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.

IJoC's Network Multidimensionality in the Digital Age

From the latest ICA newsletter: The International Journal of Communication (IJoC) is pleased to announce the publication ([April 11, 2011] of a Special Section, "Network Multidimensionality in the Digital Age," coedited by Manuel Castells, Peter Monge, and Noshir Contractor. Human communication networks, like those typically found in the network society, are highly complex and relationally rich in that they often connect different types of objects with multiple types of relations. This special section presents seven articles that explore the implications of this network multidimensionality. The articles cover a broad array of issues including network sociomateriality, network power, network exclusion, the semantic web, network fuzziness, and network spheres. The theoretical implications of network multidimensionality are explored and a number of relevant social examples are examined including the degrees of freedom in WikiLeaks networks, the kinds of power in societal networks, and the network changes that occur when technologies and other sociomaterial objects are brought inside the network. The keynote article by Bruno Latour argues that network multidimensionality eradicates the long-standing theoretical distinction between individual and society. Collectively, these papers provide a rich compendium of ideas and arguments on the theoretical and practical implications of network multidimensionality.

Complexity and Social Networking Blog

There are too many blogs out there for this blog to even pretend to cover, but this one jumped out of the bushes at me. If you're interested in social networking in a heavy duty way put this one into your feed reader: the Complexity and Social Networks Blog of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science and the Program on Networked Governance, Harvard University As stated by the blog's maestro, David Lazer, Associate Professor of Public Policy at John F. Kennedy School of Government Director, "the objective of this blog is to offer a forum for the discussion of the intertwined subjects of network analysis and complex systems theory."

Network visualization site

Visualcomplexity.com is a resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project's main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods across a series of disciplines as diverse as biology, social networks or the World Wide Web. The site displays hundreds of projects that "either provide advancement in terms of visual depiction techniques/methods or show conceptual uniqueness and originality in the choice of a subject." Whatever one's level of understanding of the workings of the software used in these projects or of the depicted networks themselves, the displays are aesthetically stunning.

For more information about information visualization the site includes a page of resource links to related sites, including SPIDER: Social Psychology of Information Diffusion--Educational Resources and An Atlas of Cyberspaces, (maps and graphic representations of the geographies of the Internet).