New Books In Communications

We are fed a steady stream of doom and gloom—terrorist attacks, erosion of democracy, robots taking our jobs. But Michael A. Cohen and his co-author Mich Zenko argue in Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans (Yale University Press, 2019) that our world has never been “more peaceful, freer, healthier, better educated, and wealthier,” and we only feel otherwise because of “threat inflation” that sensationalizes relatively minor threats.  In our discussion, Cohen readily acknowledges serious problems remain, such as climate change and gun violence, but urges us to recognize how much progress has been made and apply the lessons that have been learned. Moreover, he asks us to beware the “threat-industrial complex” of military agencies, special interest groups and the media that distort our understanding of the world we live in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it mean to be famous on the Internet? How do people become Internet celebrities, and what can that celebrity be used to do? Dr. Crystal Abidin offers anthropological insight into these questions in her book Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online (Emerald Publishing, 2018). Drawing on case studies from around the world, Dr. Abidin identifies the qualities that contribute to the making of internet celebrity. She explains how some internet celebrities become professional influencers and explores the global implications of the influencer industry. This accessibly written book is aimed at popular audiences and will be indispensable for undergraduate courses about digital culture, for academics who want a clear and cogent introduction to internet celebrity, and for anyone who wants to understand the online worlds in which we increasingly live. Dannah Dennis is an anthropologist currently working as a Teaching Fellow at New York University Shanghai. You can find her on Twitter @dannahdennis. Learn

Shortly after its introduction, photography transformed the ways Americans made political arguments using visual images. In the mid-19th century, photographs became key tools in debates surrounding slavery. Yet, photographs were used in interesting and sometimes surprising ways by a range of actors. Matthew Fox-Amato, an Assistant Professor at the University of Idaho, examines the role of photography in the politics of slavery during the 19th century and the important legacies of those uses on later visual politics in his new book, Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America (Oxford University Press, 2019). The book examines the use of photographs by slaves, abolitionists, slaveholders, and Union soldiers to explore the rich complexities of the visual politics of the moment. He also considers the legacies of this use of the new medium. In this episode of the podcast, Fox-Amato discusses the ways these various groups used photography for individual purposes

On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (she/they)--Assistant Professor, Dept. of Communication at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dr. Leslie Hahner--Associate Professor, Dept. of Communication at Baylor University--on a spectacular new work of rhetorical history: To Become an American: Immigrants and Americanization Campaigns of the Early Twentieth Century from the Michigan State University Press’ Rhetoric & Public Affairs Series (2017). To Become an American connects the Americanization campaigns at the turn of the century to contemporary political issues surrounding who counts as a "real" American and how we know. The book looks at a variety of practices--with an interesting focus on the visual--through which Americans were made (or not made) at the turn of the century: flag day parades, Girl Scout outreach, textbooks, classroom lessons, housing campaigns, and more. Each chapter looks not only at specific campaigns of Americanization but also the rhetorical tropes through which those campaigns attemp

In Enemy Number One: The United States of American in Soviet Ideology and Propaganda, 1945-1959 (Oxford University Press, 2019), Dr. Rósa Magnúsdóttir of Aarhus University, explores depictions of America in post-war Soviet propaganda. While the 1945 “meeting on the Elbe” marked a high point in United States/Soviet friendship, official relations deteriorated quickly thereafter. Enemy Number One incorporates a wide range of source material such as letters by Soviet citizens, popular magazines, Voice of America broadcasts, and a wide range of secondary scholarly literatures. Among the author’s conclusions based on this body of evidence, are that Russian state propaganda differentiated between “good” and “bad” Americans, that state propaganda to the contrary, everyday people in the USSR never lost a sense that WWII had been the site of genuine friendship between Americans and Soviet citizens, and, intriguingly, that Soviet propaganda could have been far more effective in the United State than it in fact was. Aaro

Racquel J. Gates’ new book, Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2018), interrogates understandings of African-American representations on screen.  This book is an important analysis of the concepts of negative and positive representations, especially in regard to the narrow space that these binary classifications create. Gates takes on not only the concept of representation, but also the texts where the images are presented, leading the reader through a variety of popular culture venues. Double Negative presents a careful typology of negativity, with extensive and diverse examples of each distinct variation. This analysis also integrates texts that are often dismissed or undermined. Instead, Gates provides valuable and nuanced interpretations of genres, reclaiming popular culture artifacts that are often excluded from scholarly or critical analysis. Gates explores many of the less respectable images and presentations of African-Americans, considering not only the image

On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dave Dillon of Grossmont College--on a valuable work for higher education: Blueprint for Success in College and Career, available under a Creative Commons License (open access) from the Rebus Community Press (2018). Although NBN does not typically review textbooks, this is a unique opportunity to share a cutting-edge resource for educators, students, and a general audience that is not only completely free but also a recipient of the 2019 Textbook Excellence Award from the Textbook and Academic Authors Association. In this interview, Lee and Dave discuss how the project came into being, the urgent need to teach “doing college” for the next generation of learners, and how publishing with a University Press compares and contrasts with OER publishing. Blueprint for Success is a student guide for classroom and career success, focusing on subjects ranging from study skills, time management, and caree

It's easy to get sidetracked while writing a book. But imagine being interrupted by the President of the United States. That happened to Tom Wheeler, who was in the midst of writing a history of communication networks when President Obama appointed him to be chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in 2013. Wheeler went from writing history to participating in it, making consequential decisions about net neutrality, cybersecurity, privacy, and the 5G mobile network. Wheeler is a former President of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and former CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association. He was inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Cable Television Hall of Fame in 2009. After leaving the FCC at the end of President Obama's second term, Wheeler finished his book, From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future (Brookings Institution Press, 2019). He is currently a visiting fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. Wheeler’s

Jeff McMahan is White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford. His research focuses broadly on moral and political philosophy, and is perhaps best known for his work on the moral issues surrounding killing and letting die. The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dr. Michael Mario Albrecht (he/his)--to discuss a sweeping exploration of masculinity, economic crisis, and some of the great television shows of the last decade: Masculinity in Contemporary Quality Television from Routledge Press in 2015. Drawing upon studies of contemporary television programs, including popular series viewed internationally such as Mad Men, The League, Hung, Breaking Bad, Louie, and Girls, this book explores the ways in which popular cultural texts address widely circulating discourses of the ostensible ’crisis of masculinity’ in contemporary culture. A rich study of masculinity and its representation in contemporary television, the book will appeal to scholars and students of cultural and media studies, popular culture, television studies and cultural sociology with interests in gender, masculinities, and sexuality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/a

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contribute to this process? This podcast addresses this issue. We interview Professor Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, whose book, The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance (forthcoming with MIT Press) is undergoing a Massive Online Peer-Review (MOPR) process, where everyone can make comments on his manuscript. Additionally, his book will be Open Access (OA) since the date of publication. We discuss with him how do MOPR and OA work, how he managed to combine both of them and how these initiatives can contribute to the democratization of knowledge. You can participate in the MOPR process of The Good Drone through this link: https://thegooddrone.pubpub.org/ Felipe G. Santos is a PhD candidate at the Central European University. His research is focused on how activists care for each other and how care practices w

Parents, teachers, feminists, conservatives, lawyers, the concerned citizen – pornography raises everyone's hackles. Author Richa Kaul Padte approaches pornography with a combination of light-hearted camaraderie and intellectual curiosity instead. Taking seriously the notion that every individual has sexual rights, Kaul Padte explores the twinned fates of gendered representations and subjectivity in our digital age. Cyber Sexy: Rethinking Pornography (Penguin Viking, 2018) is smart and funny in equal measure. Discussions on the need to move away from obscenity clauses in the Indian constitution to a more nuanced understanding of consent, and the questions of inequality that lie at the heart of consent, are punctuated by first hand accounts of online sexual experiences (including some of Padte's own). Never pedantic, the book closes with a call for radical empathy as we collectively struggle towards a more open and accepting social order. Richa Kaul Padte is an independent writer currently living in Goa, India

Given its expanding multimedia presence in Asia and around the world for many years now, K-pop is a phenomenon that is hard to ignore. This “animal that thrives on excess,” as Suk-Young Kim puts it (p. 6) is more than just music, however, as it offers us a way of looking at a host of fascinating and important subjects in politics, economics, anthropology and performance studies. Suk-Young Kim's book K-Pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance (Stanford University Press, 2018) transports us into K-pop's dizzying world of production, consumption, participation and neoliberal commerce. As well as navigating the geopolitical and technological conditions that have enabled K-pop’s emergence and success, Kim takes us up close to the fans and stars themselves through her ethnographic work at gigs, conventions and TV recordings. Combining all the passion of a true fan with clear-headed analysis of postmodern subjects' interactions with big business and the state, this is a must-read for anyone curious about co

What does it mean to consider trauma and media from the perspective of technology and not from that of the subject of trauma, the clinician or the witness? In Transmitted Wounds: Media and the Mediation of Trauma (Oxford University Press, 2019), Amit Pinchevski carries out this thought experiment to great effect. By bringing media theory to bear on trauma theory, this book reveals the technical operations that inform the understanding of traumatic impact on bodies and minds. Under consideration is not the way trauma and traumatic memory figure in the media (film, television, photography and other popular culture portrayals of traumatic experience), but rather media as partaking in the very construction of the traumatic itself. Pinchevski conducts an erudite and innovative exploration through a series of case studies: the radio broadcasts of the Eichmann trial; the videotaping of Holocaust testimonies; recent psychiatric debates about trauma through media following the 9/11 attacks; current controversy surroun

Reece Peck's Fox Populism: Branding Conservatism as Working Class (Cambridge University Press, 2019) offers a unique argument of why the Fox News Channel has been both a commercial successful and wielded enormous political influence. Peck focuses on the importance of the tabloid sensibilities and populist style of Fox News. He traces the history of Fox's counter-elite brand from Murdoch to O’Reilly to Hannity. Using the network's coverage of the economic recession as a case study, Peck shows how producers and hosts how use style to frame news events and create a coalition of working-class and business-class people. Peck is assistant professor of media culture at College of Staten Island, City University of New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you mention Appalachia to many people, they may immediately respond with the "Deliverance" dueling banjos theme. Unfortunately, this is an example of how the region is stereotyped and misunderstood, particularly in films. In her book, Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film(University of Georgia Press, 2018), Meredith McCarroll, Director of Writing and Rhetoric at Bowdoin College, describes Appalachian people as being shown as different from both white and nonwhite groups, often considered as belonging to the worst of each group. Her book discusses specific film examples that help to illustrate the negative connotation heaped upon Appalachia, and also presents where filmmakers treat them more fairly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

It's been called the first Internet. In the nineteenth century, the telegraph spun a world wide web of cables and poles, carrying electronic signals with unprecedented speed. In order to connect the entire American continent, however, the telegraph had to cross western territory, which brought a host of challenges, conflicts, and uncertainties. What happened when the telegraph crossed the Mississippi River? What natural obstacles had to be overcome? What role did the telegraph play in the displacement of native tribes? James Schwoch answers these questions in Wired into Nature: The Telegraph and the North American Frontier (University of Illinois Press, 2018). Schwoch is a professor of communication studies at Northwestern University. He is also the author of The American Radio Industry and Its Latin American Activities, 1900-1939 and Global TV: New Media and the Cold War, 1946–69, both also published by University of Illinois Press. Nathan Bierma is a writer, instructional designer, and voiceover talent in G

Is the existence of truth coming to a screeching halt? Does truth still exist? In Truth-Spots: How Places Make People Believe (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Dr. Thomas F. Gieryn takes time to explain how place informs truth. During this interview Dr. Gieryn offers an in-depth explanation of how history and biography have fed the narratives told about truth-spots. Dr. Gieryn presents us with the beliefs and claims that have developed Mount Parnassus, Delphi, Walden Pond, Seneca, Selma, Stonewall, courthouses, laboratories, and several other places across the globe as truth-spots. The advancement of technology has improved human travel and allows humans access to almost anywhere around the globe. An improvement in human mobility allows more people to access truth-spots that would otherwise be unavailable. This access paired with mass media has heightened human awareness to claims humans make about their accounts of truth-spots. Dr. Gieryn provides an account of how he views the automobile and other modes

In the early days of film, female comedians appeared in films that included both strange activities and slapstick. In her new book Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes (Columbia University Press, 2018), Margaret Hennefeld, Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, reviews the role of these women, as well as how their appearances had a cultural and political effect, particularly in the feminist movement leading to universal suffrage. She illustrates how these films still have important meanings to modern day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can insights from psychoanalysis help us understand digital culture? in Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture: Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data (Routledge, 2018), Jacob Johanssen, a senior lecturer in the University of Westminster's School of Media and Communication, draws on the work of Freud and Anzieu to explore both traditional and new forms of media. The book uses research projects on the Embarrassing Bodies television show, and on digital labour, to show how psychoanalysis can inform research methods and explain how people engage with TV, use Twitter, and present themselves online. Moreover, the book grapples with the rise of big data, offering new perspectives on content providers such as Netflix. Packed with rich analysis and a wealth of examples, the book will be essential reading across cultural and media studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices