Melinda Ferguson is the bestselling author of her addiction trilogy: Smacked, Hooked and Crashed. She is also an award-winning publisher.

To escape the pandemic, Ferguson finds her dream house on a private nature reserve, secluded in the otherworldly Cedarberg. A week before it's registered, a beautiful high-powered exec is brutally murdered next door. How could heaven have transformed into hell in an instant?

Written in her no-holds-barred signature style, Bamboozled is set in an age of fear, on a dystopian planet floundering in a maze of deception. In her search for sanity, Ferguson tries to untangle herself from a masked world gone mad, in which the media are controlled by the Invisible, Big Tech are mining our lives, where truth-tellers are mercilessly hunted and where, in certain countries, there are now Ministries of Loneliness.

Driven by an ancient human yearning to connect, the author must go on a deep journey into the unknown if she is to find her garden of songbirds and her torch of freedom and joy. The book is also about losing money and finding magic, while trying to work out who killed the woman next door.

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. This Research Agenda explores the academic field of intelligence studies and how it is developing into an increasingly international and diverse area of study. As more governments release records, and as new generations of scholars engage with the topic from a range of perspectives, the book considers how the field is becoming richer, wider, and more global in scope. Featuring contributions by a diverse range of leading intelligence scholars, it surveys a variety of core areas in, and approaches to, the study of intelligence - including technological perspectives, gender, deception, and the 'deep state' - highlighting how intelligence will become a greater feature of government and security in the future. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the book explores not only the established elements of intelligence studies, but analyses the cutting edge of intelligence research and proposes an agenda for the continued development of the field. Offering concise and accessible discussions of developing topics in intelligence studies, this Research Agenda will be a useful guide for scholars and students of public policy, international relations and security. It will also be of interest to professionals engaged in research into security and intelligence matters.

Identifying academic freedom as a major casualty of rapid and extensive reforms to the governance and practices of academic institutions worldwide, this timely Handbook considers the meaning of academic freedom, the threats it faces, and its relation to rights of critical expression, public accountability and the democratic health of open societies. An international cohort of leading scholars discuss the historical conceptualisations of academic freedom and explore the extent of its reconfiguration by neoliberalism and economic globalisation. Chapters examine the threats posed to academic freedom by interventionist government, economic fundamentalism, political conservatism and extremism. The Handbook finds that these threats endanger the intellectual ambitions at the core of academic freedom: contesting established 'truth' and holding power to account. Examining a matter of urgent social and political importance which is crucial to the future of democracy and intellectual autonomy, this Handbook is an invigorating read for students and scholars researching academic freedom, free speech and democratic governance in higher education institutions.

Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down.

In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it.

Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online – a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.

Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government's system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down.

In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it.

Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online - a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet's conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.

Mark Tushnet presents a concise yet comprehensive overview of free expression law, understood as a form of constitutional law. Confronting the major issues of free expression - speech critical of government, libel law, hate speech regulation, and the emerging challenges posed by new technologies - he evaluates the key questions and potential difficulties for future generations. Contrasting the United States with current law in Europe and elsewhere, Tushnet argues that freedom of expression around the world should reflect deference to legislative judgements, unless those judgements reflect inadequate deliberation or bias, and that much of the existing free expression law is consistent with this view. Key features include: Comprehensible for both students of law and non-specialist readers interested in freedom of expression from a legal perspective Viewpoints from multiple legal systems including analysis of decisions made by the US Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights Explains the two legal doctrinal structures: categorical, rule-bound approaches and standards-based approaches List of key references for further reading, allowing readers to extend their knowledge of the topic past the advanced introduction. This Advanced Introduction will be an essential foundational text for students of law, as well as those from a political science background who can view freedom of expression from a legal perspective.

The Freedom of Information Law allows any person to request and obtain, without explanation or justification, existing, identifiable, and unpublished governmental records, including documents, data, and video. Signed into law in New York in 1974, FOIL remains a powerful public panacea in unlocking information and maintaining vital transparency in our state government. Databases detailing public employee compensation, online viewing of highway department agreements and school district superintendents contracts, and text message exchanges all disclosed and made public through FOIL requests are now common, as the last decade has ushered in an increased demand for public information. Orzechowski guides readers through the creation of the law and the concept of open government in the twenty-first century, offering a foundational understanding of how the legislation works, who is exempt, and how the law was created for every citizen of New York State. Dozens of perspectives from state senators to a Pulitzer Prize winner to watchdog organizations outline the impact of New York State's law. Orzechowski examines the drafting of current legislation to strengthen the existing law and offers perspectives from those who are confronted with the real challenges of accessing public information every day: journalists, attorneys, and citizens. This exploration of FOIL, including narrative, scholarly examination, and how-to guides, serves as a tour of a law that continues to impact residents across the state.

Media power is a crucial, although often taken for granted, concept. We assume, for example, that the media are 'powerful'; if they were not, why would there be so many controversies over the regulation, control and impact of communicative institutions and processes? Further, we assume that this 'power' is somehow problematic; audiences are often treated as highly susceptible to media influence and too much 'power' in the hands of one organization or individual is seen as risky and potentially dangerous. These concerns have been at the heart of recent controversies involving the relationships between media moguls and political elites, the consequences of phone hacking in the UK, and the emerging influence of social media as vital gatekeepers. Yet it is still not clear what we mean by media power or how effective it is. This book evaluates contrasting definitions of media power and looks at the key sites in which power is negotiated, concentrated and resisted - politically, technologically and economically. Combining an evaluation of both previous literature and new research, the book seeks to establish an understanding of media power which does justice to the complexities and contradictions of the contemporary social world. It will be important reading for undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers and activists alike.

With the ubiquitous nature of modern technologies, they have been inevitably integrated into various facets of society. The connectivity presented by digital platforms has transformed such innovations into tools for political and social agendas. Politics, Protest, and Empowerment in Digital Spaces is a comprehensive reference source for emerging scholarly perspectives on the use of new media technology to engage people in socially- and politically-oriented conversations and examines communication trends in these virtual environments. Highlighting relevant coverage across topics such as online free expression, political campaigning, and online blogging, this book is ideally designed for government officials, researchers, academics, graduate students, and practitioners interested in how new media is revolutionizing political and social communications.

How far does the idea of academic freedom extend to professors in an era of racial reckoning? The protests of summer 2020, which were ignited by the murder of George Floyd, led to long-overdue reassessments of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in both American academe and cultural life more generally. But while universities have been willing to rename some buildings and schools or grapple with their role in the slave trade, no one has yet asked the most uncomfortable question: Does academic freedom extend to racist professors? It's Not Free Speech considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by outrageous police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be rigorously distinguished from freedom of speech, Michael Berube and Jennifer Ruth take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy-theories that have no intellectual legitimacy whatsoever. Approaching this question from two angles-one, the question of when a professor's intramural or extramural speech calls into question his or her fitness to serve, and two, the question of how to manage the simmering tension between the academic freedom of faculty and the antidiscrimination initiatives of campus offices of diversity, equity, and inclusion-they argue that the democracy-destroying potential of social media makes it very difficult to uphold the traditional liberal view that the best remedy for hate speech is more speech. In recent years, those with traditional liberal ideals have had very limited effectiveness in responding to the resurgence of white supremacism in American life. It is time, Berube and Ruth write, to ask whether that resurgence requires us to rethink the parameters and practices of academic freedom. Touching as well on contingent faculty, whose speech is often inadequately protected, It's Not Free Speech insists that we reimagine shared governance to augment both academic freedom and antidiscrimination initiatives on campuses. Faculty across the nation can develop protocols that account for both the new realities-from the rise of social media to the decline of tenure-and the old realities of long-standing inequities and abuses that the classic liberal conception of academic freedom did nothing to address. This book will resonate for anyone who has followed debates over #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, and "cancel culture"; more specifically, it should have a major impact on many facets of academic life, from the classroom to faculty senates to the office of the general counsel.

The history of Latin American journalism is ultimately the story of a people who have been silenced over the centuries, primarily Native Americans, women, peasants, and the urban poor. This book seeks to correct the record propounded by most English-language surveys of Latin American journalism, which tend to neglect pre-Columbian forms of reporting, the ways in which technology has been used as a tool of colonization, and the Latin American conceptual foundations of a free press. Challenging the conventional notion of a free marketplace of ideas in a region plagued with serious problems of poverty, violence, propaganda, political intolerance, poor ethics, journalism education deficiencies, and media concentration in the hands of an elite, Ferreira debunks the myth of a free press in Latin America. The diffusion of colonial presses in the New World resulted in the imposition of a structural censorship with elements that remain to this day. They include ethnic and gender discrimination, technological elitism, state and religious authoritarianism, and ideological controls. Impoverished, afraid of crime and violence, and without access to an effective democracy, ordinary Latin Americans still live silenced by ruling actors that include a dominant and concentrated media. Thus, not only is the press not free in Latin America, but it is also itself an instrument of oppression.

This book is about people whose beliefs and affiliations have opposed powerful interests in the present-day United States. This eclectic group of people and controversial issues, from climate-change scientists who have been censored by the Bush administration to Muslims accused of terrorism, have one thing in common. All of them straddle the limits of what Noam Chomsky has called permissible debate as defined by dominant political and economic institutions and individuals. The central thesis is that restriction of free inquiry is harmful to our culture because it inhibits the search for knowledge. Johansen presents case studies in the borderlands of free speech in a Jeffersonian cast-an intellectual framework assuming that open debate-even of unpopular ideas-is essential to accurate perception of reality. This book is about people whose ideological circumstances have found them opposing established beliefs in our times-scholars advocating the Palestinian cause in a very hostile intellectual environment, for example, as well as climate scientists defending themselves against the de-funding of their laboratories by defenders of fossil-fuel interests; opponents of creation science under assault for teaching what once was regarded as household-variety biology (a.k.a. Darwinism); Marxists in a political system dominated by neoconservatives. The central thesis that unites this diverse array of controversies is that shutting down free inquiry-most notably for points of view deemed unpopular-dumbs us all down by restraining the search for knowledge, which demands open inquiry. We have been told when going to war, as in Iraq, that freedom isn't free, the unstated assumption being that our armed forces are fighting and dying to safeguard our civil rights at home and abroad. During recent years, however, freedom to inquire and debate without retribution has been under assault in the United States. This assault has been carried out under a distinctly Orwellian cast, under Newspeak titles such as the Patriot Act, parts of which might as well be described more honestly as the Restriction of Freedom of Inquiry Act. The information gathered here will interest (and probably anger) anyone who is concerned with protecting robust, free inquiry in a nation that takes seriously its freedom to speak out, and to define truth through open debate.

"This is a thought-provoking and well-written book."
-- "American Political Science Association"

"Passavant's argument depends on stablising a paradoxical tension between two principles conventionally involved in an adversary relationship."
--"Journal of American Studies"

"Passavant challenges the dichotomous approach to the relationship between liberalism and communitarianism. Overall, "No Escape" offers new insight on the relationship by critcally delving into historical events, sociopolitics, and legal developments. It challenges the conventional wisdom regarding the inherent confloict between expanding liberal rights while embracing communitarian values. Some readers will find considerable value in his judiciously documented and forceful argument."
--"The law and Politics Book Review"

Conventional legal and political scholarship places liberalism, which promotes and defends individual legal rights, in direct opposition to communitarianism, which focuses on the greater good of the social group. According to this mode of thought, liberals value legal rights for precisely the same resason that communitarians seek to limit their scope: they privilege the individual over the community. However, could it be that liberalism is not antithetical to social group identities like nationalism as is traditionally understood? Is it possible that those who assert liberal rights might even strengthen aspects of nationalism?

No Escape argues that this is exactly the case, beginning with the observation that, paradoxical as it might seem, liberalism and nationalism have historically coincided in the United States. No Escape proves that liberal government and nationalism canmutually reinforce each other, taking as its example a preeminent and seemingly universal liberal legal right, freedom of speech, and illustrating how it can function in a way that actually reproduces nationally exclusive conditions of power.

No Escape boldly re-evaluates the relationship between liberal rights and the community at a time when the call has gone out for the nation to defend the freedom to live our way of life. Passavant challenges us to reconsider traditional modes of thought, providing a fresh perspective on seemingly intransigent political and legal debates.

Hotly contested and vigorously defended since it was first written into the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech is a basic right that all Americans hold dear. But what of the freedom "not" to speak? Should, for instance, a special prosecutor be able to compel a mother to testify about, and incriminate, her own daughter? The freedom "not" to speak is an implicit "right" that holds great relevance for all of us-the freedom not to speak when commanded by church and state, not to sign an oath, not to salute a flag, not to assert a belief in God, or not to reveal one's political beliefs and associations.

Bosmajian traces the history of the freedom not to speak from the Middle Ages and Inquisition to the twentieth century and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His history addresses the Civil War and Reconstruction loyalty oaths by Union Confederate soldiers, and the expulsion of Jehovah's Witnesses from schools for refusing to salute the flag, and includes an analysis of coerced speech in a variety of literary works. Bosmajian also contemplates the future of this right to silence and argues for the importance of a specifically labeled and firmly established freedom not to speak.

Van Belle provides the first systematic analysis of the effects that press freedom has on the conduct of international politics. The institutionalization of press freedoms within a state and the free flow of information between the free presses of different nations creates a foreign policy decision making environment that systematically limits policy options, generates domestic political imperatives, and provides specific benefits to a leader. This shapes some aspects of foreign policy in a consistent and empirically identifiable manner, most notably by limiting international conflicts. When social-psychological propositions regarding dehumanization and the acceptance of killing in war are introduced to Van Belle's model, shared press freedom is shown to provide a mechanism that prevents lethal conflicts. The effects of press freedom on international conflict, particularly on hypotheses related to escalating conflicts beyond the threshold of casualties, are quite robust. However, Van Belle indicates there is no evidence of a complimentary effect on cooperation. The combination of findings from the empirical analyses suggest that the key to the effects of press freedom center on the creation of images, such as the dehumanized image of an enemy. A thoughtful analysis that scholars and researchers of foreign policy and international relations as well as journalism and mass communication will find particularly useful.

Freedom of expression is enshrined in the Constitution as a "sacred right" of the American people. The appeal is clear: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech or of the press." Yet the ink had barely dried on the Constitution before the first landmark freedom of expression issue exploded onto the scene. This student resource traces 11 such issues that have polarized the nation. These events show the variety, complexity, and intensity that freedom of speech and expression issues engender. Issues include: BLAlien and Sedition Acts of 1798 BLThe Abolitionist Movement BLThe Civil War BLThe Comstock Law BLWorld War I BLThe Cold War and the "Red Menace" BLThe Civil Rights Movement BLThe Vietnam War BLThe Nazi March on Skokie BLPolitical Correctness and Free Speech on Campus BLThe Internet These events show the variety, complexity, and intensity that freedom of speech and expression issues engender. Magee illustrates how the United States has worked through these contentious periods with American citizens' freedoms remaining intact, if not enhanced. An annotated bibliography follows each issue to provide avenues for further research, and a timeline and general bibliography provide additional reference support.

The relationship between the media and government and the influence that relationship has on democracy and national development is explored in this book. The study provides a succinct descriptive review of scholarly research works on communication and its implications for freedom, democracy, and development. The book lists the most frequently cited works in political communication (specifically regarding media-government relationships and press-freedom issues) and development communication. Following a general introduction, Part One examines press-freedom issues and research worldwide, and Part Two presents the relevant literature on development communication issues and provides insights into why the concept is popular with the developing world's journalists. Students, scholars, and policymakers in political communication, development communication, and international development will find this an invaluable tool for their research endeavors.