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New Books in Communications

New Books in Communications

By: Marshall Poe
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 This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communicationsNew Books Network Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Alexis Lerner, "Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

    Alexis Lerner, "Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
    Feb 16 2026
    Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States (University of Toronto Press, 2025) is an empirically grounded ethnographic study of how graffiti and street art can be used as a political tool to circumvent censorship, express grievances, and control public discourse, particularly in authoritarian states. For more than a decade, Dr. Alexis M. Lerner combed the alleyways, underpasses, and public squares of cities once under communist rule, from Berlin in the west to Vladivostok in the east, recording thousands of cases of critical and satirical political street art and cataloging these artworks linguistically and thematically across space and time. Complemented by first-hand interviews with leading artists, activists, and politicians from across the region, Post-Soviet Graffiti provides theoretical reflection on public space as a site for political action, a semiotic reading of signs and symbols, and street art as a form of text. The book answers the question of how we conceptualize avenues of dissent under authoritarian rule by showing how contemporary graffiti functions not only as a popular public aesthetic, but also as a mouthpiece of political sentiment, especially within the post-Soviet region and post-communist Europe. A purposefully anonymous and accessible artform, graffiti is an effective tool for circumventing censorship and expressing political views. This is especially true for marginalized populations and for those living in otherwise closed and censored states. Post-Soviet Graffiti reveals that graffiti does not exist in a vacuum; rather, it can be read as a narrative about a place, the people who live there, and the things that matter to them. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications
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    46 mins
  • Linda Quirk, "Forgers, Fakers, and Publisher-Pirates" (U Alberta Press, 2025)

    Linda Quirk, "Forgers, Fakers, and Publisher-Pirates" (U Alberta Press, 2025)
    Feb 14 2026
    Whether print or digital, text or image, artistic or scientific, rare or common, historic or contemporary, most of the content we encounter contains accidental mistakes—ranging from typos to factual errors to errors arising from prejudicial assumptions—and a significant proportion of it also contains deliberate misinformation resulting from various forms of forgery, fakery, and piracy. In Forgers, Fakers, and Publisher-Pirates (U Alberta Press, 2025), Linda Quirk introduces the work of notorious and lesser-known forgers, reveals the various ways in which experts and authors have faked their own identities—ranging from carefully-selected pseudonyms to falsified ethnicities to fraudulent credentials—and explores a number of shady publishing practices. We can all become better readers and better at protecting ourselves from scammers by improving our understanding of the nature of the content before us. Linda Quirk is a librarian (Bruce Peel Special Collections, University of Alberta, Edmonton) whose research and publications focus on a group of women who, in the nineteenth century, did pioneering work in various fields and whose writings helped to break down the barriers then preventing women from full participation in Canadian society. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom (2022) and The Social Movement Archive (2021), and co-editor of Armed By Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba’s Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (2025).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications
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    1 hr and 13 mins
  • Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley et al. eds., "Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media" (Routledge, 2025)

    Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley et al. eds., "Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media" (Routledge, 2025)
    Feb 12 2026
    Studying Chinese media has never been a stable intellectual enterprise. As Professor Yuezhi Zhao once observed, it often resembles aiming at a target that appears clear from a distance but becomes elusive on closer inspection. Over the past decade, that target has grown even more fragmented and mobile. Media systems across the Chinese-speaking world—including the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and transnational Chinese communities—have been reshaped by rapid technological transformation, intensifying geopolitical rivalry, and profound political change. It is against this backdrop that the second edition of The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media has been published. Rather than simply updating a reference work, this edition reflects a field fundamentally reconfigured. Assumptions formed before the full societal penetration of digital platforms and social media now require serious reconsideration. The digital is no longer one topic among many; it is central to understanding contemporary political, cultural, and economic life. In this podcast conversation, co-editors Dr Ming-yeh Rawnsley and Dr Yiben Ma reflect on the making of the new volume. Dr Ma contributed to the first edition (2015) and joined the editorial team for the second edition, also authoring a new chapter. After introducing the book and outlining its scope, they share seven key reflections as editors and scholars of Chinese media: Digital transformation as the organising principle Scholarship grounded in lived experience A regional lens without isolation Expanding the field beyond institutional narratives The limits of global communication strategy Hong Kong: accelerated transformation Macao: continuity and quiet change The second edition comprises 29 chapters, in addition to an extensive introduction. Despite striving for breadth and balance, the editors recognise that many areas remain underexplored and warrant sustained attention. They hope the volume will stimulate further research and dialogue. As global uncertainty deepens and information politics become increasingly consequential, the study of Chinese media can no longer be regarded as a specialised regional concern. It is central to understanding how power, technology, and communication interact in the contemporary world. In this sense, the handbook contributes not only to Chinese media studies but also to the broader field of media and communications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications
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    39 mins
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