New Books in Communications

Arthur Asseraf’s Electric News in Colonial Algeria (Oxford University Press, 2019) examines the workings of the “news ecosystem” in Algeria from the 1880s to the beginning of the Second World War. The study of a society divided between a dominant (European) settler minority and an Algerian Muslim majority, the book tracks the development and impact of new information technologies—the printing press, telegraph, cinema, radio (and later television)—in Algeria from the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries. Throughout its chapters, readers are reminded to resist Eurocentric and teleological frameworks of “modernization” that do not apply to societies like Algeria’s where such technologies coexisted with other forms of news circulation including manuscripts, song, and rumor/word of mouth.The book is grounded in an impressive range of sources in multiple languages. It challenges ideas about the relationship between print capitalism and nationalism over the course of this pivotal period in both Algerian and French history. Interrogating the history of colonial hegemony in and through the analysis of how Algerians accessed and interpreted the news in myriad ways often not anticipated by settler and state authorities, the book also has far-reaching implications for how we think about knowledge and power in imperial contexts more broadly. Its pages are rich with exciting and fascinating moments and stories—of surveillance, violence, and injustice, but also of the counterforces of the Algerian subversion of and resistance to colonial oppression.*Special note in March 2020: I hope you are all keeping safe and healthy and that this conversation with Arthur might be helpful in some small way right now—with work, teaching and/or as a distraction in this period of global pandemic. Thanks so much to Arthur, who was SO much fun to speak with & to all the NBFS listeners out there!Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. She is the author of Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France Between the Wars(2009). Her current research focuses on the history of French nuclear weapons and testing since 1945. Her most recent article, '"No Hiroshima in Africa": The Algerian War and the Question of French Nuclear Tests in the Sahara' appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of History of the Present. She lives and reads in Vancouver, Canada and hopes all listeners are keeping healthy and safe at this difficult time in our world. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Hot Molecules, Cold Electrons: From the Mathematics of Heat to the Development of the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Cable (Princeton University Press, 2020), by Paul Nahin, is a book that is meant for someone who is comfortable with calculus, but for those readers who are, it is a treat. It is a thorough study of the history and mathematics of the heat equation, which is not only important as an analysis of heat, its analysis marked the beginning of Fourier series. It came as a surprise to me that the heat equation was also instrumental in analyzing the problem of laying the transatlantic cable that was one of the great engineering feats of the nineteenth century. Although it isn’t necessary to work through the math to appreciate this book, I think that students studying this material would not only find Paul’s treatments easy to follow, but would benefit greatly by learning something of the history that surrounds the development of the analysis and applications of the heat equation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like rabbits or hats. Paradox works in the abstract, with words and concepts and symbols, to create the illusion of contradiction. There are no contradictions in reality, but there can appear to be. In Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy (MIT Press, 2020), Matt Cook and a few collaborators dive deeply into more than 75 paradoxes in mathematics, physics, philosophy, and the social sciences. As each paradox is discussed and resolved, Cook helps readers discover the meaning of knowledge and the proper formation of concepts―and how reason can dispel the illusion of contradiction.The journey begins with “a most ingenious paradox” from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. Readers will then travel from Ancient Greece to cutting-edge laboratories, encounter infinity and its different sizes, and discover mathematical impossibilities inherent in elections. They will tackle conundrums in probability, induction, geometry, and game theory; perform “supertasks”; build apparent perpetual motion machines; meet twins living in different millennia; explore the strange quantum world―and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

The rise of digital technology is transforming the world in which we live. Our digitalized societies demand new ways of thinking about the social, and this short book introduces readers to an approach that can deliver this: digital sociology.In What is Digital Sociology (Polity, 2019), Neil Selwyn examines the concepts, tools and practices that sociologists are developing to analyze the intersections of the social and the digital. Blending theory and empirical examples, the five chapters highlight areas of inquiry where digital approaches are taking hold and shaping the discipline of sociology today. The book explores key topics such as digital race and digital labor, as well as the fast-changing nature of digital research methods and diversifying forms of digital scholarship.In this interview, Dr. Selwyn and I discuss the overarching question guiding this book: what is digital sociology? We go on to discuss how the classical figures in sociology wrote about, and engaged with, technology, the distinctiveness of contemporary digital sociology, key methodologies, and the research ethics related to digital sociological research. I highly recommend this book for students, professors, and anyone else interested in digital humanities, big data and computational methods, or science and technology studies. This would be a great book for both undergraduate and graduate courses related to digital media and social science.Dr. Neil Selwyn is a professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. His research and teaching focuses on the place of digital media in everyday life, and the sociology of technology (non)use in educational settings. Neil has written extensively on a number of issues, including digital exclusion, education technology policymaking and the student experience of technology-based learning. You can find him on Twitter @Neil_Selwyn.Krystina Millar is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University. Her research interests include gender, sociology of the body, and sexuality. You can find her on Twitter at @KrystinaMillar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

We often think of censorship as governments removing material or harshly punishing people who spread or access information. But Margaret E. Roberts’ new book Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall (Princeton University Press, 2020) reveals the nuances of censorship in the age of the internet.She identifies 3 types of censorship: fear (threatening punishment to deter the spread or access of information); friction (increasing the time or money necessary to access information); and flooding (publishing information to distract, confuse, or dilute). Roberts shows how China customizes repression by using friction and flooding (censorship that is porous) to deter the majority of citizens whose busy schedules and general lack of interest in politics make it difficult to spend extra time and money accessing information. Highly motivated elites (e.g. journalists, activists) who are willing to spend the extra time and money to overcome the boundaries of both friction and flooding meanwhile may face fear and punishment. The two groups end up with very different information – complicating political coordination between the majority and elites.Roberts’s highly accessible book negotiates two extreme positions (the internet will bring government accountability v. extreme censorship) to provide a more nuanced understanding of digital politics, the politics of repression, and political communication. Even if there is better information available, governments can create friction on distribution or flood the internet with propaganda. Looking at how China manages censorship provides insights not only for other authoritarian governments but also democratic governments. Liberal democracies might not use fear but they can affect access and availability – and they may find themselves (as the United States did in the 2016 presidential election) subject to flooding from external sources. The podcast includes Roberts’ insights on how the Chinese censored information on COVID-19 and the effect that had on the public.Foreign Affairs named Censored one of its Best Books of 2018 and it was also honored with the Goldsmith Award and the Best Book in Human Rights Section and Information Technology and Politics section of the American Political Science Association.Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Life hackers track and analyze the food they eat, the hours they sleep, the money they spend, and how they're feeling on any given day. They share tips on the most efficient ways to tie shoelaces and load the dishwasher; they employ a tomato-shaped kitchen timer as a time-management tool. They see everything as a system composed of parts that can be decomposed and recomposed, with algorithmic rules that can be understood, optimized, and subverted. In Hacking Life: Systematized Living and its Discontents (MIT Press, 2019), Joseph Reagle examines these attempts to systematize living and finds that they are the latest in a long series of self-improvement methods. Life hacking, he writes, is self-help for the digital age's creative class.Reagle chronicles the history of life hacking, from Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack through Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Timothy Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek. He describes personal outsourcing, polyphasic sleep, the quantified self movement, and hacks for pickup artists. Life hacks can be useful, useless, and sometimes harmful (for example, if you treat others as cogs in your machine). Life hacks have strengths and weaknesses, which are sometimes like two sides of a coin: being efficient is not the same thing as being effective; being precious about minimalism does not mean you are living life unfettered; and compulsively checking your vital signs is its own sort of illness. With Hacking Life, Reagle sheds light on a question even non-hackers ponder: what does it mean to live a good life in the new millennium?John Danaher is a lecturer the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is also the host of the wonderful podcast Philosophical Disquisitions. You can find it here on Apple Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Technological advancement through the 20th century has allowed religious leaders to broaden their reach, first through print, then televangelism, and now, social media.In this podcast, Dr Ryan P. Burge, of the Eastern Illinois University, discusses how religious leaders use twitter today, whether successful tweeting means having conversations, and the extent to which evangelicals engage with politics on twitter. His discussion is an extension of his paper “Is Social Media a Digital Pulpit? How Evangelical Leaders Use Twitter to Encourage the Faithful and Publicize Their Work,” which is published in Brill’s Journal of Religion, Media, and Digital Culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo--interviews Kristen Hoerl (she/hers) on her impressive new book The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements (University Press of Mississippi, 2018).The Bad Sixties explores the construction of “the sixties” in Hollywood media, from Family Ties and The Wonder Years to Law and Order, arguing that these texts have proved dismissive, if not adversarial, to the role of dissent in fostering progressive social change. These stories portray a period in which urban riots, antiwar protests, sexual experimentation, drug abuse, and feminism led to national division and moral decay. According to Hoerl, these messages supply distorted civics lessons about what we should value and how we might legitimately participate in our democracy. Hoerl describes our contemporary relationship to the sixties, shaped by these media portrayals, as “selective amnesia.” Selective amnesia removes the spectacular events and figures that define the late-1960s from their motives and context, flattening their meaning into reductive stereotypes. Despite popular television and film, Hoerl explains, memory of 1960s activism still offers a potent resource for imagining how we can strive collectively to achieve social justice and equality. Winner of the 2018 Book Award from the American Studies Division of the National Communication Association. Dr. Hoerl can be reached at khoerl2@unl.edu if you have feedback or questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Joshua Foa Dienstag, Professor of Political Science and Law at UCLA, considers, in his new book, the interaction between our experiences in watching films and our positions as citizens in a representative democracy. In both situations, as an audience member watching a movie and as a citizen in a representative republic, we need to understand the interactions we have with others, and consider how we experience representation, in politics and in film. These are not necessarily spaces and concepts that are usually woven together, but Dienstag makes the case that they should be considered in regard to each other because they both are forms of representation, and important emotional dimensions are threaded through each form.Cinema Pessimism: A Political Theory of Representation and Reciprocity (Oxford University Press, 2019) begins by diving into the idea of representative government, especially in contrast to idealized notions of direct democracy. Dienstag examines some of the history of political thought about representative democracy and focuses on the contemporary dialogue among political theorists about reciprocity as both necessary and difficult in the representation relationship. If we could have more fully reciprocal relationships with our elected officials, inequality and corruption might not be problematic issues. Given that our democracy has grown substantially since the early days of the republic, we, as citizens, are far less connected to our elected officials. Cinema Pessimism holds up a mirror to this question of the estrangement of political representation and examines our experiences in context of filmic representations, which are structured to engage us emotionally and through images that “look like us.” Thus, Dienstag weaves together our experiences as audience members, where we see narrative constructions of these issues of representation and reciprocity, and our political experiences of the same.In both cases, Dienstag warns that we are becoming disconnected—disconnected from individuals in our lives, from our roles as citizens, and from actual emotional engagement with others—and this disconnection is particularly problematic when the idea of representation and reciprocity is predicated on connections. Cinema Pessimism toggles between thinking about the political experiences of citizens and the emotional and visual experiences of audience members, tracing out the overlapping components of these often-separated roles. Dienstag’s analysis combines visual cultural artifacts and political theory, focusing our thinking on the danger that representative politics may pose for freedom and equality. Cinema Pessimism examines a number of cinematic artifacts, some more overtly political than others, in the course of discussing what we see, feel, and experience as viewers and audience members. This novel and rigorous analysis will be of interest to many readers, bringing together a variety of fields and disciplines, including political theory, philosophy, media studies, cultural studies, and film studies.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

In her recently published Migrant Anxieties: Italian Cinema in a Transnational Frame (Indiana University Press, 2019), Áine O'Healy explores how filmmakers in Italy have probed the tensions accompanying the country’s shift from an emigrant nation to a destination point for over five million immigrants over the course of three decades. Migrant Anxieties traces a phenomenology of anxiety that is not only present at the sociopolitical level but also interwoven into the narrative strategies of over 30 films produced since 1990, throwing into sharp relief the interface between the local and the global in this transnational era. Starting with the representation of post-communist migrations to Italy from Eastern Europe and subsequent arrivals from Africa through the controversial frontier of Lampedusa, O’Healy explores topics as diverse as the configuration of migrant labor, affective surrogacy, Italian whiteness, and the legacy of Italy’s colonial history. Showing how contemporary filmmaking practices in Italy are linked to changes in the broader media landscape, O’Healy analyzes the ways in which both Italian and migrant filmmakers are reimagining Italian society and remapping the nation’s borderscape.Giancarlo Lombardi is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the College of Staten Island and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has published widely on European and North American serial drama, on Italian Film and Cultural Studies, and on cultural representations of Italian terrorism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications