Benedetta Brevini, Arne Hintz, Patrick McCurdy (eds.): Beyond WikiLeaks: Implications for the Future of Communications, Journalism and Society (2013)

“Revelations published by the whistleblower platform WikiLeaks, including the releases of U.S. diplomatic cables in what became referred to as ‘Cablegate’, put WikiLeaks into the international spotlight and sparked intense about the role and impact of leaks in a digital era. Beyond WikiLeaks opens a space to reflect on the broader implications across political and media fields, and on the transformations that result from new forms of leak journalism and transparency activism. A select group of renowned scholars, international experts, and WikiLeaks ‘insiders’ discuss the consequences of the WikiLeaks saga for traditional media, international journalism, freedom of expression, policymaking, civil society, social change, and international politics. From short insider reports to elaborate and theoretically informed academic texts, the different chapters provide critical assessments of the current historical juncture of our mediatized society and offer outlooks of the future. Authors include, amongst others, Harvard University’s Yochai Benkler, Graham Murdoch of Loughborough University, net activism scholar, Gabriella Coleman, the Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jillian York, and Guardian editor, Chris Elliott. The book also includes a conversation between philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, and WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and its prologue is written by Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Icelandic MP and editor of the WikiLeaks video, Collateral Murder.”

Publisher Palgrave Macmillan, 2013
ISBN 1137275758, 9781137275752
308 pages

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Edmund Carpenter, Marshall McLuhan (eds.): Explorations in Communication: An Anthology (1960–) [EN, ES]

“This book explores the form and dynamics of communication to discover how it works – how human beings exchange feelings, facts, fancy. What makes words, sentences and grammars meaningful? What is the difference between the private world of reading and the instant “togetherness” of television audiences? How does the inner structure of communication vary from society to society?

These essays by world-famed scholars and artists cover the whole range of communications media — from skin touch to voice inflection, from newsprint to electronic devices, from primitive grammars to films. Here we step outside the various media by examining one through another. Print is seen from the perspective of electronics; television is analyzed through print — and thus literacy’s role in shaping man is brought into sharp new focus.

The contemporary revolution in the packaging and distribution of ideas and feelings makes a new view of communication imperative. To give voice to such views, the journal Explorations was begun in Toronto in 1953, financed by the Ford Foundation and the Toronto Telegram. From the start, the magazine won high praise from the academic world. The articles in this book, all of which appeared in Explorations, represent some of the most original research now in print on problems that will confront us for many years to come.” (from front flap)

With contributions by Ray L. Birdwhistell, Edmund Carpenter, H. J. Chaytor, Lawrence K. Frank, Northrop Frye, Arthur Gibson, Sigfried Giedion, Stephen Gilman, Robert Graves, Stanley Edgar Hyman, Dorothy Lee, Fernand Léger, Marshall McLuhan, David Riesman, W. R. Rodgers, Gilbert Seldes, Jean Shepherd, Daisetz T. Suzuki, Jacqueline Tyrwhitt.

Publisher Beacon Press, Boston, 1960
Issue 218 of Beacon series in Contemporary Communications
210 pages
via Archive.org

Google books

Explorations in Communication: An Anthology (hi-res, 181 MB, no OCR), Lower-res version (67 MB, OCR, via Steve McLaughlin), Other formats
El aula sin muros investigaciones sobre técnicas de comunicación (Spanish, trans. Luis Carandell, 2nd ed., 1968/1974, added on 2014-3-6)

John McMillian: Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (2011)

How did the New Left uprising of the 1960s happen? What caused millions of young people-many of them affluent and college educated-to suddenly decide that American society needed to be completely overhauled?

In Smoking Typewriters, historian John McMillian shows that one answer to these questions can be found in the emergence of a dynamic underground press in the 1960s. Following the lead of papers like the Los Angeles Free Press, the East Village Other, and the Berkeley Barb, young people across the country launched hundreds of mimeographed pamphlets and flyers, small press magazines, and underground newspapers. New, cheaper printing technologies democratized the publishing process and by the decade’s end the combined circulation of underground papers stretched into the millions. Though not technically illegal, these papers were often genuinely subversive, and many of those who produced and sold them-on street-corners, at poetry readings, gallery openings, and coffeehouses-became targets of harassment from local and federal authorities. With writers who actively participated in the events they described, underground newspapers captured the zeitgeist of the ’60s, speaking directly to their readers, and reflecting and magnifying the spirit of cultural and political protest. McMillian pays special attention to the ways underground newspapers fostered a sense of community and played a vital role in shaping the New Left’s highly democratic “movement culture.”

Deeply researched and eloquently written, Smoking Typewriters captures all the youthful idealism and vibrant tumult of the 1960s as it delivers a brilliant reappraisal of the origins and development of the New Left rebellion.

Publisher Oxford University Press, 2011
ISBN 0195319923, 9780195319927
304 pages

review (Dan Berger, International Journal of Communication)
review (Kirkus Reviews)
review (Russ Smith, The Wall Street Journal)
interview with the author (video, 48 min)

publisher
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