In Prophets, Gurus, and Pundits, author Anna M. Young proposes that the difficulty of bridging the gap between intellectuals and the public is not a failure of ideas; rather, it is an issue of rhetorical strategy. By laying a rhetorical foundation and presenting analytical case studies of contemporary “public intellectuals,” Young creates a training manual for intellectuals who seek to connect with a public audience and effect change writ large. Young begins by defining key aspects of rhetorical style before moving on to discuss the specific ways in which intellectuals may present ideas to a general audience in order to tackle large-scale social problems. Next, she defines the ways in which five crucial turning points in our nation—the rise of religious fundamentalism, a growing lack of trust in our institutions, the continued destruction of the environment, the ubiquity of media and information in our daily lives, and the decline of evidence-based reasoning—have set the stage for opportunities in the current public-intellectual dialogue. Via case studies of such well-known personalities as Deepak Chopra and Professor Cornel West, Young goes on to reveal the six types of public intellectuals who achieve success in presenting scholarly ideas to audiences at large: The Prophet presents the public’s sins for contemplation, then offers a path to redemption. The Guru shepherds his or her flock to enlightenment and a higher power. The Sustainer draws upon our natural and human resources to proffer solutions for social, political, and ecological systems. The Pundit utilizes wit and brevity to bring crucial issues to the attention of the public. The Narrator combines a variety of perspectives to create a story the average person can connect with and understand. The Scientist taps into the dreams of the public to offer ideas from above and beyond the typical scope of public discourse. At once a rallying cry and roadmap, The Politics of Thinking Out Loud draws upon rhetorical expertise and analysis of contemporary public intellectuals to offer a model for scholars to effectively engage the public—and in doing so, perhaps forever change the world in which we live.

With recent headlines around fake news from world leaders and around presidential elections, Twitter and other social media platforms being pressured to detect and label misinformation posted on their platforms, as well as misinformation around COVID-19 and its vaccine, the world has seen an increase in protests, policy changes, and even chaos surrounding this information. This spread of misinformation, when left unchecked, can turn fiction into fact and result in a mass misconception of the truth that shapes opinions, creates false narratives, and impacts multiple facets of society in potentially detrimental ways, indicating a need for the latest research on how the devastating impacts of this trend, how to discern facts from misinformation, as well as more information on technological advancements in fake news detection The Research Anthology on Fake News, Political Warfare, and Combatting the Spread of Misinformation is a compilation of the most comprehensive, previously published, and highly cited research from prestigious institutions including Columbia University and Stanford University, USA, which focuses on understanding fake news, how it spreads, its negative effects, and current solutions being investigated. While highlighting topics such as fake news, trending conspiracy theories, media distrust, political warfare, and detection methods, this book is ideally intended for practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the continuing surge of fake news and its, at times, dangerous results.

Neuroscientists found that chronic stress and cortisol can trigger long-term changes in brain structure and connectivity in individuals and emphasize the importance of reducing stressful factors in one’s daily life. Early exposure to stressful events can make a person more vulnerable to anxiety and other mood disorders later in their lifetime. Those who take active steps to reduce their stress through various means such as physical activity or therapy can reduce the negative long-term effects on the brain. Chronic Stress and Its Effect on Brain Structure and Connectivity is an essential reference source that presents current information on chronic stress management, the impact of mass media coverage on the human mind, and the effects of post-traumatic stress. Featuring research on topics such as the neurophysiological basis of moods, trauma, quantum cognition, mental health, therapy, and neurobiology, this book is ideally designed for mental health professionals, neuroscientists, neurologists, psychiatrists, researchers, and therapists.

In an accessible and droll style, well-known sociologist Joel Best shines a light on how we navigate these anxious, insecure social times. While most of us still strive for the American Dream—to graduate from college, own a home, work toward early retirement—recent generations have been told that the next generation will not be able to achieve these goals, that things are getting—or are on the verge of getting—worse. In American Nightmares, Best addresses the apprehension that we face every day as we are bombarded with threats that the social institutions we count on are imperiled. Our schools are failing to teach our kids. Healthcare may soon be harder to obtain. We can’t bank on our retirement plans. And our homes—still the largest chunk of most people’s net worth—may lose much of their value. Our very way of life is being threatened! Or is it? With a steady voice and keen focus, Best examines how a culture develops fears and fantasies and how these visions are created and recreated in every generation. By dismantling current ideas about the future, collective memory, and sociology’s marginalization in the public square, Best sheds light on how social problems—and our anxiety about them—are socially constructed.

Choosing the right technologies to match student learning outcomes in today's technology-integrated classrooms presents educators and instructional designers with multiple curricula and instructional design challenges including selecting appropriate technologies to match desired student learning outcomes. As students continue to have broad access to information from a variety of web-based platforms, educators and educational professionals are increasingly tasked with ensuring the information used to complete key assignments or tasks is authentic and from a verifiable resource. As such, the era of deep fakes in images, audios, videos, and digital texts is more prevalent than ever as numerous programs using artificial intelligence (AI) can significantly alter original content to fundamentally change the intent of original content. Moreover, students are being bombarded by a plethora of information that is either intentionally or mistakenly false and must be navigated with care. Accordingly, educators and educational professionals are now tasked with employing best practices to not only teach basic digital literacy and citizenship skills but also to recognize how technology-immersed learning environments interact with deep fakes and misinformation while equipping students with the tools necessary to recognize authentic and altered content. Deep Fakes, Fake News, and Misinformation in Online Teaching and Learning Technologies is a critical reference source that addresses rising concerns of students’ ability to navigate the multitude of false and altered information and content that is easily accessible through online platforms. The chapters go into deeper detail about how deep fakes, fake news, and mis- and dis-information have the potential of negatively affecting the fields of teaching and learning and the importance of student access to content-related tasks from legitimate, vetted resources that accurately reflect the desired information the student means to convey. The book seeks to reinforce the importance of digital literacy and digital citizenship among adolescents. This book is essential for teaching faculty, higher education faculty, higher education administrators, educational software developers, security specialists, information specialists, media specialists, librarians, educational researchers, and students looking for information on how deep fakes and fake news are being navigated within the context of online teaching and educational technologies.

The rhetoric of contemporary food production and consumption with a focus on social boundaries The rhetoric of food is more than just words about food, and food is more than just edible matter. Cookery: Food Rhetorics and Social Production explores how food mediates both rhetorical influence and material life through the overlapping concepts of invention and production. The classical canon of rhetorical invention entails the process of discovering one’s persuasive appeals, whereas the contemporary landscape of agricultural production touches virtually everyone on the planet. Together, rhetoric and food shape the boundaries of shared living. The essays in this volume probe the many ways that food informs contemporary social life through its mediation of bodies—human and extra-human alike—in the forms of intoxication, addiction, estrangement, identification, repulsion, and eroticism. Our bodies, in turn, shape the boundaries of food through research, technology, cultural trends, and, of course, by talking about it. Each chapter explores food’s persuasive nature through a unique prism that includes intoxication, dirt, “food porn,” strange foods, and political “invisibility.” Each case offers new insights about the relations between rhetorical influence and embodied practice through food. As a whole Cookery articulates new ways of viewing food’s powers of persuasion, as well as the inherent role of persuasion in agricultural production. The purpose of Cookery, then, is to demonstrate the deep rhetoricity of our modern industrial food system through critical examinations of concepts, practices, and tendencies endemic to this system. Food has become an essential topic for discussions concerned with the larger social dynamics of production, distribution, access, reception, consumption, influence, and the fraught question of choice. These questions about food and rhetoric are equally questions about the assumptions, values, and practices of contemporary public life.

Bringing together methods and scholars from rhetoric and related disciplines, essays in Inventing Place: Writing Lone Star Rhetorics blend personal and scholarly accounts of Texas sites, examining place as an embodied poiesis, an understanding and composition formed through the collaboration of a body with a particular space. Divided into five sections corresponding to Texas regions, essays consider aesthetics, buildings, environment, food and alcohol, private and public memory, and race and class. Among the topics covered by contributors are the Imagine Austin urban planning initiative; the terroir of Texas barbecue; the racist past of Grand Saline, Texas; Denton, Texas, and authenticity as rhetorical; negative views of Texas and how the state (or any place) is subject to reinvention; social, historical, and economic networks of place and their relationship to the food we eat; and Texas gun culture and working-class character.