Journal Feature: Critical Inquiry on The Wire

"Way Down in the Whole": Systematic Inequality and The Wire, by Anmol Chaddha and William Julius Wilson, leads off a discussion in the latest issue of Critical Inquiry 38 (Autumn 2011). Patrick Jagoda (Wired), Kenneth W. Warren (Sociology and The Wire), and Linda Williams (Ethnographic Imaginary: The Genesis and Genius of The Wire) provide the critical response. Finally, Chaddha and Wilson have the last word with The Wire's Impact, A Rejoinder.

Critical Inquiry is available from Penn Library's e-resources.

Urban Studies, Peace Research Abstracts

Recently added to the EBSCO suite are two databases that have relevance to Communication if you take the time to get off the beaten trail of Communication Abstracts and CMMC (on that same platform). They are Urban Studies Abstracts and Peace Research Abstracts.

Urban Studies Abstracts includes bibliographic records covering essential areas related to urban studies, including urban affairs, community development, urban history, and other areas from 1973 to the present. You can find essential treatments of communication research in USA literature. A search on television and public space turns up an article in a 2002 Environment & Planning titled: Re-mediating the spaces of reality television: America's Most Wanted and the case of Vancouver's missing women.

Peace Research Abstracts includes bibliographic records covering essential areas related to peace research, including conflict resolution, international affairs, and peace psychology since 1964. In this database I paired "media coverage" with" conflict resolution" to find articles from a talk at a COPRED (Consortium for Peace Research Education and Development) Conference in 1999 and the World Policy Journal (1995).

I don't have either of these databases posted up front on the Annenberg homepage but do keep them in mind. They can be found in the full list of Communication databases one link in. This list is good to browse every so often to remind yourself of the cornucopia of database options we have at our fingertips!

Special Issues Roundup

Measuring Exposure: Papers from the Annenberg Media Exposure Workshop, edited by Martin Fishbein and Robert Hornik is the special double issue of Communication Methods and Measures (Volume 2, Numbers 1-2, January-June 2008). The workshop, held at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania, asked six questions. 1) How reliable are general measures of exposure?, 2) How can we measure exposure to a specific type of content across media?, 3) How should multiple media use and multi-tasking be taken into account in assessing exposure?, 4) What alternative approaches should be considered for measuring content? 5) How do you assess what content is out there?, and 6) What receiver issues need to be taken into account in developing measures of exposure? One or two papers in the issue are devoted to each of these questions.

Ilan Kapoor and Shahnaz Khan edit the special issue of Topia (Number 19, Spring 2008), Islam and Cultural Politics. As the editors explain in the introduction, the issue focuses on two views of Islam: The Dominant View: Islam as "Other" and The Postcolonial View: Islam as Open and Political.

Communication and the Community of Sport is the topic of the Western Journal of Communication, edited Bob Krizek (Volume 72, Number 2, April-June 2008).

Social Semiotics (Volume 18, Number 2, June 2008) deals with The Star and the Celebrity Confessional. Edited by Sean Redmond, the issue includes 10 articles on celebrity confessions, racism and celebrity, celebrity motherhood, confessional art, among others. Celebrities include the usual suspects: Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Jodie Foster, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Russell Crowe.

The International Communication Gazette (Volume 70, Numbers 3-4, June/August, 2008) is titled Communicative Cities featuring seven articles on urban communication, networks, and public space. Gary Gumpert and Susan J. Drucker are co-editors.

And two cultural studies journals devote issues to the environment:

Cultural Studies and the Environment, Revisited is the special issue of Cultural Studies (Volume 22, Numbers 3-4, May/July 2008), guested-edited by Phaedra C. Pezzullo.

Kitty van Vuuren and Libby Lester guest-edit the Eco-Media issue of Media International Australia (Number 127, May 2008) which includes Celebrity Conservation: Interpreting the Irwins (to return to a subject above).