Book Review[s] – News at Work & News Talk

October 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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News at Work: Imitation in an Age of Information Abundance. Pablo J. Boczkowski. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2010. 272 pp.


News Talk: Investigating the Language of Journalism. Colleen Cotter. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 294 pp.

Many studies of the cultural and sociopolitical effects of news stories tend to ignore the journalistic practices that have produced those texts, focusing on larger structures of power and domination. Both of these books rebalance the equation by highlighting instead how daily routines in newsrooms determine the selection, narrative, and presentation of news stories—routines that are increasingly shaped not only by professional practices but also by journalists’ expectations of what the public wants to read.  [Read more...]

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Book Review – International Blogging: Identity, Politics, and Networked Publics

October 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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International Blogging: Identity, Politics, and Networked Publics. Adrienne Russell and Nabil Echchaibi, eds. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2009. 205 pp.

Everybody (or so it seems) writes them and presumes that somebody beyond family and close friends just might read them. Blogs have become the most democratic of media, with their low entry costs and widespread free distribution, although our understanding of their audiences and impact is a mite constricted.

This new study approaches blogs globally, and explores the way blogging is being conceptualized across and within different countries. Russell teaches digital media studies at the University of Denver, while Echchaibi is at the University of Colorado-Boulder.  [Read more...]

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Book Review – Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences

October 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences. Philip M. Napoli. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2010. 272 pp.

Philip Napoli’s new book, Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences, is a good combination of a critical approach to audience measurement as well as a thorough review of the development of audience information systems. His key argument is that technologies foster the collection and compilation of audience information beyond the traditional exposure model, and allow new dimensions of audience information be incorporated into business use.  [Read more...]

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Book Review – Digital Media Law

October 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Digital Media Law. Packard, Ashley (2010). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 352.

The Internet is a predominant “change agent” in the continually evolving communication law. Professor W. Wat Hopkins at Virginia Tech prefaced the 2011 edition of Communication and the Law: “The Internet is having an increased impact on regulation of expression, and that impact is addressed in this edition” (p. v). (Disclosure: The reviewer has contributed the “Defamation” chapter to Hopkins’s book since 1998.)  [Read more...]

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Book Review – Global Journalism Ethics

October 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Global Journalism Ethics. Ward, Stephen J.A. (2010). Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.  pp. 296.

Ward notes that traditional journalism values and practices are being questioned due to the global nature of modern journalism and the rapid changes brought about by digital and wireless technologies. Ward concludes that journalists are struggling to maintain a “credible ethical identity as they sail the roiling sea” of the modern media world (p. 3). Ward’s bold objective is to look at journalism’s future and offer conceptual inventions to help move journalism ethics forward, with an eventual goal of converging theoretical foundations and practical proposals. Although those looking for concrete practical proposals to follow in a global setting might be disappointed that Ward doesn’t get quite that far, his impressive theoretical framework provides an excellent starting point for scholars interested in journalism ethics in a wired, globalized world. As Ward writes, the goal of the book is to supply “the basic philosophical concepts to begin the invention of a detailed and theoretically solid global [journalism] ethics” (p. 235).  [Read more...]

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Book Review – Mediactive

October 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Mediactive. Gillmor, Dan (2010). Self-published under Creative Commons license. pp. 183.

Journalism is broken, and with Mediactive, Dan Gillmor aims to fix it. But he doesn’t start where you would expect—with a new financial model for the digital age.

He starts with educating the audience. After all, classic, “capital J” journalism is but a small part of the information we consume. Gillmor correctly aims more broadly, including blogs, targeted e-mails, user-generated content—the entire rabble of the web today. His goal is to help us become active users of mediated information. His principles? Be skeptical. Exercise judgment. Open your mind. Keep asking questions. Learn media techniques. In essence, the media consumer needs to think like a journalist, curate his or her own feed, and create meaning from examination of layers of linked sources. Gillmor then offers specific tools to navigate the Internet, from basic search and RSS to specific ways to evaluate the credibility of web-based information. It’s a useful primer in media literacy, especially useful to young audiences whose first instinct is to just “Google it.”  [Read more...]

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Book Review – New New Media

October 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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New New Media. Paul Levinson. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. 225 pp.

It’s increasingly difficult to keep up with the rapid growth of new forms of communication created by the Internet. Change happens so fast that even a relatively new format—such as Wikipedia, launched in 2001—seems old and familiar just ten years later.

Paul Levinson, an author and professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University, says one characteristic that distinguishes “new new media” from simple “new media” is that in the newer form the consumer is also a producer.  [Read more...]

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