New Books in Communications
Episodes
Jasbeer Musthafa Mamalipurath, "TEDified Islam: Postsecular Storytelling in New Media" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jasbeer Mamalipurath’s TEDified Islam: Postsecular Storytelling in New Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) is the first of its kind in-depth examinat...
Emily Winderman, "Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History (JHU Press, 2025)
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How did three words come to carry the weight of America's abortion debates? In Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History (JHU Press, 2025), Dr. Emil...
Michelle McSweeney, "OK" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"OK" as a word accepts proposals, describes the world as satisfactory (but not good), provides conversational momentum, or even agrees (or disagrees)....
Páraic Kerrigan, "LGBTQ Visibility, Media and Sexuality in Ireland" (Routledge, 2020)
16 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“We know what we want, and one day, our prince will come,” says Toby, the bicycle-shorts-wearing, double ententre-making, unacknowledgely-gay neig...
Pluribus Episode 3 Analysis: The Amazonification of Everything
16 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we analyze the third episode of Vince Gilligan’s new series Pluribus. We talk through this episode as a lite...
Caroline Jack, "Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
13 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century, (U Chicago Press, 2024) reveals how American capitalism...
Sophie Bishop, "Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture" (U California Press, 2025)
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How are influencers changing the arts? In Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture (U Californ...
In “Pluribus” An America Without Division, But At What Price?
10 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we analyze the first two episodes of Vince Gilligan’s new series Pluribus. The show posits an extraordinary ...
Vanesa Rodríguez-Galindo, "Madrid on the Move: Feeling Modern and Visually Aware in the Nineteenth Century" (Manchester UP, 2021)
08 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book Madrid on the Move: Feeling Modern and Visually Aware in the Nineteenth Century (Manchester UP, 2021), Vanesa Rodríguez-Galindo exp...
Andrea Kitta, "The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore" (Utah State UP, 2019)
08 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Disease is a social issue and not just a medical one. This is the central tenet underlying The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore (...
AI, News, and the State: Reinstitutionalising Journalism in Global China’s Algorithmic Age: A conversation with Dr. Joanne Kuai
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How is artificial intelligence transforming journalism as both a profession and an institution? In this episode, Ning Ao speaks to Dr. Joanne Kuai, ex...
Muhammad Atique, "Algorithmic Saga: Understanding Media, Culture, and Transformation in the AI Age" (Atique Mindscape Publishing, 2024)
01 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In an age when digital media permeates every aspect of our lives, understanding its influence is more critical than ever. Algorithmic Saga: Understan...
Martin Moore and Thomas Colley, "Dictating Reality: The Global Battle to Control the News" (Columbia UP, 2025)
01 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the United States to China and from Brazil to India, an authoritarian approach to news is spreading across the world. Increasingly, the media is ...
Tamar Mitts, "Safe Havens for Hate: The Challenge of Moderating Online Extremism" (Princeton UP, 2025)
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Content moderation on social media has become one of the most daunting challenges of our time. Nowhere is the need for action more urgent than in the ...
Rob Wells, "The Insider: How the Kiplinger Newsletter Bridged Washington and Wall Street" (U Massachusetts Press, 2022)
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Willard M. Kiplinger launched the groundbreaking Kiplinger Washington Letter in 1923, he left the sidelines of traditional journalism to strike o...
Nora Kenworthy, "Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare" (MIT Press, 2024)
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare (MIT Press, 2024), Dr. Nora Kenworthy presents an eye-opening investigation into charitabl...
Stevie Suan, "Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its ...
Maggie Gram, "The Invention of Design: A Twentieth-Century History" (Basic Books, 2025)
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Maggie Gram is a writer, cultural historian, and designer. She leads an experience-design team at Google. She has taught at the Maryland Institute Col...
Petar Mitric, "The Co-production Landscape in Europe: From Eurimages to Netflix" (Springer Nature, 2025)
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Co-production Landscape in Europe: From Eurimages to Netflix (Springer Nature, 2025) explores the evolving landscape of European film and tel...
Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi and Shilyh J. Warren eds., "Women and Global Documentary: Practices and Perspectives in the 21st Century" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Women and Global Documentary: Practices and Perspectives in the 21st Century (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), edited by Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi and ...
Will Kitchen, "Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How is the world of work depicted on page and on screen? In Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work Dr Will Kitch...
John R. Davis, "Keep Your Ear to the Ground: A History of Punk Fanzines in Washington, DC" (Georgetown UP, 2025)
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John R. Davis's Keep Your Ear to the Ground (Georgetown University Press, 2025) is the first history of the fanzines that emerged from Washington, D...
Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Selfies are more than fleeting images—across India, they shape how people imagine themselves, connect with others, and inhabit spaces. In this epis...
Carlotta Daro, "The Architecture of the Wire: Infrastructures of Telecommunication" (MIT Press, 2025)
05 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Architecture of the Wire explores the development of telecommunications infrastructure and its impact on the architectural and urban culture of t...
Amanda Belantara and Emily Drabinski, "Ways of Knowing: Oral Histories on the Worlds Words Create" (Litwin Books, 2024)
05 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ways of Knowing: Oral Histories on the Worlds Words Create (Litwin Books, 2025) sits at the heart of the library project, shaping how materials are ...
Michelle Bumatay, "On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power" (Ohio State UP, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power (The Ohio State UP, 2025) is the first book-length study in English about Black francophone car...
Greg Lukianoff and Nadine Strossen, "The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail" (Heresy Press, 2025)
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail (Heresy Press, 2025) constitutes a bulwark against the persistent censorial e...
Ashleigh Wade on How Black Girls Use Social Media
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Ashleigh Greene Wade, Assistant Professor of Digital Studies with a joint appointment in Media Studies a...
Joel Best, "Just the Facts: Untangling Contradictory Claims" (U California Press, 2025)
20 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why can’t we seem to agree on facts? In this succinct volume, sociologist Joel Best turns his inimitable eye toward the social construction of what ...
Gabrielle Durepos and Amy Thurlow, "Archival Research in Historical Organisation Studies: Theorising Silences" (Emerald Publishing, 2025)
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Archival Research in Historical Organisation Studies: Theorising Silences offers an accessible account of theorising the archive, contesting the narr...
Alisha Karabinus et al. eds., "Historiographies of Game Studies: What It Has Been, What It Could Be" (Punctum Books, 2025)
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Historiographies of Game Studies: What It Has Been, What It Could Be (Punctum Books, 2025) offers a first-of-its-kind reflection on how game studies ...
Laura Garbes, "Listeners Like Who?: Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry" (Princeton UP, 2025)
13 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why is radio so white? In Listeners Like Who? Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry (Princeton UP, 2025) Laura Garbes, a Sociol...
Alfred L. Martin Jr. and Taylor Cole Miller eds., "The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai (Rutgers UP, 2025) is an accessible collection that explores the cultural, industrial, and historical impact ...
j. Siguru Wahutu, "In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
09 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa (Cambridge UP, 2025) unpacks the historical, cultural, and institutional forces...
Justin Wyatt, "Creating the Viewer: Market Research and the Evolving Media Ecosystem" (U Texas Press, 2024)
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Creating the Viewer: Market Research and the Evolving Media Ecosystem (U Texas Press, 2024) is a study of the largely hidden world of primary ...
Margaret E. Roberts, "Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall" (Princeton UP, 2020)
31 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We often think of censorship as governments removing material or harshly punishing people who spread or access information. But Margaret E. Roberts’...
Patricia Aufderheide, "Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy" (U California Press, 2024)
30 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy (U California Press, 2024) traces how filmmaker-philosophers brought the dream of mak...
Olga Touloumi, "Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interior" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
30 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For almost seven years after World War II, a small group of architects took on an exciting task: to imagine the spaces of global governance for a new ...
Intercultural Communication
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Dr Loy Lising speaks with Distinguished Professor Ingrid Piller about the 3rd edition of her be...
Vanessa Diaz, "Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood" (Duke UP, 2020)
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
While Hollywood’s images present a veneer of fantasy for some, the work to create such images is far from escapism. In Manufacturing Celebrity: Lat...
Juan Llamas-Rodriguez ed., "Media Travels: Toward an Atlas of Global Media" (Amherst College Press, 2025)
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Media Travels: Toward An Atlas of Global Media (Amherst College Press, 2025) fills a significant gap in global media scholarship by offering short, ...
"Assignment Moscow" with author James Rodgers
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Is it possible to do independent journalism in today’s Russia? “The short answer is no,” James Rodgers tells me in our conversation about his in...
Rob Goodman, "Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why is political rhetoric broken – and how can it be fixed? Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions (Cambridge University Press, 2022) returns ...
Joshua Nall, "News from Mars: Mass Media and the Forging of a New Astronomy, 1860-1910" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019)
17 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re hearing an awful lot about the fraught relationship between science and media. In his book, News from M...
Transhuman Horror in Alien: Earth
16 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and today we react to the first two episodes of Alien: Earth. We break down the themes and ideas in the series, fo...
David de Boer, "The Early Modern Dutch Press in an Age of Religious Persecution" (Oxford UP, 2023)
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David de Boer returns to the podcast to talk to Jana Byars about his first book, The Early Modern Dutch Press in the Age of Religious Persecution (O...
Matthew Facciani, "Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How It Spreads, and What to Do about It" (Columbia UP, 2025)
14 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why are people inclined to believe misinformation? Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How It Spreads, and What to Do about It (Columbia UP, 202...
Jirí Anger, "Towards a Film Theory from Below: Archival Film and the Aesthetics of the Crack-Up" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jiří Anger is a scholar, archivist, and videographic critic devoted, as he says in this interview, to "making weird shapes shine." In this episode...
Meredith McCarroll, "Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film" (U Georgia Press, 2018)
09 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you mention Appalachia to many people, they may immediately respond with the "Deliverance" dueling banjos theme. Unfortunately, this is an example ...
Nathan Wainstein, "Grant Us Eyes: The Art of Paradox in Bloodborne" (2025)
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Grant Us Eyes is a book-length close reading of Bloodborne by literary critic Nathan Wainstein (LA Review of Books, Cartridge Lit, American Book Re...
The Social Impact of Automating Translation
03 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr. Esther Monzó-Nebot, Associate Professor in Translation and Inter...
Y. Kokosalakis and F. J. Leira-Castiñeira, "Violence and Propaganda in European Civil Wars" (Routledge, 2025)
02 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Violence and Propaganda in European Civil Wars explores the complex interplay between violence and propaganda during the continent's major civil conf...
Suruchi Mazumdar, "Divided Media: Politics and Mediated Movements in India" (Routledge, 2025)
02 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Suruchi Mazumdar’s book addresses the complex relationship between India’s evolving, emerging media landscape, the political and economic interest...
Bradley Morgan, "Frank Zappa's America" (LSU Press, 2025)
02 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From his early albums with the Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa established a reputation as a musical genius who pushed the limits of culture through...
Gavin Williams, "Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format in the first half of ...
Arianne Edmonds, "We Now Belong to Ourselves: J. L. Edmonds, the Black Press, and Black Citizenship in America" (Oxford UP, 2025)
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Black press provided a blueprint to help Black Americans transition from slavery and find opportunities to a...
Nadya Bair, "The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market" (U California Press, 2020)
26 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The legendary Magnum photo agency has long been associated with heroic lone wolf male photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, roa...
Paul A. Thomas, "Inside Wikipedia: How It Works and How You Can Be an Editor" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this book, Paul A. Thomas—a seasoned Wikipedia contributor who has accrued about 60,000 edits since he started editing in 2007—breaks down the ...
Cameron Kunzelman, "The World is Born from Zero: Understanding Speculation and Video Games" (de Gruyter, 2022)
23 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The World is Born From Zero is an investigation into the relationship between video games and science fiction through the philosophy of speculation. ...
Brian Fauteux, "Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age" (Univ of California Press, 2025)
23 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Years before the advent of music streaming, Sirius and XM established satellite radio services that attracted paying subscribers through their ever-ex...
Richard Scheib, "A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic: Depictions of Plague and Pandemic on Film and TV" (Headpress, 2025)
20 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Scheib's A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic (Headpress, 2025) is a film book like no other. It opens with the author's first-hand account of t...
Kelefa Sanneh, "Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres" (Penguin, 2021)
20 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kelefa Sanneh was born in England, and lived in Ghana and Scotland before moving with his parents to the United States in the early 1980s. He was a po...
Triauna Carey, "The Revolution Will Be Spotified: Music As a Rhetorical Mode of Resistance" (Lexington Books, 2024)
19 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Revolution Will Be Spotified: Music As a Rhetorical Mode of Resistance (Lexington Books, 2024) investigates the rhetorical strategies present in...
Cara Wallis, "Social Media and Ordinary Life: Affect, Ethics, and Aspiration in Contemporary China" (NYU Press, 2025)
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Focusing on domestic workers, rural microentrepreneurs, disadvantaged young creatives, and young feminists, Social Media and Ordinary Life (NYU Pres...
James O'Connor, "Untitled Goose Game" (Boss Fight Books, 2025)
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's a beautiful day in the village, and you are a horrible goose, ready to wreak charming havoc on the weary locals. You'll ruin their gardens, invad...
Kelly A. Spring, "SPAM: A Global History" (Reaktion, 2025)
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a conflict that solidified SPAM’s place in global food culture. Created...
David S. Wall, "Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age" (Polity, 2024)
13 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How has the digital revolution transformed criminal opportunities and behaviour? What is different about cybercrime compared with traditional criminal...
Elana Levine, "Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History" (Duke UP, 2020)
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since the debut of These Are My Children in 1949, the daytime television soap opera has been foundational to the history of the medium as an economic,...
Zev Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025)
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, scribes across East Asia used Chinese characters to write things down–even in languages based on very different foundations than Chin...
Felix Cowan, "The Kopeck Press: Popular Journalism in Revolutionary Russia, 1908-1918" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
30 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Felix Cowan about his new book, The Kopeck Press Popular Journalism in Revolutionary Russia, 1908–1918 (Univ...
Michelle Phillipov, "Digital Food TV: The Cultural Place of Food in a Digital Era (Routledge, 2023)
24 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Michelle Phillipov's Digital Food TV: The Cultural Place of Food in a Digital Era (Routledge, 2023) explores the new theoretical and political ques...
A Book Imprint from The Nation Magazine and OR Books Launches with Bhaskar Sunkara and Colin Robinson
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Nation Magazine, known for its long and storied history as a publisher of in-depth political and cultural analysis, has launched a new book imprin...
John Trafton, "Movie-Made Los Angeles" (Wayne State UP, 2023)
11 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Los Angeles was a cinematic city long before the rise of Hollywood. By the dawn of the twentieth century, photography, painting, and tourist promotion...
Speaking Philosophically: Communication at the Limits of Discursive Reason
08 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tom joins us to discuss his book Speaking Philosophically: Communication at the Limits of Discursive Reason (Bloomsbury, 2023). Western philosophy ...
Pooja Rangan, Akshya Saxena, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Pavitra Sundar eds., "Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice" (UC Press, 2023)
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone speaks with an accent, but what is an accent? Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (UC Press, 2023) introduce...
Nao Tomabechi, "Supervillains: The Significance of Evil in Superhero Comics" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Alongside superheroes, supervillains, too, have become one of today’s most popular and globally recognizable figures. However, it is not merely thei...
Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bands like R.E.M., U2, Public Enemy, and Nirvana found success as darlings of college radio, but the extraordinary influence of these stations and the...
Laura Otis, "Banned Emotions: How Metaphors Can Shape What People Feel" (Oxford UP, 2019)
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Who benefits and who loses when emotions are described in particular ways? How do metaphors such as "hold on" and "let go" affect people's emotional e...
Claire Knight, "Stalin's Final Films: Cinema, Socialist Realism, and Soviet Postwar Reality, 1945-1953" (Cornell UP, 2024)
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Stalin's Final Films: Cinema, Socialist Realism, and Soviet Postwar Reality, 1945-1953 (Cornell UP, 2024) explores a neglected period in the history ...
Who Owns These Tools? Vauhini Vara and Aarthi Vadde (SW)
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In an essay about her recent book Searches (Pantheon, 2025), a genre-bending chronicle of the deeply personal ways we use the internet and the uncan...
Sara E. Wolf, "Teaching Copyright: Practical Lesson Ideas and Instructional Resources" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The teaching of copyright and related concepts can easily be overwhelming to instructors who are experts in their field but may have little to no deta...
Lucia Soriano, "Embodying Normalcy: Women's Work in Neoliberal Times" (Lexington Books, 2024)
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Embodying Normalcy: Women’s Work in Neoliberal Times (Lexington Books, 2024) calls attention to how women in the United States do a type of unpaid ...
Ryan J. Vander Wielen et al., "The House that Fox News Built?: Representation, Political Accountability, and the Rise of Partisan News" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The influence of partisan news is presumed to be powerful, but evidence for its effects on political elites is limited, often based more on anecdotes ...
Vincent L Stephens, "Broads, Sisters, Exes: Feminist Millennial Television" (Wayne State UP, 2025)
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This timely and telling analysis identifies the formal and thematic innovations pioneered by millennial feminists between 2012 and 2020 that have shap...
Beaty Rubens, "Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home" (Bodleian Library, 2025)
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Radio, today, can feel like a faithful old companion, but its early history was sensational. Between 1922 and 1939, British life was transformed by wh...
Jennifer Holt, "Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data" (MIT Press, 2024)
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How the United States' regulation of broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and data—together understood as “the cloud”—has eroded civil libe...
Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber, "The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully" (MIT Press, 2025)
11 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How players evoke personal and subjective meanings through a new theory of player response. In The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully (MIT P...
Courtney M. Cox, "Double Crossover: Gender, Media, and Politics in Global Basketball" (U Illinois Press, 2025)
10 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As they compete in leagues around the world, elite women’s basketball players continually adjust to new cultures, rules, and contracts. Courtney M....
Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik, "Watching TV: American Television Season by Season, Fourth Edition" (Syracuse UP, 2024)
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In their fourth edition of Watching TV: American Television Season by Season (Syracuse University Press, 2025), Harry Castleman and Walter Podrazi...
Peter Krapp, "Computing Legacies: Digital Cultures of Simulation" (MIT Press, 2024)
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We're pleased to welcome Dr. Peter Krapp, the author of Computing Legacies: Digital Cultures of Simulation (MIT Press, 2024), to the New Books Netw...
Eunji Kim, "The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy" (Princeton UP, 2025)
07 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite al...
Amanda D. Lotz, "After Mass Media: Storytelling for Microaudiences in the Twenty-First Century" (NYU Press, 2025)
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With significant evolutions in digital technologies and media distribution in the past two decades, the business of storytelling through screens has s...
Zev J. Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025)
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
While other ancient nonalphabetic scripts—Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Mayan hieroglyphs—are long extinct, Chinese characters, in...
Alan Chong, "The International Politics of Communication: Representing Community in a Globalizing World" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
04 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In an era of globalization, international communication constantly takes place across borders, defying sovereign control as it influences opinion. Whi...
Matthew Daniel Eddy, "Media and the Mind: Art, Science, and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
03 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We often think of reason as a fixed entity, as a definitive body of facts that do not change over time. But during the Enlightenment, reason also was ...
Ipek A. Celik Rappas, "Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location" (Cornell UP, 2025)
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location (Cornell University Press, 2025) explores the effort behind creating screen production locations. D...
Institutional Corruption in News Media: A Conversation with William English
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why has trust in the news media declined? How can we combat biased reporting and the spread of misinformation? And how do these challenges compare to ...
Laura Spinney, "Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
30 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these Eng...
Emma Casey, "The Return of the Housewife: Why Women Are Still Cleaning Up" (Manchester UP, 2025)
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How has the rise of digital platforms changed domestic labour? In The Return of the Housewife: Why Women Are Still Cleaning Up (Manchester UP, 2025)...
Radiophilia
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Carolyn Birdsall, Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. If you’re a scholar of sound or radio, you like...