New Books in Communications

Climate Hegemony: Confronting the Politics of Environmental Impasse with Laurie Parsons (LSE Press, 2026)

Climate action is at an impasse. Its political opponents are stronger than ever, its advocates powerless. Almost every major government and corporation expresses their c

Power Surge: Conglomerate Hollywood and the Studio System's Last Hurrah with Thomas Schatz (U California Press, 2026)

Thomas Schatz returns us to an era when a newly enriched movie industry rediscovered its creative energy, and indie went mainstream without losing its edge. Between 1989

Projecting Knowledge: The Optical Lantern and Science Communication, 1880s-1940s with Dulce da Rocha Gonçalves, Nico de Klerk and Frank Kessler (Brepols, 2026)

Projecting Knowledge: The Optical Lantern and Science Communication, 1880s-1940s (Brepols, 2026) takes one of those fundamental questions - how does knowledge circulate?

Wave Makers and the Rise of #MeToo in Taiwan: Media, Empathy, and Digital Testimony with Xinling Li (Anthem Press, 2026)

When the Taiwanese political drama Wave Makers appeared in April 2023, few anticipated its impact beyond the screen. Within weeks, survivors in politics, the media, acade

Playing with Plays: Drama and Early Modern Chinese Media Ecologies with Yinghui Wu (Brill, 2025)

How was drama experienced in early modern China? It was not tied to a single medium such as the page or the stage, but operated in a media ecology—an environment in which

Ehsan Dehghan, "The Discursive-Digital Link: Antagonism and Polarisation in Digital Spaces" (Routledge, 2025)

We are in a state of crisis. Democracy is under threat, authoritarian politics are on the rise, and digital media—once heralded as emancipatory technologies—are increasin

Glenn Peers, "Strange and Familiar History of Byzantine Art: Interpretation, Risk, and Empathy" (ARC Humanities Press, 2026)

Strange and Familiar History of Byzantine Ar: Interpretation, Risk, and Empathy (ARC Humanities Press, 2026) represents a risky experiment in art-history writing. It take

Joe Jackson, "Kahlil Joseph and the Audiovisual Atlantic: Music, Modernity, Transmedia Art" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

Kahlil Joseph has collaborated with musicians FKA twigs, Flying Lotus, Sampha and Shabazz Palaces among many others. He has directed numerous films, music videos and adve

Samantha Barbas, "Hate Speech: The Legal and Cultural History of an American Dilemma" (U California Press, 2026)

The United States has no hate speech laws; hate speech is generally considered to be free speech under the First Amendment. In Hate Speech: The Legal and Cultural History

Jennifer Hoewe, "Enjoyment Is Breaking News: How We Became Less Informed and More Divided (and How to Fix It)" (MIT Press, 2026)

Why we crave enjoyment from news, how our news use divides us, and what we can do to create better news and more informed citizens. TikTok. Short-form reels. Late-night T

Emeka Umejei, "China in African Media: Between Influence Operations and Decolonization" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

At its core, China in African Media: Between Influence Operations and Decolonization (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a book about power, journalism, geopolitical influence, and kno

Debarati Sanyal, "Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges" (Fordham, 2025)

Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges (Fordham, 2025) investigates the consequences of unfolding catastrophes across the world and the displacement they c

Violaine Roussel, "Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming" (Princeton UP, 2026)

In Hollywood today, thousands of data specialists work for streaming video platforms, playing a role not just in distribution and marketing but also in decisions about co

Autumn Lorimer Linford, "Extra! Extra! A History of America's Girl Newsies" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)

American pop culture loves newsies. The children who bawled out headlines and sold newspapers on city streets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have be

Michael Diniscia and Ellyn M Toscano eds. "Civility Unbound: Contesting a Democratic Value" (NYU Press, 2026)

The idea of civility goes back to classical Rome and the ways in which citizens engaged one another within the republic. The term itself is often used in a number of di

Done in a Day with the Vietnam War: Elisa Tamarkin (JP)

Elisa Tamarkin, an English prof of high repute (Anglophilia and Apropos of Something: A History of Irrelevance and Relevance) at UC Berkeley, joins RTB to discuss Done in

John Trafton, "Los Angeles and Film: A Cultural History of 20th-Century Hollywood" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

It is impossible to talk about the City of Angels without talking about its movie business. The history of American cinema is so intertwined with Los Angeles that the ter

Karin Barber, "Much Matter in a Penny Paper: Early Yoruba Print Culture in Lagos, 1910–1930" (Ohio UP, 2026)

Much Matter in a Penny Paper: Early Yoruba Print Culture in Lagos,1910-1930 (Ohio UP, 2026) is a survey of the history and development of Yoruba print culture in Lagos, N

Steven Herman: Behind the White House Curtain

Steven Herman spent 1990-2006 in Japan, most of those years with Voice of America. He served as South East Asia Bureau Chief as well as North East Asia Bureau Chief for t

Corrado Neri, "Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture" (Anthem Press, 2026)

Taiwanese cinema is internationally celebrated for the auteurs of the Taiwan New Cinema. Yet over the past fifteen years, ghosts, demons, curses and haunted screens hav