Investigating the phenomena of technology, science, technique, and mass communication, Piyush Mathur contends that the enterprise of science communication may be misleading vis-à-vis technology—if in part because it frequently coextends with a flawed, but dominant, notion of science that presumptuously implicates technology anyway. Grappling with what authentically constitutes science and the prospective effects of its realization on a global future of mass communication, Mathur explores how various technological forms play specifically into ecologically sensitive mass communication. The result is an eco-communicative theory of technology that includes its classification based upon a set of qualitative principles and a profile of the notion of development. On the whole, though, Technological Forms and Ecological Communication: A Theoretical Heuristic brings the fields of philosophy and history of science, philosophy and sociology of technology, communication studies, and development studies into conversation with one another.

The explosion of scientific information is exacerbating the information gap between richer/poorer, educated/less-educated publics. The proliferation of media technology and the popularity of the Internet help some keep up with these developments but also make it more likely others fall further behind. This is taking place in a globalizing economy and society that further complicates the division between information haves and have-nots and compounds the challenge of communicating about emerging science and technology to increasingly diverse audiences. Journalism about science and technology must fill this gap, yet journalists and journalism students themselves struggle to keep abreast of contemporary scientific developments. Scientist - aided by public relations and public information professionals - must get their stories out, not only to other scientists but also to broader public audiences. Funding agencies increasingly expect their grantees to engage in outreach and education, and such activity can be seen as both a survival strategy and an ethical imperative for taxpayer-supported, university-based research. Science communication, often in new forms, must expand to meet all these needs. Providing a comprehensive introduction to students, professionals and scholars in this area is a unique challenge because practitioners in these fields must grasp both the principles of science and the principles of science communication while understanding the social contexts of each. For this reason, science journalism and science communication are often addressed only in advanced undergraduate or graduate specialty courses rather than covered exhaustively in lower-division courses. Even so, those entering the field rarely will have a comprehensive background in both science and communication studies. This circumstance underscores the importance of compiling useful reference materials. The Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Communication presents resources and strategies for science communicators, including theoretical material and background on recent controversies and key institutional actors and sources. Science communicators need to understand more than how to interpret scientific facts and conclusions; they need to understand basic elements of the politics, sociology, and philosophy of science, as well as relevant media and communication theory, principles of risk communication, new trends, and how to evaluate the effectiveness of science communication programmes, to mention just a few of the major challenges. This work will help to develop and enhance such understanding as it addresses these challenges and more. Topics covered include: advocacy, policy, and research organizations environmental and health communication philosophy of science media theory and science communication informal science education science journalism as a profession risk communication theory public understanding of science pseudo-science in the news special problems in reporting science and technology science communication ethics.

Our digital world is often described using terms such as immateriality and virtuality. The discourse of cloud computing is the latest in a long line of nebulous, dematerialising tropes which have come to dominate how we think about information and communication technologies. Digital Media Ecologies argues that such rhetoric is highly misleading, and that engaging with the key cultural, agential, ethical and political impacts of contemporary media requires that we do not just engage with the surface level of content encountered by the end users of digital media, but that we must additionally consider the affordances of software and hardware. Whilst numerous existing approaches explore content, software and hardware individually, Digital Media Ecologies provides a critical intervention by insisting that addressing contemporary technoculture requires a synthetic approach that traverses these three registers. Digital Media Ecologies re-envisions the methodological approach of media ecology to go beyond the metaphor of a symbolic information environment that exists alongside a material world of tantalum, turtles and tornados. It illustrates the social, cultural, political and environmental impacts of contemporary media assemblages through examples that include mining conflict-sustaining minerals, climate change blogging, iOS jailbreaking, and the ecological footprint of contemporary computing infrastructures. Alongside foregrounding the deleterious social and environmental impacts of digital technologies, the book considers numerous ways that these issues are being tackled by a heterogeneous array of activists, academics, hackers, scientists and citizens using the same technological assemblages that ostensibly cause these problems.

This collection calls for improved technical communication for the public through an embodied, situated understanding of environmental risk that promotes social justice. In addition to providing a series of chapters about recent issues on risk communication, this volume offers a diverse look at methodological practices for students, researchers, and practitioners looking to address embodied aspects of crisis and risk that incorporate UX, storytelling, and dynamic text. It includes chapters that bring embodiment to the forefront of risk communication, highlighting the cycle of content creation, dissemination, public response and decision making, continuing iterations of educational efforts, and recovery, toward increasing adaptive capacity as a whole. In addition, this work directs necessary attention to overcoming perceptual difficulties, memory lapses, definitional differences, access issues, and pedagogical problems in the communication of risks to diverse publics. This collection is essential reading for scholars and can be used as a supplemental text or casebook for courses in technical communication, environmental communication, risk and crisis communication, science communication, and public health.

`This is a very clear and concise summary of media studies, present and future. There is no other book that can both be used as a teaching tool and can help scholars organize their thinking about new media as this book can' - Steve Jones, University of Chicago This book offers an introduction to communication theory that is appropriate to our post-broadcast, interactive, media environment. The author contrasts the `first media age' of broadcast with the `second media age' of interactivity. Communication Theory argues that the different kinds of communication dynamics found in cyberspace demand a reassessment of the methodologies used to explore media, as well as new understandings of the concepts of interaction and community (virtual communities and broadcast communities). The media are examined not simply in terms of content, but also in terms of medium and network forms. Holmes also explores the differences between analogue and digital cultures, and between cyberspace and virtual reality. The book serves both as an upper level textbook for New Media courses and a good general guide to understanding the sociological complexities of the modern communications environment.

How do technology and organization interact to shape organizational structures and processes? What organizational, political and social processes constrain technological development? What forces shape the articulation of organizational and technological systems? Answering these and other pivotal questions, this volume centres on the role of theory for advancing our knowledge of communication technology in organizations at several levels - micro, group and macro. The distinguished contributors examine richly diverse topics, including telecommunications, communication networks and new media, the use of group decision support systems and discretionary databases.