"One of America’s most experienced and exemplary journalists has written an unsparing analysis of the dreadful consequences -- for journalism and the nation -- of ‘how the news lost a race to the bottom with itself.’” -- George F. Will In this national bestseller, Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor, takes readers inside America’s broken newsrooms that have succumbed to the temptation of “rage revenue.” One of America’s sharpest political analysts, Stirewalt employs his trademark wit and insight to reveal how these media organizations slant coverage – and why that drives political division and rewards outrageous conduct. The New York Times wrote that Stirewalt’s book "is an often candid reflection on the state of political journalism and his time at Fox News, where such post-mortem assessments are not common..." Broken News is a fascinating, deeply researched, conversation-provoking study of how the news is made and how it must be repaired. Stirewalt goes deep inside the history of the industry to explain how today’s media divides America for profit. And he offers practical advice for how readers, listeners, and viewers can (and should) become better news consumers for the sake of the republic.

Canada is at a critical juncture in the evolution of its communications policy. Will our information and communications technologies continue in a market-oriented, neoliberal direction, or will they preserve and strengthen broader democratic values? Media Divides offers a comprehensive, up-to-date audit of communications law and policy. Using the concept of communications rights as a framework for analysis, leading scholars not only reveal the nation’s democratic deficits in five key domains – media, access, the Internet, privacy, and copyright – they also formulate recommendations, including the establishment of a Canadian right to communicate, for the future.

Media divide and connect simultaneously: they act as intermediaries between otherwise disconnected entities, and as a 'middle' that mediates, but also shields different entities from each other. This ambiguity gives rise to conflicting interpretations, and it evokes all those figures that give a first clue about this janus-faced relationship of 'connect and divide': gate-keeper, parasite, amongst others. If we give accounts of media before and after their mediated action, we refer to persons and organizations, automatisms and artifacts, signals and inscriptions, and we seem to find it easy to refer to their distinct potentials and dis/abilities. But within the interaction? the 'middle' of media itself seems to be distributed right across the mix of material, semiotic and personal entities involved, and the location of agency is hard to pin down. In case of breakdown we have to disentangle the mix; in case of smooth operations action becomes all the more distributed and potentially untraceable? which makes its attribution a matter of the simultaneously occuring distribution of (official and unofficial) knowledge, labour and power. The empirical and historical investigation of this two-faced relationship of 'connect and divide' has thus resulted in a veritable 'practice turn in media studies'.0 0The publication studies four aspects of the practice turn in media studies: Media history from a praxeological perspective, the practice turn in religion and media studies, the connecting and dividing lines of media theories concerning gender and post_colonial agencies, and a historical and theoretical examination of the current relationship of media theory and practice theory.

There is widespread concern that the Internet is exacerbating inequalities between the information rich and poor.

Why is everyone so angry online? Pastor and former radio host Douglas Bursch provides a spiritual examination of why social media divides us and how Christians can address polarization through a ministry of peacemaking. Unpacking how technology radically changes our communication, Bursch offers practical examples of how to handle online conflict in redemptive ways.

Contrary to optimistic visions of a free internet for all, the problem of the ‘digital divide’ – the disparity between those with access to internet technology and those without – has persisted for close to twenty-five years. In this textbook, Jan van Dijk considers the state of digital inequality and what we can do to tackle it. Through an accessible framework based on empirical research, he explores the motivations and challenges of seeking access and the development of requisite digital skills. He addresses key questions such as: Does digital inequality reduce or reinforce existing, traditional inequalities? Does it create new, previously unknown social inequalities? While digital inequality affects all aspects of society and the problem is here to stay, Van Dijk outlines policies we can put in place to mitigate it. The Digital Divide is required reading for students and scholars of media, communication, sociology, and related disciplines, as well as for policymakers.

As the study of literature has extended to cultural contexts, critics have developed a language all their own. Yet, argues Mark Bauerlein, scholars of literature today are so unskilled in pertinent sociohistorical methods that they compensate by adopting cliches and catchphrases that serve as substitutes for information and logic. Thus by labeling a set of ideas an "ideology" they avoid specifying those ideas, or by saying that someone "essentializes" a concept they convey the air of decisive refutation. As long as a paper is generously sprinkled with the right words, clarification is deemed superfluous. Bauerlein contends that such usages only serve to signal political commitments, prove membership in subgroups, or appeal to editors and tenure committees, and that current textual practices are inadequate to the study of culture and politics they presume to undertake. His book discusses 23 commonly encountered terms—from "deconstruction" and "gender" to "problematize" and "rethink"—and offers a diagnosis of contemporary criticism through their analysis. He examines the motives behind their usage and the circumstances under which they arose and tells why they continue to flourish. A self-styled "handbook of counterdisciplinary usage," Literary Criticism: An Autopsy shows how the use of illogical, unsound, or inconsistent terms has brought about a breakdown in disciplinary focus. It is an insightful and entertaining work that challenges scholars to reconsider their choice of words—and to eliminate many from critical inquiry altogether.