In Organizational Approaches to the Works of Joss Whedon, Andrew F. Herrmann offers an in-depth analysis of the connections between communication, organization, gender, discourse, and ethics in the works of Joss Whedon. Herrmann examines how characters go to work in organizations, how characters fight against organizations, and how some organizations themselves are characters. Whedon's works offer both popular and scholarly appeal, often including portrayals of organizations, such as The Union of Allied Planets in Firefly and Serenity and S.H.I.E.L.D. in The Avengers and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Herrmann argues that by looking at how Whedon portrays these organizations-including the ways in which employees are impacted by their organizations and how decision-making is affected by gender, masculinity, and economic discourses-we can gain fresh insights into our own working lives. Scholars of film studies, organizational communication, gender, rhetoric, and ethics will find this book particularly useful.

Beyond New Media: Discourse and Critique in a Polymediated Age examines a host of differing positions on media in order to explore how those positions can inform one another and build a basis for future engagements with media theory, research, and practice. Herbig, Herrmann, and Tyma have brought together a number of media scholars with differing paradigmatic backgrounds to debate the relative applicability of existing theories and in doing so develop a new approach: polymediation. Each contributor's disciplinary background is diverse, spanning interpersonal communication, media studies, organizational communication, instructional design, rhetoric, mass communication, gender studies, popular culture studies, informatics, and persuasion. Although each of these scholars brings with them a unique perspective on media's role in people's lives, what binds them together is the belief that meaningful discourse about media must be an ongoing conversation that is open to critique and revision in a rapidly changing mediated culture. By studying media in a polymediated way, Beyond New Media addresses more completely our complex relationship to media(tion) in our everyday lives.

Popular culture helps construct, define, and impact our everyday realities and must be taken seriously because popular culture is, simply, popular. Communication Perspectives on Popular Culture brings together communication experts with diverse backgrounds, from interpersonal communication, business and organizational communication, mass communication, media studies, narrative, rhetoric, gender studies, autoethnography, popular culture studies, and journalism. The contributors tackle such topics as music, broadcast and Netflix television shows, movies, the Internet, video games, and more, as they connect popular culture to personal concerns as well as larger political and societal issues. The variety of approaches in these chapters are simultaneously situated in the present while building a foundation for the future, as contributors explore new and emerging ways to approach popular culture. From case studies to emerging theories, the contributors examine how popular culture, media, and communication influence our everyday lives.