The most recommended books about mass media

I have been an information technology and cybersecurity professional for over two decades. I’ve learned over and over again that “people are the weakest link.” You can build the most secure system in the world, with stringent password requirements. But if the user writes their password down and leaves it where someone else can see it, system security is irrelevant! The easiest way to gain access to a system is via “social engineering” – to trick a human being into giving you the access you need, rather than trying to hack the system itself. The books on this list will help the reader lower their chances of being exploited like 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.

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.

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.

I’ve always been intrigued by politics and the tools and tactics people use in attempts to gain and maintain power. Since 2010, I’ve been researching and writing about propaganda and digital media. With collaborators at the University of Washington, the University of Oxford, and—currently—the University of Texas at Austin, I’ve done groundbreaking work on computational propaganda: the use of algorithms and automation in attempts to control public opinion. I’ve also worked with numerous think tanks, news organizations, policymakers, and private firms in efforts to make sense of our current informational challenges. In the summer of 2022 I testified before the U.S. congress on election-oriented disinformation challenges faced by communities of color.   

As a writer, designer, and technologist, I've always been fascinated by the extraordinary potential of the internet. It’s our species' greatest invention to date, giving us powers our ancestors would have only dreamed of. But I'm equally aware of its darker side. We now live an inordinate amount of our lives in spaces controlled by algorithms that have strange agendas. A key part of my work is exposing how the subtle designs of our online spaces can dramatically change our emotions, making them much more contagious. By translating these insights into understandable narratives, my goal is to foster digital resilience, and help us take back some real measure of control of our digital lives.

I’ve always been fascinated by children’s language development and am a word hound. For over five decades I’ve been a teacher, teacher trainer, school founder/director, mentor, founder/executive director of a large children’s museum; author of 6 classic textbooks on how children think and learn, and author/self-publisher of one of my many story-poems. My passions are writing, studying new findings in brain development, and launching top-quality schools in underserved urban areas. Between 1969 and 1990, I founded six schools, five still running, three as private non-profit schools and two as essential entities (one called the “safety-net") in their public school systems. The MELC is the only U.S. school accredited by Reggio's founders.

I’ve been curious about how reporters covered D-Day, and their interactions with the army, for more than thirty years, and my research into media-military relations, begun in earnest fifteen years ago has led to more than a dozen archives in several countries. Most accounts suggest that the press and the military fully cooperated during World War II, but documentary evidence reveals a far more nuanced story, with far more conflict between officials and the press than is supposed. After publishing work about the campaign in French North Africa, and a book about Ed Kennedy’s scoop of the German surrender, I’m now back where I started, working on a book about press coverage of D-Day.

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.

I've always had a creative curiosity that involves making, designing, and finding creative solutions to problems, this led me to using digital tools and lecturing in interactive media. As technology, society, and design have developed so to has my knowledge and experience in these fields enabling me to understand and develop the unique skills that are required to create successful solutions in the digital design process. I do this through creating and designing interventions in the physical space to ask questions and raise awareness of our use of technology and the impact on our awareness of time and space and the world around us.

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. 

I hold the registered trademark as "The Work-Life Balance Expert®," and work with organizations that seek to enhance their productivity by improving the effectiveness of their people. I've spoken to Fortune 50 companies such as IBM, Cardinal Health Group, Lockheed, American Express, the IRS, Wells Fargo, and Westinghouse. My books have been published in 19 languages and have been featured in 68 of the top 75 American newspapers, as well as Time Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. At heart, I'm a simpler living advocate. I believe in giving back to his community and am an active volunteer for Art Space in downtown Raleigh, and the North Carolina Museum of Art.

I’ve worked in and around journalism long enough to know that not all journalists are heroes. Few even aspire to be. But there is something quietly heroic about the daily task of holding the powerful to account, even in democracies where the risk of imprisonment or assassination is less than in more authoritarian states. Here is my selection of books to remind all of us about some of these more heroic aspects of the journalism trade. I hope you find reading them enjoyable and maybe even inspiring.

William J. Buxton is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies and Senior Fellow, Centre for Sensory Studies, at Concordia University Montreal, Qc, Canada. He is also professeur associé au Département d’information et de communication de l’Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada. He has edited and co-edited five books related to the life and works of the Canadian political economist and media theorist, Harold Adams Innis.

For more than thirty years I have been discussing, formulating ideas, and writing about Architecture, Building Reuse, and Interiors. I lead the MA Architecture and Adaptive Reuse programme and direct graduate atelier Continuity in Architecture at the Manchester School of Architecture. I am currently the Visiting Professor at the University IUAV of Venice where I am conducting research on the sustainable adaptation of existing buildings with particular emphasis on the environmental concerns within the inherently fragile city of Venice.

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.

I grew up reading books, and when I was around 10 years old I discovered science fiction and fantasy. What hooked me about these genres was the imagination and skill that would go into building an entire world which only exists between the covers of that book. But I also found that there was an intense enjoyment to be had from books that sat within those categories, but which were more unusual; books that push the boundaries of their genre or introduce something new.

As an avid reader, I have been fascinated by children’s reading development and began researching this topic with a specific interest in the personal motivation of young readers. I examined children’s reading in various digital formats, including e-books made by families and children themselves. Today, I work as Professor in Norway and the UK and enjoy working across academia and industry. I feel very passionate about communicating research in an accessible way to children’s teachers, caregivers, and policy-makers. The books on my list do this exceptionally well, and I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did.

I grew up in a bilingual environment (Welsh and English) and have been fascinated by languages ever since, and the way they reflect thought, culture, and history. An English degree course at University College London gave me an academic grounding in language and literature, and I've been exploring and writing on those subjects ever since, eventually as a professor of linguistics, and these days as an independent scholar. My website provides a complete list of my publications, along with links to other materials. And the most fascinating thing about language? Its diversity and change. Whatever a language was like yesterday, it's different today, and will be different again tomorrow.

When my sister got divorced, she and my nephew, Jordy, moved in with our parents. My mother was—and still is—a big music fan, and she decided to play the same music in her house that Jordy’s dad played in his. The music became a bridge; a way for Jordy to feel like he was at home in both places. I loved this and kept it tucked away for years before Here and There came to me. I feel passionate about helping kids find a way to feel safe and comfortable in themselves—no matter where they are or what they’re going through—and all the books on my list do this brilliantly.