Communicative Engagement and Social Liberation: Justice Will Be Made recognizes limitations in contemporary understandings that separate history and rhetoric. Drawing together ontological and epistemic perspectives to allow for a fuller appreciation of communication in shaping lived-experience, facets of the two academic subjects are united in acts of communicative engagement. Communicative engagement draws from Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s writings on the human condition; extends the communicative praxis of philosopher Calvin O. Schrag by reuniting theōria-poíēsis-praxis; expands Ramsey Eric Ramsey’s writings to provide ground for vitalizing social liberation; and includes the work of philosophers including Hans-Georg Gadamer, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Michel Foucault as well as philosophers of communication including Lenore Langsdorf, Michael J. Hyde, Corey Anton, and others who guide a recollection of the significance of poíēsis in human communication. Myrtilla Miner, Mary White Ovington, and Jessie Daniel Ames dedicated their lives to being out-of-place and speaking out-of-turn to alter the way humanity was understood by members of society at large. The lived-experiences of these historical figures assists readers in recognizing how creativity (poíēsis) can potentially enable liberation from restrictive social circumstances.

Social Networking: Redefining Communication in the Digital Age fulfills a pressing demand in social network literature by bringing together international experts from the fields of communication, new media technologies, marketing and advertising, public relations and journalism, business, and education. In this volume contributors traces online social networking practices across national borders, cultural confines, and geographic limits. The book delves into the socioeconomic, political, cultural, and professional dimensions of social networking around the globe, and explores the similarities, distinctions, and specific characteristics of social media networks in diverse settings. The chapters offer an important contribution to the scholarly research on the uses and applications of online social networking around the world and pertain to a broad range of academic fields. Overall, the volume addresses a subject matter of keen interest to academics and practitioners alike and provides a much-needed forum for sharing innovative research practices and exchanging new ideas.

This book provides an inside look at the discipline of Communication. In this collection of chapters, top scholars from a wide range of subfields discuss how they have experienced and how they study the crucial issues of our time. The 2020s opened with a series of events with massive implications for the ways we communicate, from the COVID-19 pandemic, a summer of protests for social justice, and climate change-related natural disasters, to one of the most contentious presidential elections in modern U.S. history. The chapters in this book provide snapshots of many of these issues as seen through the eyes of specialists in the major subfields of Communication, including interpersonal, organizational, strategic, environmental, religious, social justice, risk, sport, health, family, instructional, and political communication. Written in an informal style that blends personal narrative with accessible explanation of basic concepts, the book is ideal for introducing students to the range and practical applications of Communication discipline. This book comprises a valuable companion text for Introduction to Communication courses as well as a primary resource for Capstone and Introduction to Graduate Studies courses. Further, this collection provides meaningful insights for Communication scholars as we look ahead to the remainder of the 2020s and beyond.

Around the time this book is being written the world is faced with threats of terrorism, random shootings in various public places on a global scale, increased school violence especially in the United States, increased racial, ethnic, and religious tension worldwide as well as global forced displacement of people due to violence and human rights violations. Given this context, this project turns attention to the problematic of the “uprootedness of the modern man” in our age of technological advancement, globalization, and distraction. It introduces an innovative perspective to the study of communication ethics and the larger field of communication studies through an aesthetic ecology framework. The concept of aesthetic ecology refers to an environment that involves material, conceptual, and contemplative elements that are part of the ongoing dialogue between our sensuous and interpretive engagements in/with the world. Each chapter of this book explores an aspect of this aesthetic ecology in facilitating existential rootedness in connection to communication ethics.

Tenacious hope, the heart of a just and free society During the Enlightenment, Scottish intellectuals and administrators met the demands of profit and progress while shepherding concerns for self and other, individual and community, and family and work. Communication Ethics and Tenacious Hope captures the “unity of contraries,” offering the Scottish Enlightenment as an exemplar of tenacious hope countering the excesses of individualism. Ronald C. Arnett reveals two stories: the struggle between optimism and tenacious hope, and optimism’s ultimate triumph in the exclusion of difference and the reification of progress as an ultimate good. In chapters that detail the legacies of Lord Provost George Drummond, Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Reid, George Campbell, Adam Ferguson, and Sir Walter Scott, Arnett highlights the problematic nature of optimism and the ethical agency of tenacious hope. Arnett illustrates the creative union of education and administration, the ability to accept doubt within systems of knowledge and imagination, and an abiding connection to local soil. As principles of progress, free will, and capitalism swept Europe, proponents of optimism envisioned a world of consumerism and absolutes. In contrast, practitioners of tenacious hope embraced uncertainty and compassion as pragmatic necessities. This work continues Arnett’s scholarship, articulating the vital importance of communication ethics. Those seeking to discern and support a temporal sense of the good in this historical moment will find in this timely work the means to pursue, hold, and nourish tenacious hope. This insightful theorization of the Scottish Enlightenment distills the substance of a just and free society for meeting dangerous and uncertain times.

Global communication can be difficult in the best of circumstances. The contributors in this book take seriously the premise that one can examine communication within specific global settings and scenes with the goal of ensuring that the meanings made among those within specific communities is more clearly understood. This includes recognizing that we often communicate based on specific assumptions and act in ways that have normative bases that are shared with those within communities, but are often difficult to discern or navigate by those who are not members of them. Situated within the Ethnography of Communication research program, the contributors in this volume use Cultural Discourse Analysis to examine such practices, a theory and methodology developed by Donal Carbaugh over the past thirty years. The book is a celebration of his work and career, in which forty-four prominent Communication scholars and practitioners come together to use this framework to examine pressing communication issues across the globe. The book includes a preface by Gerry Philipsen that is an academic history of Carbaugh’s career, an introduction outlining the history and current practice of Cultural Discourse Analysis, sixteen data based chapters using the framework to examine a broad range of inter/cultural communication practices across the globe, and an epilogue by Carbaugh reviewing this research and its future trajectory. The book is a handbook of Cultural Discourse Analysis for examining the latest in Cultural Discourse Analysis research and learning how to do such work that will be useful to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in a broad range of fields, inter/cultural communication scholars, and all those who seek to better understand and communicate in the global world today.

Ethics in communication and media has arguably reached a pivotal stage of maturity in the last decade, moving from disparate lines of inquiry to a theory-driven, interdisciplinary field presenting normative frameworks and philosophical explications for communicative practices. The intent of this volume is to present this maturation, to reflect the vibrant state of ethics theorizing and to illuminate promising pathways for future research.