100 books like Media Ethics and Global Justice in the Digital Age

By Clifford G. Christians,

Here are 100 books that Media Ethics and Global Justice in the Digital Age fans have personally recommended if you like Media Ethics and Global Justice in the Digital Age. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet

Raphael Cohen-Almagor Author Of Confronting the Internet's Dark Side: Moral and Social Responsibility on the Free Highway

From my list on the internet's history, development, and challenges.

Why am I passionate about this?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor, DPhil, St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, is Professor of Politics, Olof Palme Visiting Professor, Lund University, Founding Director of the Middle East Study Centre, University of Hull, and Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Raphael taught, inter alia, at Oxford (UK), Jerusalem, Haifa (Israel), UCLA, Johns Hopkins (USA), and Nirma University (India). With more than 300 publications, Raphael has published extensively in the field of political philosophy, including Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Tolerance; Challenges to Democracy; The Right to Die with Dignity; The Scope of Tolerance; Confronting the Internet's Dark Side; Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism, and The Republic, Secularism and Security: France versus the Burqa and the Niqab.

Raphael's book list on the internet's history, development, and challenges

Raphael Cohen-Almagor Why did Raphael love this book?

This book tells the fascinating story of the visionary pioneers who created the internet. The wizards are the internet’s forefathers. They were determined visionaries and doers. In the 1960s, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider, the first director of the American Information Processing Techniques Office, saw them as the ultimate communications devices. The early internet was devised and implemented in American research units, universities, and telecommunication companies that had vision and interest in cutting-edge research. Licklider, Vint Cerf, Steve Crocker, Len Kleinrock, Larry Roberts, Robert Kahn, and David Clark articulated the vision of a "galactic" computer network—a globally interconnected set of processing nodes through which anyone anywhere can access data and programs.

This captivating book enables a better understanding of the internet. It captures the hard work, genius, fortunate experiences, and early successes of the visionary wizards and their daring, stunningly successful venture that has changed,…

By Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Where Wizards Stay Up Late as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the 1960s, when computers were regarded as giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communication device. With Defence Department funds, he and a band of computer whizzes began work on a nationwide network of computers. This is an account of their daring adventure.


Book cover of Technologies of Freedom

Raphael Cohen-Almagor Author Of Confronting the Internet's Dark Side: Moral and Social Responsibility on the Free Highway

From my list on the internet's history, development, and challenges.

Why am I passionate about this?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor, DPhil, St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, is Professor of Politics, Olof Palme Visiting Professor, Lund University, Founding Director of the Middle East Study Centre, University of Hull, and Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Raphael taught, inter alia, at Oxford (UK), Jerusalem, Haifa (Israel), UCLA, Johns Hopkins (USA), and Nirma University (India). With more than 300 publications, Raphael has published extensively in the field of political philosophy, including Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Tolerance; Challenges to Democracy; The Right to Die with Dignity; The Scope of Tolerance; Confronting the Internet's Dark Side; Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism, and The Republic, Secularism and Security: France versus the Burqa and the Niqab.

Raphael's book list on the internet's history, development, and challenges

Raphael Cohen-Almagor Why did Raphael love this book?

This is a classic. The book provides an early assessment of the impact of new communications tools on freedom of expression. Pool observed how electronic networks were emerging and transforming the nature of print, arguing that we need to learn how to live with technology and make the most of it. Electronic technologies, Pool envisaged, will become the dominant mode of communication. Pool further envisaged that electronic technology would allow a great degree of diversity, more knowledge, easier access, and freer speech. He provided a lucid and perceptive analysis of the relation of American law to technology and its regulation. Pool was concerned with the negative consequences of new technology and feared its excessive regulation. It is not computers but policy that threatens freedom, he warned. This seminal work encapsulates many of the questions we face today. The challenges Pool described came to life as the pressures on government to…

By Ithiel de Sola Pool,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Technologies of Freedom as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How can we preserve free speech in an electronic age? In a masterly synthesis of history, law, and technology, Ithiel de Sola Pool analyzes the confrontation between the regulators of the new communications technology and the First Amendment.


Book cover of The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society

Raphael Cohen-Almagor Author Of Confronting the Internet's Dark Side: Moral and Social Responsibility on the Free Highway

From my list on the internet's history, development, and challenges.

Why am I passionate about this?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor, DPhil, St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, is Professor of Politics, Olof Palme Visiting Professor, Lund University, Founding Director of the Middle East Study Centre, University of Hull, and Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Raphael taught, inter alia, at Oxford (UK), Jerusalem, Haifa (Israel), UCLA, Johns Hopkins (USA), and Nirma University (India). With more than 300 publications, Raphael has published extensively in the field of political philosophy, including Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Tolerance; Challenges to Democracy; The Right to Die with Dignity; The Scope of Tolerance; Confronting the Internet's Dark Side; Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism, and The Republic, Secularism and Security: France versus the Burqa and the Niqab.

Raphael's book list on the internet's history, development, and challenges

Raphael Cohen-Almagor Why did Raphael love this book?

This book analyzes the impact of new technology on society. Castells shows that the internet has become the backbone of modern economy and business, creating a global network society. Imagination is instigating and enabling tremendous changes in every aspect of life. But many of us do not fully grasp the potential of new technology. To make the most of this modern galaxy, we need to understand how it operates, its logic, its benefits, and constraints, and how to manage it effectively. Castells argues that modern communication enables control but it also enables freedom. It is the role of government and organisations to see that the internet is developed and used in ways that are consistent with a social order in which people are enabled to become responsible human beings. In this edifying and quite accessible book, Castells explains the galaxy of networks, how it began, how it shapes new and…

By Manuel Castells,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Internet Galaxy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Web has been with us for less than a decade. The popular and commercial diffusion of the Internet has been extraordinary - instigating and enabling changes in virtually every area of human activity and society. We have new systems of communication, new businesses, new media and sources of information, new forms of political and cultural expression, new forms of teaching and learning, and new communities.

But how much do we know about the Internet - its history, its technology, its culture, and its uses? What are its implications for the business world and society at large? The diffusion has…


Book cover of Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World

Raphael Cohen-Almagor Author Of Confronting the Internet's Dark Side: Moral and Social Responsibility on the Free Highway

From my list on the internet's history, development, and challenges.

Why am I passionate about this?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor, DPhil, St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, is Professor of Politics, Olof Palme Visiting Professor, Lund University, Founding Director of the Middle East Study Centre, University of Hull, and Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Raphael taught, inter alia, at Oxford (UK), Jerusalem, Haifa (Israel), UCLA, Johns Hopkins (USA), and Nirma University (India). With more than 300 publications, Raphael has published extensively in the field of political philosophy, including Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Tolerance; Challenges to Democracy; The Right to Die with Dignity; The Scope of Tolerance; Confronting the Internet's Dark Side; Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism, and The Republic, Secularism and Security: France versus the Burqa and the Niqab.

Raphael's book list on the internet's history, development, and challenges

Raphael Cohen-Almagor Why did Raphael love this book?

Due to its global nature and reach, some people think that because the internet knows no borders, it also does not have limits. This concept is wrong. Goldsmith and Wu tell the fascinating story of the internet's challenges to governmental rule. They ask: who is really in control of the internet? And does the internet liberate us from government, borders, and even our physical selves? In a lively prose, the authors peppered their arguments with real-life examples concerning disagreements between giants of the internet and democratic and authoritarian governments. They show that governments have been asserting their power to direct the future of the internet.

Internet intermediaries have to filter content geographically to comply with local law for a small fraction of their communications. This imposes costs on them, and forces them to adjust to this cost of business. But in light of the internet’s many advantages, the authors argue…

By Jack Goldsmith, Tim Wu,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Will cyberanarchy rule the net? And if we do find a way to regulate our cyberlife will national borders dissolve as the Internet becomes the first global state? In this provocative new work, Jack L. Goldsmith and Tim Wu dismiss the fashionable talk of both a 'borderless' net and of a single governing 'code'. Territorial governments can and will, they contend, exercise significant control over all aspects of Internet communications. Examining policy puzzles from
e-commerce to privacy, speech and pornography, intellectual property, and cybercrime, Who Controls the Internet demonstrates that individual governments rather than private or global bodies will play…


Book cover of Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell

Howard Sounes Author Of This Woman: Myra Hindley’s Prison Love Affair and Escape Attempt

From my list on biographies to put you in the mind of a criminal.

Why am I passionate about this?

The author of biographies, histories, and true crime books, Howard Sounes is best-known for Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, now in an updated edition; Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life; and Fred & Rose, the bestselling story of married English serial killers Fred and Rose West. Other books include Amy, 27, Seventies, Heist, and biographies of Paul McCartney and Lou Reed.

Howard's book list on biographies to put you in the mind of a criminal

Howard Sounes Why did Howard love this book?

The best true crime books are similar to any good biography, in that they are crafted, powerfully-researched lives of unusual people. With true crime, the life of the subject usually goes awry, however, by degrees from childhood, culminating in disaster, which affects others. Crime takes different forms. This gripping book charts the downfall of the brilliant but unscrupulous media baron Robert Maxwell, ending in his mysterious death in 1991. Had he lived, he may well have gone to jail, like his daughter, Ghislaine. Author John Peston has an eye for grotesques and a nice sense of humour. 

By John Preston,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fall as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the UK’s 2022 Costa Prize for Biography

“A portrait of one of the most enigmatic figures in the annals of white-collar crime. . . . A well-researched, compelling book that uncovers many mysteries about a media tycoon.”—Kirkus Reviews

From the acclaimed author of A Very English Scandal, a thrilling and dramatic true-life account of the rise and fall of one of the most notorious media moguls of all time: Robert Maxwell.

In February 1991, Robert Maxwell triumphantly sailed into Manhattan harbor on his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, to buy the ailing New York Daily News. Taxi drivers stopped…


Book cover of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Gray Brechin Author Of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin

From my list on the hidden costs of city-building.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in what was becoming Silicon Valley, I escaped to San Francisco on weekends and, through it, fell in love with what other great cities have to offer. However, as an environmental writer and TV producer there in the 1980s, I became aware of how cities exploit the territories on which they rely. A winter sojourn in the most lovely, fragile, and ingenious of all towns—Venice—in 1985 focused my too-diffuse thought on what might otherwise seem a contradiction. The lagoon city is, as John Ruskin said, the finest book humanity has ever written; I owe it my life and the book it inspired. 

Gray's book list on the hidden costs of city-building

Gray Brechin Why did Gray love this book?

Published in 1985 partly to explain how a mediocre but persuasive Hollywood actor could become president of the United States, this influential book posits that television, by its very nature, debases civic discourse by replacing education with simplistic, misleading, and often violent entertainment.

It is the theoretical analog of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and proposes that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was a more accurate predictor of today than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four because pleasure is a more effective means of mass control than force.

Like Mumford, Postman was critical of many of the uses of technology that were eagerly adopted by most. Dying in 2003, he did not live to see universal addiction to hand-held screens, but he accurately predicted the political and social consequences.

By Neil Postman,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Amusing Ourselves to Death as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment? As our world begins to look more and more like Orwell's 1984, Neil's Postman's essential guide to the modern media is more relevant than ever.

"It's unlikely that Trump has ever read Amusing Ourselves to Death, but his ascent would not have surprised Postman.” -CNN

Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell…


Book cover of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls

Philip Graves Author Of Consumer.ology: The Truth about Consumers and the Psychology of Shopping

From my list on understanding consumers and your consumer self.

Why am I passionate about this?

Having studied statistics in the 1980s and realised that forecasting energy reserves wasn’t for me, I stumbled into a career in market research. A chance reading of a book on psychoanalysis opened my eyes to how little we all understand ourselves and I started to look for better ways to identify how consumers think. After developing techniques from psychoanalysis and behavioural science I started my own consultancy firm in 2005. Over the last seventeen years I’ve been lucky enough to advise some of the world’s biggest brands, make regular appearances in the media discussing consumer affairs and, with my book Consumer.ology, to upset some of the biggest market research companies.

Philip's book list on understanding consumers and your consumer self

Philip Graves Why did Philip love this book?

Early in my career I was responsible for running the UK brand tracking and customer experience studies of a global brand. I was constantly battling to reconcile what the research told me with what the real data from the business showed was actually going on. This book, written by someone who was a senior editor at the Gallup market research company for years, helped me appreciate some of the reasons that survey results are inaccurate. It also reveals how opinion polls can be used to distort elections and manipulate people – scary stuff.

By David W. Moore,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Opinion Makers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With a new afterword by the author

Drawing on over a decade's experience at the Gallup Poll and a distinguished academic career in survey research, David W. Moore—praised as a "scholarly crusader" by the New York Times—reveals that pollsters don't report public opinion, they manufacture it. In this highly critical book, he describes the questionable tactics pollsters use to create poll-driven news stories-including force-feeding respondents, slanting the wording of questions, and ignoring public ignorance on even the most arcane issues. More than proof that the numbers do lie, The Opinion Makers clearly and convincingly spells out how urgent it is…


Book cover of The Age of American Unreason

Joel Stein Author Of In Defense of Elitism: Why I'm Better Than You and You Are Better Than Someone Who Didn't Buy This Book

From my list on saving democracy from populism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started worrying about populism in 2008, when vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin chastised the elitists, whom she defined as “people who think they’re better than anyone else.” Meanwhile, she thought she was so much better than anyone else that she could serve as backup leader of the world despite the fact that she believed that the political leader of the United Kingdom is the queen. After she lost she vowed, “I’m never going to pretend like I know more than the next person. I’m not going to pretend to be an elitist. In fact, I’m going to fight the elitist.” She was unaware that there is a third option: to study so that you know more than the next person. 

Joel's book list on saving democracy from populism

Joel Stein Why did Joel love this book?

If you’ve ever wondered if people today are dumber than people in the past, you should watch Idiocracy. And then read this book. It shows how we’ve devolved into people who look at lists of the best five books and never actually read those books. In 2008, for a column for the L.A. Times, I had her take a quiz from the author of the book How Dumb Are You?: The Great American Stupidity Quiz and she got two wrong. I got 11 wrong. The point is: Read her book instead of mine.

By Susan Jacoby,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Age of American Unreason as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A cultural history of the last forty years, The Age of American Unreasonfocuses on the convergence of social forces—usually treated as separate entities—that has created a perfect storm of anti-rationalism. These include the upsurge of religious fundamentalism, with more political power today than ever before; the failure of public education to create an informed citizenry; and the triumph of video over print culture. Sparing neither the right nor the left, Jacoby asserts that Americans today have embraced a universe of “junk thought” that makes almost no effort to separate fact from opinion.


Book cover of Political Scandal: Power and Visability in the Media Age

Igor Prusa Author Of Scandal in Japan: Transgression, Performance and Ritual

From my list on scandal and why it matters.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a Czech scholar in Japanese studies and media studies who became spontaneously interested in the way media scandals unfold in Japan. For ten years, I was studying Japanese scandals at The University of Tokyo (Ph.D. 2017), and I developed a new approach to Japanese scandal as a highly mediatized social ritual that tends to preserve the status quo while generating commercial profit. After my return from Japan, I continued my scandal research at the Czech Academy of Sciences, and I'm currently teaching media & communication theory at Ambis University Prague. In 2023, Routledge finally published the results of my decade-long research in my new book titled Scandal in Japan: Transgression, Performance and Ritual.

Igor's book list on scandal and why it matters

Igor Prusa Why did Igor love this book?

The author of this book, John B. Thompson, is one of my favorites.

I love his 1995 masterpiece Media and Modernity which offers a general social theory of the media. In 1997, Thompson published a chapter on the social theory of scandal, and finally in 2000, he published the book I am now recommending here.

What I love about Political Scandal is that the book is both incisive and disturbing, and that the author succeeds in showing us how scandal unlocks essential secrets about power and politics today. This book is a very useful source for the students in media, political, and critical discourse analysis.    

By John B. Thompson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Political Scandal as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Political scandals have become a pervasive feature of many societies today. From Profumo to the cash-for-questions scandal, from Watergate to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, scandals have come to play a central role in politics and in the shaping of public debate. What are the characteristics of political scandals and why have they come to assume such prominence today? What are the social and political consequences of the preoccupation with political scandal in the public domain?

In this major new book Thompson develops a systematic and wide-ranging analysis of the phenomenon of political scandal. He shows that the rise of political scandal…


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