The Art of Failure:
An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games, by Jesper Juul (MIT, 2013). “We may think of video games as being ‘fun,’ but…Juul claims
that this is almost entirely mistaken. When we play video games, our facial
expressions are rarely those of happiness or bliss. Instead, we frown, grimace,
and shout in frustration as we lose, or die, or fail to advance to the next
level. Humans may have a fundamental desire to succeed and feel competent, but
game players choose to engage in an activity in which they are nearly certain
to fail and feel incompetent. So why do we play video games even though they
make us unhappy? Juul examines this paradox. In video games, as in tragic works
of art, literature, theater, and cinema, it seems that we want to experience
unpleasantness even if we also dislike it. Reader or audience reaction to
tragedy is often explained as catharsis, as a purging of negative emotions.
But, Juul points out, this doesn't seem to be the case for video game players.
Games do not purge us of unpleasant emotions; they produce them in the first
place. What, then, does failure in video game playing do? Juul argues that
failure in a game is unique in that when you fail in a game, you (not a
character) are in some way inadequate. Yet games also motivate us to play more,
in order to escape that inadequacy, and the feeling of escaping failure (often
by improving skills) is a central enjoyment of games. Games, writes Juul, are
the art of failure: the singular art form that sets us up for failure and
allows us to experience it and experiment with it…” –Publisher’s description
Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and
Race in the U.S., by H. Samy Alim (Oxford
University Press, 2012)"A fabulously original work! Two of
America's leading authorities on Black Language and Culture draw on their
expertise and extensive scholarship to profoundly reshape the national
conversation on race--by "languaging" it. In complicating compliments
about President Obama's "articulateness," they brilliantly analyze
his artful use of language--and America's response to it--as a springboard to
consider larger, thought-provoking questions about language, education, power
and what Toni Morrison has referred to as "the cruel fallout of
racism." Few sociolinguists tackle these complex issues with as much
insight, sophistication, and downright directness as Alim and Smitherman. As
they firmly conclude, it's time to change the game - and this book does just
that."--John R. Rickford, Stanford University
The Ashgate
Research Companion to Moral Panics, edited by Chrles Krinksy (Ashgate,
2012). “Assemblage of cutting-edge critical and theoretical perspectives on the
concept of moral panic... Chapters come from a range of disciplines, including
media studies, literary studies, history, legal studies, and sociology, with
significant new elaborations on the concept of moral panic (and its future),
informed and powerful critiques, and detailed empirical studies from several
continents…addresses themes including the evolution of the moral panic concept,
sex panics, media panics, moral panics over children and youth, and the future
of the moral panic concept.”—Publisher’s description
Discourse
2.0: Language and New Media, by Deborah Tannen and Anna Marie Trester
(Georgetown, 2013). Topics include: “how Web 2.0 can be conceptualized and theorized; the role
of English on the worldwide web; how use of social media such as Facebook and
texting shape communication with family and friends; electronic discourse and
assessment in educational and other settings; multimodality and the
"participatory spectacle" in Web 2.0; asynchronicity and turn-taking;
ways that we engage with technology including reading on-screen and on paper;
and how all of these processes interplay with meaning-making.” --Publisher’s
description
Authentic ™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a
Brand Culture, by Sarah Banet-Weiser (New York
University, 2012). “…reveals
how the pervasiveness of branding culture requires us to rethink our
investments in authenticity and our understandings of citizenship and social
membership….offers us the first fully theorized analysis of how the hegemony of
branding culture and the eclipse of typographic culture by digital culture combine
to make us fundamentally new kinds of social subjects.”-George Lipsitz
Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent
Government, by Gavin Newsom and Lisa Dickey (Penguin Press, 2013)
“Makes a fascinating case for a more
engaged government, transformed to meet the challenges and possibilities of the
21st century, and where technology brings the critical tools of
our democracy closer to its citizens than ever before.” --President William J. Clinton
Contrastive Media Analysis: Approaches to Linguistic and Cultural
Aspects of Mass Media Communication, edited
by Stefan Hauser and Martin Luginbuhl (John Benjamins, 2012). “Brings
together linguistic mass media studies with intercultural, diachronic,
intermedia and interlingual perspectives…aim[s]…to advance and to broaden the
methodological and theoretical discussions involved [by] comparing such diverse
formats and genres like newspapers, TV news shows, TV commercials, radio
phone-ins, obituaries, fanzines and film subtitles…”—Publisher’s description
Digital
Memory and the Archive, by Wolfgang Ernst. (University
of Minnesota, 2013). “Explores how media infrastructure, not content,
shapes contemporary digital culture... the first English-language collection of the German
media theorist’s work, brings together essays that present Wolfgang Ernst’s
controversial materialist approach to media theory and history. His insights
are central to the emerging field of media archaeology, which uncovers the role
of specific technologies and mechanisms, rather than content, in shaping
contemporary culture and society.” –Publisher’s description
The Digital Rights Movement: The Role of Technology in Subverting
Digital Copyright, by Hector Postigo (MIT, 2013) “Postigo is among the
first to provide a comprehensive discussion of the development of the digital
rights movements, its key actors, and its major arguments. If you are
interested in online social movements, digital rights, or participatory
culture, this book is for you!” —Jennifer Earl, Professor of Sociology, University of Arizona
Documentary
Film (Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies), edited by Ian Aitken (Routledge, 2012). “An authoritative reference work to enable users to
navigate and make sense of the subject’s large literature and the continuing
explosion in research output...brings together in four volumes the foundational
and the very best cutting-edge scholarship on documentary film.” –Publisher’s
description
Drugs & Media: New Perspectives
on Communication, Consumption, and Consciousness, edited by Robert C. MacDougall. (Continuum, 2012). “The
contributors to this cutting-edge collection apply media ecological concepts to
consider how drugs function as communication technologies; literally media in
and for the human sensorium. In these essays, drugs are considered as
communication media in a practical sense, not merely in the metaphorical way
they tend to be discussed in the popular press. Media and drugs are thus
conceived as communicative tools that enhance and/or inhibit physical, social and
symbolic experience--our ways of seeing and being in the world.” –Editors
iPolitics: Citizens, Elections, and Governing in
the New Media Era, edited by Richard L. Fox
and Jennifer M. Ramos. (Cambridge University Press, 2012). "A lively collection of essays exploring digital media and politics
in the United States as well as comparatively. iPolitics covers a wide range of
crucial topics, from political knowledge and participation to governance and campaigning.
This book demonstrates persuasively that the implications of digital media are
often complex, nuanced, and contingent." --Bruce Bimber, University of
California at Santa Barbara
The
Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-Humanitarianism, by Jane Abbate (MIT, 2013). “Lilie
Chouliaraki is the Aristotle of mediated humanitarianism. With empirical
finesse and theoretical bite, she shows how compassion for distant suffering
turned from pity into glitz. And yet she defends theatricality as a potential
moral force if checked by critical self-awareness. This book casts desperately
needed light onto media and morality today.” --John Durham Peters, University of Iowa
Juan in a
Hundred: The Representation of Latinos on Network News, by Otto Santa Ana
(University of Texas, 2013). “Santa Ana calculated
that among approximately 12,000 stories airing across four networks (ABC, CBS,
CNN, NBC), only 118 dealt with Latinos, a ratio that has remained stagnant over
the past fifteen years. Examining the content of the stories, from briefs to
features, reveals that Latino-tagged events are apparently only broadcast when
national politics or human calamity are involved, and even then, the Latino
issue is often tangential to a news story as a whole. On global events
involving Latin America, U.S. networks often remain silent while BBC
correspondents prepare fully developed, humanizing coverage. The book concludes
by demonstrating how this obscurity and misinformation perpetuate maligned
perceptions about Latinos. Santa Ana's inspiring calls for reform are poised to
change the face of network news in America.” –Publisher’s description
Misunderstanding the Internet, by James Curran, Natalie
Fenton, and Des Freedman (Routledge,
2012). “the book I have been waiting
for since the late 1990s. It is a superb examination of the Internet, how we
got to this point and what our options are going forward… a signature work in the political economy of communication"--Robert W. McChesney, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Mommyblogs and the Changing Face of
Motherhood, by May
Friedman (University of Toronto, 2013). Examining the content of hundreds of
mommyblogs to observe the ways that online maternal life writing provides “a
front row seat to some of the most raw, offbeat, and engaging portraits of
motherhood imaginable.”
Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China, by
Daniela Stockman (Cambridge University, 2013). A “multi-method
analysis of the introduction of market forces in Chinese media. By
communicating from the bottom up as well as from the top down… Stockmann argues
that market-based media provide regime stability rather than simply a
democratizing force for change in China. She enriches our understanding of
China's dynamic media environment by making cogent comparisons to trends in
other authoritarian regimes. These comparisons reveal the importance of
institutional factors in determining the impact of media
commercialization." --Ann N. Crigler, University of Southern California
Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World, by Ulises Ali Mejias (University of Minnesota, 2013) “Makes the case that it is not only necessary to challenge the privatized
and commercialized modes of social and civic life offered by
corporate-controlled spaces such as Facebook and Twitter, but that such
confrontations can be mounted from both within and outside the network. The
result is an uncompromising, sophisticated, and accessible critique of the
digital world.”—Publisher’s description
Philosophical
Profiles in the Theory of Communication, edited by
Jason Hannan (Peter Lang, 2012). “There are many
philosophers who have struggled with conceptions of communication, whether in
constructing a philosophy of mind, of language, or of being. The editor of this
volume has wisely selected the works of philosophers who are less known in the
communication literature, yet have something to say to its students and
scholars. To shed light on the positions these philosophers have taken, these
essays reveal not only their life experiences and personal struggles, but also
who influenced them. Thus, the volume reproduces a fascinating network of
intellectual connections that can enrich the conversations among present
generations of communication theorists. Reading this volume is a pleasure and
an encouragement to go on.” —Klaus
Krippendorff, University of Pennsylvania
A Social
History of Contemporary Democratic Media, by Jesse Drew (Routledge, 2013). “Beginning
with a look at the inherent weaknesses of the U.S. broadcasting model of mass
media, Drew outlines the early 1960s and 1970s experiments in grassroots media,
where artists and activists began to re-engineer electronic technologies to
target local communities and underserved audiences. From these local projects
emerged national and international communications projects, creating production
models, social networks and citizen expectations that would challenge
traditional means of electronic media and cultural production. Drew’s
perspective puts the social and cultural use of the user at the center, not the
particular media form. Thus the structure of the book focuses on the local, the
national, and the global desire for communications, regardless of the means.” –Publisher’s
description
Supervision: An Introduction to the Surveillance
Society, by John Gilliom and Torrin
Monahan (University of Chicago, 2012). “Authors chart the pitfalls and the potentials of emerging
monitoring practices in an engaging fashion, pointing out some of the more
colorful examples along the way. Above all, the book forces all of us fish in
the bowl to confront the universal medium we are swimming in: the pervasive
practices of surveillance that have colonized our world, from workplace to
social space, in the name of efficiency, productivity, and security.” – Mark
Andrejevic, University of Queensland
Terrorism TV:
Popular entertainment in Post-9/11 America, by Stacy Takacs (University
Press of Kansas, 2012). “The role of entertainment
programming in building a national consensus favoring a War on Terror, taking a
close look at programs that comment both directly and allegorically on the
post-9/11 world. In show after show, she chillingly illustrates how popular
television helped organize public feelings of loss, fear, empathy, and
self-love into narratives supportive of a controversial and unprecedented war.”
–Publisher’s description
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, by Andrew Blum (Ecco Press, 2012). “An engaging reminder that, cyber-Utopianism aside, the internet is as
much a thing of flesh and steel as any industrial-age lumber mill or factory.
It is also an excellent introduction to the nuts and bolts of how exactly it
all works.” --The Economist
Virality: Contagion Theory in the age of Networks, by Tony D.
Sampson (University of Minnesota, 2012).
"Tarde and Deleuze come beautifully together in this
outstanding book, the first to really put forward a serious alternative to
neo-Darwinian theories of virality, contagion, and memetics. A thrilling read
that bears enduring consequences for our understanding of network cultures.
Unmissable." —Tiziana Terranova
War Culture and the Contest of Images,
by Dora Apel (Rutgers, 2012). Analyzes depiction of war in not only photography
but performance art, video games and other media in the Middle East and the
United States.
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