New Media, Communication, and Society is a fast, straightforward examination of key topics which will be useful and engaging for both students and professors. It connects students to wide-ranging resources and challenges them to develop their own opinions. Moreover, it encourages students to develop media literacy so they can speak up and make a difference in the world. Short chapters with lots of illustrations encourage reading and provide a springboard for conversation inside and outside of the classroom. Wide-ranging topics spark interest. Chapters include suggestions for additional exploration, a media literacy exercise, and a point that is just for fun. Every chapter includes thought leaders, ranging from leading researchers to business leaders to entrepreneurs, from Socrates to Doug Rushkoff and Lance Strate to Bill Gates.
"We live in an environment characterized by extraordinary complexity, one that includes all manner of new media and digital technologies, mobile devices, wired and wireless connectivity, networks, the Internet and the web, social media, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, ubiquitous computing, cloud storage, data mining, streaming content, multi-screen viewing, information overload, participatory media, and so much more. Learning how to navigate our new media environment is no easy task, but all the more vital for anyone associated with the media professions, indeed for anyone entering the twenty-first century workplace, and ultimately for every one of us, as citizens in a democracy. There has long been a need for a text that provides a clear, accessible, and comprehensive introduction to new media, and at last, thanks to Mary Ann Allison and Cheryl A. Casey, we have one. New Media, Communication, and Society delivers exactly what students and instructors need from an introductory text, and indeed exceeds all expectations of what such a text might provide."-Lance Strate, Fordham University, author of Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition