This volume puts together the works of a group of distinguished scholars and active researchers in the field of media and communication studies to reflect upon the past, present, and future of new media research. The chapters examine the implications of new media technologies on everyday life, existing social institutions, and the society at large at various levels of analysis. Macro-level analyses of changing techno-social formation – such as discussions of the rise of surveillance society and the "fifth estate" – are combined with studies on concrete and specific new media phenomena, such as the rise of Pro-Am collaboration and "fan labor" online. In the process, prominent concepts in the field of new media studies, such as social capital, displacement, and convergence, are critically examined, while new theoretical perspectives are proposed and explicated. Reflecting the inter-disciplinary nature of the field of new media studies and communication research in general, the chapters interrogate into the problematic through a range of theoretical and methodological approaches. The book should offer students and researchers who are interested in the social impact of new media both critical reviews of the existing literature and inspirations for developing new research questions.

This book discusses some of the newest developments of the internet, examining its impact on political, economic and psychological processes, the shaping of communication technology under social, cultural and organizational constraints, and the development of theories, methods and pedagogical tools to account for these transformations.

As competition between companies increases, the need for effective public relations and advertising campaigns becomes imperative to the success of the business. However, with the introduction of new media, the nature of these campaigns has changed. Today’s consumers have more awareness and diversified ways to obtain knowledge, and through new media, they can provide feedback. An understanding of how to utilize new media to promote and sustain the reputation of an organization is vital for its continued success. The Handbook of Research on New Media Applications in Public Relations and Advertising is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the application of new media tools for running successful public relations and advertising campaigns. While highlighting topics such as digital advertising, online behavior, and social networking, this book is ideally designed for public relations officers, advertisers, marketers, brand managers, communication directors, social media managers, IT consultants, researchers, academicians, students, and industry practitioners.

The global web and its digital ecosystem can be seen as tools of emancipation, communication, and spreading knowledge or as means of control, fueled by capitalism, surveillance, and geopolitics. The Digital Frontier interrogates the world wide web and the digital ecosystem it has spawned to reveal how their conventions, protocols, standards, and algorithmic regulations represent a novel form of global power. Sangeet Kumar shows the operation of this power through the web's "infrastructures of control" visible at sites where the universalizing imperatives of the web run up against local values, norms, and cultures. These include how the idea of the "global common good" is used as a ruse by digital oligopolies to expand their private enclosures, how seemingly collaborative spaces can simultaneously be exclusionary as they regulate legitimate knowledge, how selfhood is being redefined online along Eurocentric ideals, and how the web's political challenge is felt differentially by sovereign nation states. In analyzing this new modality of cultural power in the global digital ecosystem, The Digital Frontier is an important read for scholars, activists, academics and students inspired by the utopian dream of a truly representative global digital network.

New Frontiers in International Communication Theory offers a wide-ranging assessment of the present state of the field of international communication and charts new directions for theory and research. It brings together renowned and emerging scholars who challenge the field to move beyond the limits of existing formulations, approaches, and trajectories, providing an alternative and a supplement to traditional approaches in analysis and study. In rethinking the central problematics of the field, exploring established and new tools and models of inquiry, and articulating new research agendas, this interdisciplinary collection anticipates the future of international communication studies.

This collection of papers comprises over ten papers published in recent years, with topics on new phenomena, new problems, new thinking, and new views in the fields of “barrier-free communication”, “new technologies and new media”, “Internet and society”, etc. They present and reflect on the new developments and new trends of current Chinese media research from different aspects, and to a certain extent outline and depict the landscape of the accelerating informatization of the Chinese society. They show the important influences of the media in the evolution of contemporary Chinese society.