalism has experienced in the past decade and a half," Anderson writes, "it would be a shame to waste this moment."

Nick CouldryView on AmazonIn Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Polity Press, 2012), Nick Couldry provides a sweeping synthesis of his important media theory over the last decade. Couldry reassesses his work on media rituals, media power, and the "hidden injuries" of representation in light of cross-cultural diversity as well as the sudden eruption of social media. The book argues convincingly that these theories remain relevant to a social media age, in a rich, chapter-by-chapter engagement with contemporary social theory. Couldry makes a cogent case for a "practice approach" to media studies that treats a wide range of social activity–and not just production or consumption–as media-related and worthy of study. The book is concerned with big themes–social order, justice and power–but also furnishes a toolkit of mid-range theories that deserve to be applied, and wrestled with, in empirical research. Media, Society, World provides a nuanced verdict on the prospects of digital democracy, advances a de-territorialized notion of "media cultures," and furnishes a theory of media power through a highly original rethinking of Pierre Bourdieu's field theory. The concluding chapter asks readers to engage with a literature–and a set of questions–that media scholars rarely address: media justice in the context of moral and political philosophy. The book is a major statement from the leading media theorist working today.

Mark DeuzeView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Journalism] "You live in media. Who you are, what you do, and what all of this means to you does not exist outside of media." So begins Mark Deuze's critical look at media, society, and culture, Media Life (Polity Press, 2012). Media are everywhere, and like fish in water, most are blissfully unaware of the very surroundings in which they live. Deuze uses hope to separate his book from many scholarly works on modern media culture. He writes not from fear of the future, but optimism. Media, he writes, isn't something to be avoided or something we need to escape. Rather, media is most effective when it is understood and used to live a better life, or as Deuze writes, "… we have to let go of seeing media as influence machines that will eventually make us disappear, instead considering media as part of our lives to the extent that they will make us visible (again)." There isn't a wasted moment in Media Life, with each chapter building upon the ideas of the previous. Meticulously researched and seamlessly written, Media Life addresses concerns and hopes, historical context and modern media phenomena. It is an important book that will be cited for years to come.

Marshall PoeView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Science, Technology, and Society] It is not every historian who would offer readers an attempt to explain human nature. In A History of Communications: Media and Society from the Evolution of Speech to the Internet (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Marshall Poe does just that. At the same time, Poe guides readers through the history of communications media from the origin of speech through the culture of the Internet, and provides us with a carefully-articulated theoretical framework for explaining why successive media arose when and where they did, and how they have shaped the way people understand and organize themselves. The book is structured with extraordinary care, but doesn't let that structure overwhelm the vibrant collection of examples, tales, and (occasionally quite funny) anecdotes along the way. Poe's writerly voice is wonderfully engaging and colloquial, and he has given us a volume that is full of opportunities for critical reflection on the possibilities of interdisciplinary scholarship across the arts and sciences. Give the interview a listen. In addition to being an account of an ambitious project with potentially wide-ranging implications for many fields, it's also a rare opportunity to hear the interviewer interviewed.

[Crossposted from New Books in History] We don't think much about institutions. They just seem to "be there." But they have a history, as Ian McNeely and Lisa Wolverton show in their important new book Reinventing Knowledge. From Alexandria to the Internet (W.W. Norton, 2008). The book deals specifically with institutions in which knowledge has been created, preserved, and transmitted: the library, the monastery, the university, the Republic of Letters, the academic disciplines, and the laboratory. In clear, readable and spicy prose, McNeely and Wolverton show how each of these institutions was created, how they developed, and how they have been molded to novel purposes in successive ages. Reading Reinventing Knowledge is especially enlightening in that it demonstrates an important fact about history: the present is always assimilating and transforming the past.  As McNeely and Wolverton show, our beloved "ancient" institutions are actually quite modern in their form and function, if not name. What we call a "university" would be unrecognizable to a "university" student of the 15th century. It turns out that the more things change, the more they change, though we tend to call them by old names. This is a terrific book, a model for the way popular history should be written. It should find a wide audience. Go buy it. Please become a fan of "New Books in Communications" on Facebook if you haven't already.