Polity's Global Media and Communication Series

Polity Press has just published (2011) three excellent overviews of media systems and policy abroad.

European media : structures, policies and identity / Stylianos Papathanassopoulos and Ralph Negrine.

Indian media : global approaches / Adrian Athique.

Arab media : globalization and emerging media industries / Noha Mellor, Muhammad Ayish, Nabil Dajani, and Khali Rinnawi.

All three books are aimed at both students without prior knowledge of the media landscape of these areas as well as more seasoned readers who want to make sure they have good perspective on the the whole picture. These books are interdisciplinary and combine facts with theoretical insight.

All three titles are available at both Annenberg Reference and Van Pelt.

May CommQuote

After eight years the last episode of House will air on May 21. Actor Hugh Laurie  in a guest column for Entertainment Weekly reflects:

“ House tried to be about something. Most procedural dramas set out merely to comfort the audience with the idea that we live in an ordered, moral universe in which virtue is rewarded and sin is punished; wherever evil takes to the streets, a group of heavily-armed models will be there to chase it, catch it, and expunge it from our nightmares. This is not an entirely accurate representation of the facts.

But House, I believe, grappled with some chewy questions. Is it worth using bad means for good ends? Can an action be good if its motive is bad? Or if its motive is not intentionally good? What is a soul? Is there a God? If there isn’t, what defines a friend, and what will you do for him? We didn’t always express these questions well, by any means, but we tried, and a large number of people around the world seemed to respond to the effort." --Hugh Laurie, May 18, 2012

Facebook: A Profile of Friends

A snapshot of Facebook users, Facebook: A Profile of its 'Friends, is composed of data highlights from  the last few years of research done at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.  "The project has been surveying people who use social media to explore how they use it and what they get out of it. Highlights from the surveys paint a portrait of what kind of people use sites such as Facebook, who they connect to and how they manage their privacy." As you read down through the featured points (such as "80% of Facebook user requests are accepted") you can click on the link to the rest of the report. There appear to be five "feeder" reports to this profile. 

Journal Public Culture in For Some Changes

Read about changes in store for the prominent cultural studies journal Public Culture in the May 13th Chronicle of Higher Education. The journal, under new editorship, plans to aim for a broader audience. Sociologist and public intellectual Eric Klinenberg, one of the new editorial board members, explains that "the remade Public Culture will place greater emphasis on 'imaginative social theory' and 'vivid ethnographic writing.' It will also emphasize contemporary issues such as climate change, military interventions, the power of markets, and links between social media and social movements."

The journal will also include "'visual investigations'—images that invite readers to ponder and analyze. Some of those will run online only, alongside videos and podcast" as reported by Chronicle reporter Peter Monaghan.

You can read the full article here.

CNN Transcripts in More Than One Place

CNN has been good about archiving their transcripts over the past decade. You can find them, organized by program, at CNN.Com/transcripts.  But for the greater good of historical digital preservation these transcripts, 2000-2012, have been snatched up by the Internet Archive here, as announced by their by their Just In Time Grabs team.  Love this explanation of their initiative:

The hardest part about our transient, shallow world wide web is the terrifying swiftness in which data disappears. To this end, Archive Team members have often bravely strapped on miner's helmets and flashlights, dove into the flaming wreckage of a dying site, and grabbed a copy for all of time. Some of these rescues, consisting of what we could grab, are being saved here.

LexisNexis Academic also carries CNN transcripts but it's tricky telling what years of coverage they provide. They do have transcripts for certain shows going back to the early 90s. You have to go into the Browse Publications section and under transcripts click on the information icon for individual genres--financial, entertainment, international--to see what programs they carry and years of coverage.

New Reference Titles on the shelf

The Biographical Encyclopedia of American Radio, edited by Christopher H. Sterling (Routledge, 2011). Includes over 200 biographical entries on the most important radio personalities, writers, producers, directors, and network executives. Scholarly but very readable.

 Handbook of Comparative Communication Research, edited by Frank Esser and Thomas Hanitzsch (2012). "...30 topical chapters, contributed by scholars in 11 countries, are organized in three parts that focus on subdisciplinary fields, central research areas, and conceptual and methodological issues. Also included are substantial introductory and concluding chapters in which the editors integrate the contents, elaborate historical and conceptual frames for comparative research, and highlight challenges and opportunities for future work." --from the Foreward

Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Daily Life, edited by Matthias R. Mehl and Tamlin S. Conner (The Guilford Press, 2012). "This volume--more than any other book published in the last two decades--will change the field of psychology. Psychological scientists have long recognized that ultimately, if their research is to have any meaning, they must venture out of the lab to study psychological processes unfolding in the 'real world.' But until now there has not been a comprehensive resource to show them how. As the first complete, authoritative, and practical guide to studying daily life, this handbook is set to change the way research is done. Every behavioral scientist should own a copy."--Sam Gosling,University of Texas at Austin

Key Concepts in Media and Communications, edited by Paul Jones and David Holmes (Sage 2011). "A sprightly, critical and intelligent guided tour around the mansion of media and communications/cultural research." --James Curran

Key Readings in Journalism, edited by Elliot King and Jane L. Chapman (Routledge, 2012). The field's greatest hits? So says Robert McChesney (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks, Second Edition, edited by Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). Update to previous edition with new material on new media, social networks,  and social movements

Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953: A History of Prime Time Programs Through the Ratings of Nielsen, Crossley and Hooper, by Jim Ramsburg (MacFarland & Company, 2012). Radio's golden age broken down year by year with industry statistics, daily program ratings and a chart of the year's 50 top programs.

Plunkett’s Entertainment & Media Industry Almanac 2012, edited by Jack W. Plunkett (Plunkett Research, 2012). Complete profiles on top companies with statistics and trends in film and video, radio and television, cable and satellite, magazines and books, gaming, newspapers, and new media.

Plunkett’s Games, Apps & Social Media Industry Almanac 2012, edited by Jack W. Plunkett (Plunkett Research 2012). Complete profiles on the top companies with statistics and trends in mobile gaming, game consoles, 3D games, online gaming, apps and smartphones, social media, games and apps developers, advertising and marketing.

Psychophysiological Measurement and Meaning: Cognitive and Emotional Processing of Media, by Robert F. Potter and Paul D. Bolls (Routledge, 2012). A comprehensive resource for psychophysiological research on media responses.

The Sage Handbook of Social Network Analysis, edited by John Scott and Peter J. Carrington (Sage, 2011). Topics include: network theory, online networks, corporate networks, lobbying networks, deviant networks, measuring devices, key methodologies, software applications.

Television Journalism, by Stephen Cushion (Sage, 2012).

Sections: The role of news in television culture/From radio to television/Redefining what's newsworthy/Rise of partisan news consumption/Reporting the politics of developed nations/Entering the profession: Who are television journalists/Past, present and future of journalism scholarship.