News Story

Media School faculty members are hard at work completing research across a wide swath of disciplines. Some have recently published books, which range in variety from social media and democracy to indigo dyeing in Japan.

Here are book published recently:

Professor Edward Castronova is author of Wildcat Currency: How the Virtual Money Revolution is Transforming the Economy, in June this year through Yale University Press. New forms of monetary exchange have exploded into today’s economy, be it through credit card company points that can be traded in for goods and services or even through online games, where players have found ways to transform virtual money into sources of real money. Castronova writes that the virtual and real economic worlds are mingling more than ever, and he explores in this book how these virtual currencies will affect the future politically, legally and economically.

Castronova also is co-author of Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis, with Vili Lehdonvirta, a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. It was published in May through MIT Press. In this book, the authors use fundamental rules of economics to analyze virtual economies often present in digital games. They also look at Bitcoin as well as the virtual economies of social media that revolve around points, likes or followers.

Professor Shannon Martin‘s book, Social Media and Participatory Democracy in the 21st Century: Public Notice and the World Wide Web, has been published by Peter Lang. Public notices about government or other legal action often appear in classified ads in print newspapers. In her book, Martin looks at how governments around the world have used new digital formats to disseminate such information. She also offers suggestions for smoothing the transition from a paper-based world of records to one of digital speed and portability.

Associate professor Stephanie DeBoer is author of  Co-producing Asia: Locating Japanese-Chinese Regional Film and Media, published by University of Minnesota Press in March. She focuses on the history of East Asian co-production through innovative methods across decades. Through interviews with producers in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taipei and Shanghai, the book reveals that film and media co-production was not only a site of technological transformation throughout time, but also an arena for competing senses of location and place.

Associate professor Sung-Un Yang is co-author of International Public Relations and Public Diplomacy: Communication and Engagement, published by Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. His co-editors are Guy Golan, associate professor at the Syracuse University Newhouse School of Public Communications, and Dennis Kinsey, director of public diplomacy at Newhouse.

Senior lecturer Norbert Herber has self-published a book called I am Ai, We are Ai about the 2012 National Cultural Festival Project in Japan. It traces the path of traditional indigo in Japan, from the soil of Tokushima to the workshops and the dyers throughout the country. The short book is paired with a CD of Herber’s sound work for the final installation of the project. A PDF version of the book is also available online.