Media scholarship has responded to a rapidly evolving media environment that has challenged existing theories and methods while also giving rise to new theoretical and methodological approaches. This volume explores the state of contemporary media research. Focusing on Intellectual Foundations, Theoretical Perspectives, Methodological Approaches, Context, and Contemporary Issues, this volume is a valuable resource for media scholars and students.

Lynne M. Webb (Ph. D., University of Oregon) is Professor in Communication at the University of Arkansas. She previously served as a tenured faculty member at the Universities of Florida and Memphis. Her research examines young adults' interpersonal communication in romantic and family contexts. Her research appears in over 50 essays published in scholarly journals and edited volumes, including computers in Human Behavior, Communication Education, Health Communication, and Journal of Family Communication. --Book Jacket.

Conflict, Mediated Message, and Group Dynamics: Intersections of Communication establishes up a framework to explore the ways in which emotions enter a conflict scenario and investigate their role either as causes or consequences of conflict. The volume's chapters shed new light on the questions of the extent to which context on the one hand and culture-related dimensions on the other are conducive to conflict dynamicity and management either by calming emotions—and conflict—or by increasing their severity.

Text-based interaction among humans connected via computer networks, such as takes place via email and in synchronous modes such as “chat”, MUDs and MOOs, has attracted considerable popular and scholarly attention. This collection of 14 articles on text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC), is the first to bring empirical evidence from a variety of disciplinary perspectives to bear on questions raised by the new medium. The first section, linguistic perspectives, addresses the question of how CMC compares with speaking and writing, and describes its unique structural characteristics. Section two, on social and ethical perspectives, explores conflicts between the interests of groups and those of individual users, including issues of online sex and sexism. In the third section, cross-cultural perspectives, the advantages and risks of using CMC to communicate across cultures are examined in three studies involving users in East Asia, Mexico, and students of ethnically diverse backgrounds in remedial writing classes in the United States. The final section deals with the effects of CMC on group interaction: in a women's studies mailing list, a hierarchically-organized workplace, and a public protest on the Internet against corporate interests.

"This book was written to introduce students to the state-of-the-art knowledge on how media and mediated communication affect people and society. Regarding the content, working through this book will allow students to gain knowledge on media use, develop awareness of diversity of mediated messages, and of media use responses, understand possible negative effects of media; acquire knowledge on theories about mediated communication and on research on mediated communication effects. The course setup was designed with the options of online or "hybrid" (a combination of online and in-person instruction) in mind and was actually taught in hybrid format during our "test runs.""--

"Alphabet to Internet: Mediated Communication in Our Lives," a survey history of our media of communication, considers how all of us are affected by the means we have devised for recording and communicating information. From the start of writing things down, mediated communication has nudged our world onward, again and again. It has changed the way we choose to live.Beginning with the evolution of writing and the alphabet from Sumer to Greece, Alphabet to Internet traces in a brisk and lively style the development and the impact of printing, still and motion photography, mail service, the telegraph, the telephone, recording, broadcasting, the Internet, and the digital revolution. An additional chapter reflects on the role of communication in current international political struggles. Another chapter is devoted to the cultural influence of video games. A supplementary section, ?A Timeline of Communication and Culture,? contains more than 5,000 entries. It is the most complete and up-to-date of its subject matter in existence.