Information is an important concept that is studied extensively across a range of disciplines, from the physical sciences to genetics to psychology to epistemology. Information continues to increase in importance, and the present age has been referred to as the "Information Age."

One may understand information in a variety of ways. For some, information is found in facts that were previously unknown. For others, a fact must have some economic value to be considered information. Other people emphasize the movement through a communication channel from one location to another when describing information. In all of these instances, information is the set of characteristics of the output of a process. Yet Information has seldom been studied in a consistent way across different disciplines.

"Information from Processes" provides a discipline-independent and precise presentation of both information and computing processes. Information concepts and phenomena are examined in an effort to understand them, given a hierarchy of information processes, where one process uses others. Research about processes and computing is applied to answer the question of what information can and cannot be produced, and to determine the nature of this information (theoretical information science). The book also presents some of the basic processes that are used in specific domains (applied information science), such as those that generate information in areas like reasoning, the evolution of informative systems, cryptography, knowledge, natural language, and the economic value of information.Written for researchers and graduate students in information science and related fields, "Information from Processes "details a unique information model independent from other concepts in computer or archival science, which is thus applicable to a wide range of domains. Combining theoretical and empirical methods as well as psychological, mathematical, philosophical, and economic techniques, Losee's book delivers a solid basis and starting point for future discussions and research about the creation and use of information."

Communication in its most basic form--the sending of signals and exchange of messages within and between organisms--is the heart of evolution. From the earliest life-forms to "Homo sapiens," the great chain of communication drives the evolutionary process and is the indispensable component of human culture.
That is the central message of this unique perspective on both the biological evolution of life and the human development of culture. The book explores the totality of communication processes that create and sustain biological equilibrium and social stability. The authors argue that this ubiquitous connectivity is the elemental unity of life.
Introducing a new subdiscipline--evolutionary communication--the authors analyze the core domains of life--sheer survival, sex, culture, morality, religion, and technological change--as communications phenomena. What emerges from their analysis is a brilliant interpretation of life interconnected through communication from the basic molecular level to the most sophisticated manifestations of culture.
Challenging the boundaries of conventional approaches to cultural analysis, this is an original and engaging view of evolution and an encouraging prognosis for our collective future.

This book discusses the effect of communication strategies in the course of China's national image building from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. The research data are collected via researcher's in-depth observation as well as focus group analysis and case study of selected Chinese radio and TV networks. On the basis of the empirical study and drawing on theories of international communication and political communication, this book also introduces an analytical framework that can be used to evaluate the effect of communication strategies in practice. Especially, the framework is applied to systematically analyze the formation and application of Chinese Communist Party's communication strategy with an aim at improving the national image and increasing its global influence. This book is of interest to graduate students and researchers who are interested in the broadcast communication in China.

The advent of the Information Society is marked by the explosive penetration of information technologies in all aspects of life and by a related fundamental transofmation in every form of the organization. Researchers, business people and policy makers have recognized the importance of addressing technological, economic and social impacts in conjunction. For example, the rise and fall of the dot-com hype depended a lot on the strenght of the business model, on the technological capabilities avalable to firms and on the readiness of the socity and economy at large sustain a new breed of business activity. However, it is notoriously difficult to examine the cross-impacts of social, economic and technological aspects of the Information Socity. This kind of work requires multidisciplinary work and collaboration on a wide range of skills. Social and Economic Transformation in the Digital Era addresses this challenge by assembling the latest thinking of leading researchers and policy makers. The book covers all key subject areas of the Information Society an presents innovative business models, case studies, normative theories and social explanations.

This book presents background information on the current literary theory known as reader response and examines ways in which response and the teaching of literature has been researched and the findings of that research. It effectively demonstrates the diverse manner in which theoretical principles can be examined using a number of different frameworks. It investigates new theoretical perspectives on reader-response theory as well as demonstrating how empirical, qualitative, and ethnographic research has investigated current theory. Each chapter on research response to literature integrates classroom vignettes and actual student responses, in order to offer the classroom teacher as well as the reading and literature research new information about the manner in which children and older students interact with the literature. This volume will be particularly informative to college personnel and graduate students interested in theories and research focusing on response to literature and the teaching of literature. This text is useful as both a reference for researchers and teachers and a supplemental text for graduate students.

Each of us is highly skilled at designing our turns at talk, and meshing them with those of the people around us. Conversation Analysis (CA) is the study of just how that is done, and how the choreography of conversation brings off the business we conduct with each other.
Conversation Analysis is beginning to have a strong record not only of understanding interaction, but also of seeing how it might be changed. This volume collects together some of the most exciting developments in CA as it is applied to intervention programs in medical communication, speech therapy, mediation, welfare interviewing, surveying, telephone helplines, and other insitutional encounters. The contributors explain the difficulties and the benefits of applying CA in the real world, and with working with external agencies like government institutions, charities, and the medical establishment.

What signals are you sending when you share the gospel? The importance of signs for communicating truth has been recognized throughout the ages. Crystal L. Downing traces this awareness from biblical texts, through figures from church history like John Wycliffe and William Tyndale, to more recent writers Samuel Taylor Coleridge and C. S. Lewis. In the nineteenth century, this legacy of interest in the activity of signs brought about a new field of academic study. In this book, Downing puts the discipline of semiotics within reach for beginners through analysis of the movement's key theorists, Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Peirce, Mikhail Bakhtin and others. She then draws out the implications for effective communication of the gospel of Jesus Christ within our shifting cultural landscape. Her fundamental thesis is that "Failure to understand how signs work--as effects of the cultures we seek to affect--inevitably undermines not just our political and moral agendas but, worse, the gospel of Jesus Christ." Writing with humor, clarity and flare, Downing lucidly explains the sophisticated thinking of leaders in semiotics for nonexperts. Of value to all those interested in communication in any context, this work will be of special interest to students majoring in communications or English or to students in evangelism and preaching courses at the undergraduate and graduate level.

In this absorbing book, Bruce J. Evensen analyzes the role of the mass media, public opinion, and the Zionists in the evolution of America's Palestine policy during the Truman administration. Taking issue with recent revisionist historians who argue that Truman had little difficulty manipulating public opinion, Evensen claims that the press and an aroused public opinion successfully frustrated the President's course on Palestine and elicited his support of the United Nations' partition of Jewish and Arab states and Truman's early recognition of Israel. Evensen emphasizes the development of a conventional wisdom that placed the Middle East at the center of U.S. strategic planning and saw limiting Soviet penetration as a primary goal. Within this context, he shows a divided Truman administration, which was uncertain how to act on the Jewish state. Reluctantly, the administration initially supported the UN's vote to partition the region; then, as Palestine erupted into violence, it attempted to abandon this decision. Interpreting the President's action as a gutless appeasement of the Arabs and an indication of his fear of the Soviets, the media, reflecting the public's Cold War fears, confronted the administration's policy in the Middle East and frustrated the President's effort to abandon the partition scheme. The media's role in reflecting and shaping competing visions of reality, which became the conventional wisdom of policy making, is a key part of this study.

During the past decade, blogging has not only grown, but it has also become a truly international phenomenon: about two thirds of all blogs are written in a language other than English. Blogging in the Global Society: Cultural, Political and Geographical Aspects provides a comprehensive view of blogging as a global practice. Bloggers have created a new virtual world a blogosphere populated with opinion leaders and information purveyors, political pundits and activists, human and animal rights defenders and abusers, corruption fighters and truth seekers, as well as professionals, marketers, advertisers, journalists, celebrities, artists, academics, and bored consumers of all sorts. This book provides a cross-disciplinary analysis of the social, cultural, and political factors affecting blogging practices, tracing the diffusion of blogging as a global communication innovation, uncovering particularities and patterns of adoption in different cultures and geographical regions, and shedding light on trends in the global blogosphere.

The dominant cultural script is that the Baby Boomers have 'had it all', thereby depriving younger generations of the opportunity to create a life for themselves. Bristow provides a critical account of this discourse by locating the problematisation of the Baby Boomers within a wider ambivalence about the legacy of the Sixties.

This volume provides a novel and relational sociological approach to the study of EU civil society. It focuses on the interactions and interrelations between civil society actors and the forms of capital that structure the fields and sub-fields of EU civil society, through new and important empirical studies on organized EU civil society.

This book describes language diversity and classroom discourse: language use in the classroom in which children are dialect speakers. Specifically, the authors observed and videotaped a wide range of activities including whole groups with the teacher, small groups with and without the teacher, and one-on-one interaction, in kindergarten, fourth- and sixth- grade classrooms. The book is a description of what was found. Classroom language use is discussed in terms of language functions. The book also includes a discussion of why dialect is an issue and an overview of how dialect has been dealt with by researchers and practitioners. Finally, dialect diversity in the classroom is considered in light of the relationship between language, education, and society at large. The study is unique in that it provides a quantitative as well as qualitative picture of language use in the classroom with dialect speakers.

The anonymity inherent in cyber education impacts the way learners interact in online environments. While this sense of anonymity may free individuals to express themselves or create a new self, technology affords ways to capture, track and scrutinize patterns of interaction. There are legal ramifications and concerns behind this game of alter egos and emerging social mores. Anonymity and Learning in Digitally Mediated Communications: Authenticity and Trust in Cyber Education investigates the impact of anonymity and its effects on online identity and learning. A close examination of the implications of anonymity in cyber education reveals issues of authenticity and trust, which are at the heart of online learning.

Fifty years ago, the political whistle-stop tour was thus named because trains blew their whistles twice when making unscheduled stops in backwater towns. Like its distant cousin, the "electronic" whistle-stop brings the candidate's message directly to the people, but with one outstanding difference: the new whistle-stop offers politicians an accuracy, efficiency, and success at voter persuasian unimaginable to by earlier whistle-stoppers such as Harry Truman.

As Selnow shows, American political campaigns have an extraordinary affinity for electronic devices. They have seized upon electronic bulletin boards, home pages, and electronic libraries. Since political campaigns are communication campaigns, Selnow concludes that candidates who successfully inform, persuade, enlighten, and even confuse voters will win votes. Selnow also examines the debate between those who argue that new technologies have improved efficiency and those who believe that the innovations have affected society in other ways. Scholars and students of American political communication must read this book; the lively style will also make it exciting reading for anyone interested in this new political tool.

This book provides insight into the nature of the relationship between dialogue and care. The work is textured and mindful of the human need for authentic communication between embedded human communicative agents. This is because the authors are well-versed in the field, having published articles, books, and book chapters dealing with the cultivation of human communication and human relationships through aspects of care, dialogue, and other philosophical preconditions. This study approaches the relationship of care and dialogue through a constructive hermeneutic approach situated within the current historical moment, while relying on a rich and textured historical tradition of philosophical writings that invite new discussion on the value of this relationship. In a historical era of rapidly changing technologies, it is often easier to text, twitter, and e-mail in a hypertext mode that fails to acknowledge the dialogic potential in human relationships. This book reminds us that even in these technologically sophisticated times, we gain more in human relationships through care and dialogue than in quick, instant communication. It is unique from other books dealing with the relationship between dialogue and care in human relationships because it integrates literature involving communication ethics and philosophies of communication framed around the metaphor of "care" to provide a more textured insight related to human communication. The discussion is an alternative to a social scientific approach. Readers will gain a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the issue(s) involved from different perspectives. Many other books on these matters are also theoretically laden with deep philosophical concepts, but they are often devoid of connections to everyday experiences which limits application of the ideas. The authors address this by a text that explores those philosophical and theoretically laden concepts related to "care" in an applied manner, so that the practice of these ideas is situated within actual human interaction. This study provides an in-depth exploration specifically dealing with care as a philosophical and ethical paradigm for living in the world. This book is distinctive as it encompasses theorists/scholars from multiple perspectives that include sociological, psychological, philosophical, and from both social science and humanities approaches; all of which come together within a communication framework. The purpose of this book is to provide readers with the opportunity to consider multiple ways of enhancing human communication through discovering how the notion of "care" has the ability to shape and guide communicative exchanges. Care is posited as a philosophy of communication and more specifically as a communicative ethic that can be embraced in interpersonal and organizational communicative contexts. Our goal is to provide a textured understanding of "care" as it relates to human communication and as it is foregrounded in philosophical thought. This text will help develop philosophical understanding of this topic that is inescapably linked to human communication. This book will interest all in communication, sociology, psychology, and anthropology.

An examination of the development of local radio broadcasting and the trend for locally-owned, locally-originated and locally-accountable commercial radio stations to fall into the hands of national and international media groups. Starkey traces the early development of local radio through to present-day digital environments.

Interpreting the Peace is the first full-length study of language support in multinational peace operations. Building peace depends on being able to communicate with belligerents, civilians and forces from other countries. This depends on effective and reliable mediation between languages. Yet language is frequently taken for granted in the planning and conduct of peace operations. Looking in detail at 1990s Bosnia-Herzegovina, this book shows how the UN and NATO forces addressed these issues and asks what can be learned from the experience. Drawing on more than fifty interviews with military personnel, civilian linguists and locally-recruited interpreters, the book explores problems such as the contested roles of military linguists, the challenges of improving a language service in the field, and the function of nationality and ethnicity in producing trust or mistrust. It will be of interest to readers in contemporary history, security studies, translation studies and sociolinguistics, and to practitioners working in translation and interpreting for military services and international organizations.

This reference combines a critical analysis of Ronald Reagan's style as a public speaker with a set of selected speeches and an extensive bibliography. Kurt Ritter and David Henry cover his oratory from his days in the motion picture industry and as a political candidate to his years as Governor of California and as President of the United States. This analysis of his use of mass media as a pulpit and his command of the TV medium is intended for students, teachers, and professionals in communications and in government. The volume defines Ronald Reagan's role as a political pastor, his emphasis on heroes, and his appeals to values of freedom and promise. Selected speeches illustrate points made in the analysis. A chronology of his major speeches is given, along with an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources. A full index is also provided. This book will be of great interest to students of oratory, speech communication specialists, political scientists, and others needing an overview and texts of President Reagan's speeches.

Paper is older than the printing press, and even in its unprinted state it was the great network medium behind the emergence of modern civilization. In the shape of bills, banknotes and accounting books it was indispensible to the economy. As forms and files it was essential to bureaucracy. As letters it became the setting for the invention of the modern soul, and as newsprint it became a stage for politics. In this brilliant new book Lothar Muller describes how paper made its way from China through the Arab world to Europe, where it permeated everyday life in a variety of formats from the thirteenth century onwards, and how the paper technology revolution of the nineteenth century paved the way for the creation of the modern daily press. His key witnesses are the works of Rabelais and Grimmelshausen, Balzac and Herman Melville, James Joyce and Paul Valery. Muller writes not only about books, however: he also writes about pamphlets, playing cards, papercutting and legal pads. We think we understand the ?Gutenberg era?, but we can understand it better when we explore the world that underpinned it: the paper age. Today, with the proliferation of digital devices, paper may seem to be a residue of the past, but Muller shows that the humble technology of paper is in many ways the most fundamental medium of the modern world.

The Practice of Technical and Scientific Communication is a detailed description of the work done by technical and scientific communicators in a variety of professional settings. It is designed mainly as an educational and career planning tool for students preparing for careers in technical communication. However, it may also be used by educators who teach and advise students, by researchers who need a comprehensive picture of technical communication practice, and by employers who need a more thorough understanding of how technical communicators can contribute to their businesses.

This book exmines the 1978 "Mass Media Declaration of UNESCO," not only for its historical and diplomatic implications, but for its importance to the basic professional training and lifelong education of journalists. It is the first comprehensive book to appear on this subject. Making a landmark contribution to a heretofore vague and poorly articulated field, this volume inaugurates this document as a part of journalism training and brings it to the permanent agenda of professional debate. The book also serves as invaluable background material for reading the official UNESCO documents.

Presidential Communication is the first book to combine a study of the presidency with communications. First it builds a base for the rhetorical presidency--what it means and how it works--and why an Approach based on an analysis of presidential rhetoric and persuasion works better than others to uncover the essential nature of the office. The authors also examine the presidency from the major areas of concentration traditionally found in communications scholarship. The theoretical discussion is reinforced with case studies drawn from recent history.