Books for course in Media & Politics

For the Fall 2014 course in Media and Politics you should read the four books below, as well as the articles in this list.

• Curran, J., Fenton, N., & Freedman, D. (2012). Misunderstanding the Internet. London: Taylor and Francis. Chap. 1-2, 4-6. 131 pages.
• Hodkinson, P. (2011). Media, culture and society: an introduction. Los Angeles: SAGE. Chap. 1-, 9-11. 200 pages.
• Hoskins, A., & O’Loughlin, B. (2010). War and media: the emergence of diffused war. Cambridge: Polity Press. Chap. 1-9. 184 pages.
• Oates, S. (2008). Introduction to media and politics. Los Angeles: Sage. Chap. 1-10. 175 pages

You can read more about these books below. The descriptions are excerpts from the publishers' descriptions:

	Misunderstanding the Internet is a short introduction, encompassing the history, sociology, politics and economics of the internet and its impact on society. The book has a simple three part structure: Part 1 looks at the history of the internet, and offers an overview of the internet’s place in society Part 2 focuses on the control and economics of the internet Part 3 examines the internet’s political and cultural influence Misunderstanding the Internet is a polemical, sociologically and historically informed textbook that aims to challenge both popular myths and existing academic.
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	The text is organized into three distinctive parts, which fall neatly into research and teaching requirements: Elements of the Media (which covers media technologies, the organization of the media industry, media content and media users); Media, Power and Control (which addresses questions of the media and manipulation, the construction of news, public service broadcasting, censorship, commercialization); and Media, Identity and Culture (which covers issues of the media and ethnicity, gender, subcultures, audiences and fans).
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	The trinity of government, military and publics has been drawn together into immediate and unpredictable relationships in a "new media ecology" that has ushered in new asymmetries in the waging of war and terror. War is diffused through a complex mesh of our everyday media. Paradoxically, this both facilitates and contains the presence and power of enemies near and far. The conventions of so-called traditional warfare have been splintered by the availability and connectivity of the principal locus of war today: the electronic and digital media. Hoskins and O'Loughlin identify and illuminate the conditions of what they term "diffused war" and the new challenges it raises for the actors who wage and counter warfare, for their agents and mechanisms of the new media and for mass publics.
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	This book compares media institutions and political experiences in countries around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia, to enable students to think critically about the central questions in the study of media and politics, including: Are the media a force for democracy or a tool of repression? What specific influences shape news production in different societies? What happens to media freedom in war and why? How can we explain the relationship between the media, terrorists, and citizens in the post-9/11 world? Can the internet bring about political change?
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