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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Communication studies > General
The papers in this volume consider a general area of study known as network routing. The underlying problems are conceptually simple, yet mathematically complex and challenging. How can we best route material or people from one place to another? Or, how can we best design a system (for instance locate facilities) to provide services and goods as efficiently and equitably as possible? The problems encountered in answering these questions often have an underlying combinatorial structure, for example, either we dispatch a vehicle or we do not, or we use one particular route or another. The problems also typically have an underlying network structure (a communication or transportation network). In addition, models for these problems are often very large with hundreds or thousands of constraints and variables. A companion volume in the "Handbook" series, entitled "Network Models", treats basic network models such as minimum cost flows, matching and the travelling salesman problem, as well as, several complex network topics, not directly related to routing, such as network design and network reliability.
This book analyses the complex relationship between directness, indirectness, politeness and impoliteness. Definitions of directness and indirectness are discussed and problematised from a discursive theoretical perspective.
Studies in Communications is a series that presents contemporary
scholarship on the central dynamic of society - communications.
Theoretically grounded, empirical studies drawn from the social
sciences focus on the institutional patterns and the dynamic
processes of meaning construction. Drawing from theories in mass
media/communications, critical theory, comparative and historical
analysis, qualitative and quantitative research yield compelling
themes. Applications for policy and for teaching are incorporated.
Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, concerns about fake news have fostered calls for government regulation and industry intervention to mitigate the influence of false content. These proposals are hindered by a lack of consensus concerning the definition of fake news or its origins. Media scholar Nolan Higdon contends that expanded access to critical media literacy education, grounded in a comprehensive history of fake news, is a more promising solution to these issues. The Anatomy of Fake News offers the first historical examination of fake news that takes as its goal the effective teaching of critical news literacy in the United States. Higdon employs a critical-historical media ecosystems approach to identify the producers, themes, purposes, and influences of fake news. The findings are then incorporated into an invaluable fake news detection kit. This much-needed resource provides a rich history and a promising set of pedagogical strategies for mitigating the pernicious influence of fake news.
Despite hundreds of millions of visitors each year, zoos have remained outside of the realm of philosophical analysis. This lack of theoretical examination is interesting considering the paradoxical position within which a zoo is situated, being a space of animal confinement as well as a site that provides valuable tools for species conservation, public education, and entertainment. Why Do We Go to the Zoo? argues that the zoo is a legitimate space of academic inquiry. The modes of communication taking place at the zoo that keep drawing us back time and time again beg for a careful investigation. In this book, the meaning of the zoo as communicative space is explored. This book relies on the phenomenological method from Edmund Husserl and a rhetorical approach to examine the interaction between people and animals in the zoo space. Phenomenology, the philosophy of examining the engaged everyday lived experience, is a natural method to use in the project. Despite its rich history and tradition it is interesting that there are very few books explaining "how to do" phenomenology. Why Do We Go to the Zoo? provides a detailed account of how to actually conduct a phenomenological analysis. The author spent thousands of hours in zoos watching people and animals interact as well as talking with people both formally and informally. This book asks readers to bracket their preconceptions of what goes on in the zoo and, instead, to explore the meaning of powerful zoo experiences while reminding us of the troubled history of zoos.
The personal anecdotes and candid reflections on the lives and work of these important critical scholars, and their predictions on the future of the field, make this book a valuable resource for scholars and students of communication, media studies, political economy, political science, and those interested in critical theoretical approaches.
As Others See Us, first published in 1994 by Gordon &
Breach, is a book designed to introduce the reader to a new way of
thinking about the movements, both conscious and unconscious, that
we make every day and every second of our lives. Goldman describes
the human experience as a continuous stream of body movements,
though we are only aware of a small fraction of the more obvious
and intrusive physical acts. The aim of this book is first to
increase awareness of the subtleties and complexities of our body
language, and then to encourage the reader to perceive these
intricacies in their own movements and in those of others. Finally,
with a more complete understanding and appreciation for the power
of body language and non-verbal communication, one can achieve a
deeper connection between physical and intellectual spheres, to
allow for a fuller and more engaging experience of communication
and expression. This new knowledge of the human body's movements
not only permits one to more accurately perceive the emotions and
thoughts of others, but can allow a glimpse into one's own mind, to
see how we present ourselves to the world, and whether our thoughts
are in sync with our actions.
The charge that symbolic interactionism (SI) is impaired by an astructural bias orbits around a number of sociology's core concerns: structure and agency, methodological individualism and methodological holism, the micro-macro link, the proper procedures to conduct research and when to state and how to test hypotheses and, whether interactionism can address structural concerns such as class, race, gender, power, and oppression. The Astructural Bias: Myth or Reality constitutes a collection of outstanding essays by scholars who address the concern of an astructural bias. Chapters explore the nature of social structure and SI's effectiveness in using the concept. This volume is beneficial for contemporary interactionists and their critics, social theorists, and all students of sociology who are interested in assessing the ability of SI to fully address the grave social circumstances and social problems of an increasingly precarious and dangerous world.
There is a struggle over governance of the global information
network among national governments and international organizations,
corporations and NGOs, elites and civil society. The outcome will
determine how we communicate, the extent of our civil liberties and
human rights, the profitability of e-commerce, and the richness of
cultural expression. This collection looks at the processes by
which the global information policy regime is being formed -
themselves in conflict - as a foundation for understanding its
emergent features.
Cassirer's thought-provoking essay Form and Technology (1930) considers the theoretical work performed by material instruments and, in so doing, it ascribes to technology a new dignity as a genuine tool of the mind in equal company with language and art. Germinating in this essay, we find an ambitious program for a new kind of philosophy of technology that resonates with contemporary approaches focusing on material apparatuses, relational and performative processes, and the embodied, embedded, and enacted nature of perception and cognition. Cassirer's approach, however, is unique in the way that it integrates logical concerns, championed by scientifically oriented philosophers, with the concerns of the historical and cultural sciences. The current revival of interest in Cassirer's thinking has precisely to do with its potential for bridging unproductive intellectual gaps. Form and Technology, especially, provides a rich resource for current attempts, across disciplines, to develop new conceptual and ontological frameworks. Cassirer's classic essay, translated here into English for the first time, is accompanied by ten critical essays that explore its current relevance.
This book covers an approach to conversational informatics which encompasses science and technology for understanding and augmenting conversation in the network age. A major challenge in engineering is to develop a technology for conveying not just messages but also underlying wisdom. Relevant theories and practices in cognitive linguistics and communication science, as well as techniques developed in computational linguistics and artificial intelligence, are discussed.
This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the free press-fair trial debate over news cameras in the courtroom--one that discusses the issue from a historical, legal, and social scientific perspective. It incorporates the key aspects of the debate in one volume, examining witness privacy and protection, defendant reputation, the purported "educational" benefits of televising trials, the coverage of trials from an entertainment or voyeurisitic perspective, and whether any proposed benefits of televising trials are negated by potential negative costs to the participants involved or the audience in general.
This book explores the various choices speakers or communicators make when expressing power relations in modern societies. The volume brings together several disciplines, such as linguistics, sociology, communication studies and social psychology, to give insight into how interactants co-construct different aspects of power in their everyday life.
This book offers a comprehensive account of the nature and development of political communication in Africa. In light of the growing number of African states now turning towards democratic rule, as well as the growing utilization of information technologies in Africa, the contributors examine topics such as: the role of social media in politics, strategic political communication, political philosophy and political communication, Habermas in Africa, gender and political communication, image dilemma in Africa, and issues in political communication research in Africa, and identify the frontiers for future research on political communication in Africa.
This 21st volume in the series discusses a variety of topics in the field of symbolic interaction. It is divided into three parts, which address: remembering Anselm Strauss; the pragmatic heritage; and, reading self, media and culture.
Translation and interpreting (T/I) and cross-cultural communication activities in the Asia Pacific are unique in that they involve vastly different languages and cultures. Such differences pose challenges for T/I practitioners and researchers as well as scholars of cross-cultural studies. In Translation and Cross-Cultural Communication Studies in the Asia Pacific, Leong Ko and Ping Chen provide a comprehensive and in-depth account of various issues encountered in translation and interpreting activities and cross-cultural communication in the Asia Pacific. The book covers six areas including translation research from the historical perspective and different issues in translation studies; research on literary translation; studies on translation for special purposes; research on interpreting; translation and interpreting training; and research on issues in cross-cultural communication.
Winner of The American Journalism Historians Association Book of the Year Award, 2015 This study of American public relations history traces evangelicalism to corporate public relations via reform and the church-based temperance movement. It encompasses a leading evangelical of the Second Great Awakening, Rev. Charles Grandison Finney, and some of his predecessors; early reformers at Oberlin College, where Finney spent the second half of his life; leaders of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League of America; and twentieth-century public relations pioneer Ivy Ledbetter Lee, whose work reflecting religious and business evangelism has not yet been examined. Observations about American public relations history icon P. T. Barnum, whose life and work touched on many of the themes presented here, also are included as thematic bookends. As such, this study cuts a narrow channel through a wide swath of literature and a broad sweep of historical time, from the mid-eighteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century, to examine the deeper and deliberate strategies for effecting change, for persuading a community of adherents or opponents, or even a single soul to embrace that which an advocate intentionally presented in a particular way for a specific outcome-prescriptions, as it turned out, not only for religious conversion but also for public relations initiatives.
Winner of the 2014 Bonnie Ritter Book Award Winner of the 2013 James W. Carey Media Research Award As unprecedented waves of young, rural women journey to cities in China, not only to work, but also to "see the world" and gain some autonomy, they regularly face significant institutional obstacles as well as deep-seated anti-rural prejudices. Based on immersive fieldwork, Cara Wallis provides an intimate portrait of the social, cultural, and economic implications of mobile communication for a group of young women engaged in unskilled service work in Beijing, where they live and work for indefinite periods of time. While simultaneously situating her work within the fields of feminist studies, technology studies, and communication theory, Wallis explores the way in which the cell phone has been integrated into the transforming social structures and practices of contemporary China, and the ways in which mobile technology enables rural young women-a population that has been traditionally marginalized and deemed as "backward" and "other"-to participate in and create culture, allowing them to perform a modern, rural-urban identity. In this theoretically rich and empirically grounded analysis, Wallis provides original insight into the co-construction of technology and subjectivity as well as the multiple forces that shape contemporary China.
Friendship is an essential part of human experience, involving ideas of love and morality as well as material and pragmatic concerns. Making and having friends is a central aspect of everyday life in all human societies. Yet friendship is often considered of secondary significance in comparison to domains such as kinship, economics and politics. How important are friends in different cultural contexts? What would a study of society viewed through the lens of friendship look like? Does friendship affect the shape of society as much as society moulds friendship? Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Europe, this volume offers answers to these questions and examines the ideology and practice of friendship as it is embedded in wider social contexts and transformations.
Why? This question drives scientific inquiry, not least in the social sciences: why war, revolution, racism and inequality? Asking and debating about 'why?', however, is not the prerogative of scholars; social actors, endowed with thought, reflection and speech, do it too. While we all dance to the beat of genes, emotions, identities and habituated norms, we occasionally stop to ask 'why?' The social sciences have been long preoccupied with the ostensibly objective 'why' while sidelining the social, intersubjective 'why?' This book focuses on the latter, analysing the social actors' search for justification in their public, political sphere. Justifications, broadly understood, are answers to why-questions given and debated by social actors. The chapters focus on public justifications. While the contributors do not submit that private encounters addressing why-questions do not matter, they choose to put public encounters addressing these questions under scrutiny. Given the ongoing telecommunications revolution, and new political practices associated with it, these public encounters become increasingly pertinent in our evolving political orders. This book originally published as a special issue in Contemporary Politics.
Genre, Gender, Race, and World Cinema is an innovative anthology that introduces the study of film theory using the four topics of genre, gender, race, and world cinema, to encourage critical discussion. * A major anthology geared towards course use, which covers key concepts in film studies through analysis of important films from American, Asian, European and African cinema * Combines formal, historical, cultural, and theoretical approaches to study * Analyzes how film represents and influences individual and societal constructs of identity * Uses selected readings to introduce inter-textual relations between the readings and the films they discuss * Contains section introductions that map the themes and histories of each topic, and raise theoretical issues specific to each
This 19th volume in the series discusses a variety of topics in the field of symbolic interaction. |
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