The goal is to record most books written or edited by the School of Communication faculty. We will start by entering the most recent publications first and work our way back to older books. There is a WMU Authors section in Waldo Library, where most of these books can be found.
.With a few exceptions, we do not have the rights to put the full text of the book online, so there will be a link to a place where you can purchase the book.
If you are a faculty member and have a book you would like to include in the WMU book list, please contact wmu-scholarworks@wmich.edu
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Ethics and Entertainment: Essays on Media Culture and Media Morality
Sandra Borden and Howard Good
As modern media shift from the distribution of information to its creation, a fresh inquiry into the ethics of media is needed. This collection of 19 essays provides useful perspectives for both producers and consumers of entertainment. Topics include the creation of celebrity, the effects of entertainment on children, the hybridization of entertainment and news, author and intellectual property rights, and the role of human dignity in modern media, among many others.
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Telling the Kalamazoo Community RACE Story
Sue Ellen Christian and Donna Odom
Local residents of Kalamazoo, Michigan share their stories of race and ethnicity.
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Becoming the Second City: Chicago's Mass News Media, 1833-1898
Richard Junger
Becoming the Second City examines the development of Chicago's press and analyzes coverage of key events in its history to call attention to the media's impact in shaping the city's cultural and historical landscape. In concise, extensively documented prose, Richard Junger illustrates how nineteenth-century newspapers acted as accelerants that boosted the growth of Chicago in its early history by continually making and remaking the city's public image as the nation's populous "Second City." Highlighting the newspaper industry's involvement in the business and social life of Chicago, Junger casts newspaper editors and reporters as critical intermediaries between the elite and the larger public and revisits key events and issues including the Haymarket Square bombing, the 1871 fire, the Pullman Strike, and the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. A former news reporter, Richard Junger is an associate professor of communication and English at Western Michigan University and the author of The Journalist as Reformer: Henry Demarest Lloyd and Wealth Against Commonwealth.
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Leadership: Theory and Practice
Peter G. Northouse
Adopted at more than 800 colleges and universities worldwide, the market-leading text owes its success to the unique way in which it combines an academically robust account of the major theories and models of leadership with an accessible style and practical exercises that help students apply what they learn. Each chapter follows a consistent format, allowing students to easily contrast the various theories, and three case studies in each chapter provide practical examples of each theory or trait discussed.
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Motherhood Misconceived: Representing the Maternal in U.S. Films
Heather Addison, Mary Kate Goodwin-Kelly, and Elaine Roth
First collection of essays on cinematic motherhood.
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Telecommunications and Business Strategy
Richard Gershon
With today's communications industry experiencing major changes on an almost daily basis, media managers must have a clear understanding of the different delivery platforms, as well as a grasp of critical management, planning, and economic factors in order to stay current and move their organizations forward.
Telecommunications and Business Strategy helps current and future media professionals understand the relationship and convergence patterns between the broadcast, cable television, telephony, and Internet communication industries. Author Richard A. Gershon examines telecommunications industry structures and the management practices and business strategies affecting the delivery of information and entertainment services to consumers. He brings in specialists to present the finer points of management and planning responsibilities. Case studies from the International Radio and Television Society (IRTS) competition supplement the main text and offer an invaluable perspective on management issues.
Developed for students in telecommunications management, electronic media management, and telecommunication economics, this volume also serves as a practical reference for the professional manager. -
Interracial Communication: Theory Into Practice
Mark P. Orbe and Tina M. Harris
Specifically addressing how interpersonal communication as process is potentially impeded because of how we are socialized to think about racial differences, this exciting and much-anticipated second edition of Interracial Communication: Theory Into Practice guides readers in applying the valuable contributions of recent communication theory to improving everyday communication among the races. Authors Mark P. Orbe and Tina M. Harris offer a comprehensive, practical foundation for dialogue on interracial communication, as well as a resource that stimulates thinking and encourages readers to become active participants in the solution process.
New to the Second Edition"Incorporates new topics: " This edition includes discussions of whiteness and diversity management within the workplace and a brand new chapter on interracial conflict."Provides updated statistics, research studies, and examples: "Changes reflect the state of study in a post-9/11 society, including discussions of how the media frame race in relation to Middle Easterners and Latinos and pending issues relative to illegal immigration."Offers student reflections: " Chapter concepts are brought to life through self-reflections about race as experienced by students enrolled in an interracial communication course."Presents additional reflections by the authors: " Each author offers new experiences to help readers understand how race is salient in their everyday lives, including friendships; romantic relationships; organizational, public, and group settings; and the mass media."Gives attention to all predominant U.S. races: " The book addresses African Americans, Asian Americans, European Americans, Latino/a Americans, and Native Americans in addition to discussing multiracial Americans.
Intended Audience
This is an ideal core text for courses such as Interracial Communication, Intercultural Communication, International or Global Communication, and Race, Gender, and Media in departments of speech communication, mass communication, and ethnic studies.
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Journalism as Practice: MacIntyre, Virtue Ethics and the Press
Sandra Borden
The process of turning the news into just another product has been going on since at least the nineteenth century. But this process of commodification has accelerated since a few, publicly owned conglomerates have come to dominate the global media market. The emphasis on the bottom line has resulted in newsroom budget cuts and other business strategies that seriously endanger good journalism. Meanwhile, the growing influence of the Internet and partisan commentary has led even journalists themselves to question their role.In this book, Sandra L. Borden analyzes the ethical bind of public-minded journalists using Alasdair MacIntyre's account of a 'practice'. She suggests that MacIntyre's framework helps us to see how journalism is normatively defined by the pursuit of goods appropriate to its purpose - and how money and other 'external' goods threaten that pursuit. Borden argues that developing and promoting the kind of robust group identity implied by the idea of a practice can help journalism better withstand the moral challenges posed by commodification.This book applies MacIntyre's virtue theory to journalism with philosophical rigor, and at the same time is informed by the most current thinking from communication and other disciplines, including organizational studies and sociology.
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Crisis Management By Apology: Corporate Response to Allegations of Wrongdoing
Keith Hearit
This volume examines the role of apologia and apology in response to public attack. Author Keith Michael Hearit provides an introduction to these common components of public life, and considers a diverse list of subjects, from public figures and individuals to corporations and institutions. He explores the motivations and rationales behind apologies, and considers the ethics and legal liabilities of these actions. Hearit provides case studies throughout the volume, with many familiar examples from recent events in the United States, as well as an international apology-making case from Japan.
The broad-perspective approach of this volume makes the content relevant and appealing to practitioners and scholars in public relations, business communications, and management. It is a valuable text for courses that take a discursive approach to public relations, and it also appeals to readers in business management, examining apology as a response strategy to corporate crises. -
Hollywood and the Rise of Physical Culture
Heather Addison
This study examines the relationship between cinema and physical culture (i.e. activities such as dieting and muscle-building). Hollywood's long-standing prominence on the world state makes it an ideal place to begin such an examination. The evidence that emerges from a case study of Hollywood's impact on the American reducing craze of the 1920s, a physical culture fad whose chief focus was on shedding fat, will form the basis for speculation regarding the interrelationship of Hollywood and physical culture.
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Real Emotional Logic: Film and Television Docudrama as Persuasive Practice
Steven N. Lipkin
Analyzing docudrama as a mode of argument, Steven N. Lipkin explores the ethical, historical, and ideological functions of docudrama to discover why these films based on true stories offer such appealing story lines. That appeal, Lipkin discovers, is rooted in docudrama’s representation of actual people and events by means of melodramatic narrative structures that play on the emotions of the viewer.
The dual nature of docudramas—blending narrative and documentary style— argues for a moral view of reality-based subject matter. The ethics, the ideology, the very presence of docudrama on television and the range of topics and problems that appear in contemporary feature film docudramas indicate how this form of presentation appeals to its audience. Docudrama offers a warranted, rational view of what the story material might suggest initially to be an irrational world. Through its moral agenda, docudrama ultimately allows the possibilities of understanding, optimism, and hope to emerge from “real stories.”
Real Emotional Logic traces the development of docudramas into contemporary movies of the week and feature films, including Schindler’s List, Amistad, JFK, The Killing Fields, Quiz Show, A League of Their Own, In the Name of the Father, Call Northside 777, 13 Rue Madeleine, Cheerleader Mom, Shine, Rosewood, A Civil Action, and October Sky.
Lipkin provides further insight into the genre by identifying and describing the commonalities connecting ostensibly different docudramas through their shared themes and narrative techniques. In doing so, he exposes the persuasive rhetorical strategies at the heart of docudramas and reveals the constructed emotional appeal inherent in films “based on a true story.”
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Building Diverse Communities: Applications of Communication Research
Trevy A. McDonald, Mark P. Orbe, and Trevellya Ford Ahmed
An examination of how various methodological approaches can promote a sense of community within and outside the academy. It focuses on the strategies used, then demonstrates how researchers can put the theory into practice. It also highlights how community can be guided via public channels.
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Instructor's Manual to Accompany Leadership: Theory and Practice, Second Edition
Mary Ann Bowman and Peter Guy Northouse
This instructor's manual has been prepared by Mary Ann Bowman to accompany the publication of the second edition of Leadership: Theory and Practice.
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Telecommunications Management: Industry Structures and Planning Strategies
Richard A. Gershon
With today's communications industry experiencing major changes on an almost daily basis, media managers must have a clear understanding of the different delivery platforms, as well as a grasp of critical management, planning, and economic factors in order to stay current and move their organizations forward. "Telecommunications Management" helps current and future media professionals understand the relationship and convergence patterns between the broadcast, cable television, telephony, and Internet communication industries. Author Richard A. Gershon examines telecommunications industry structures and the management practices and business strategies affecting the delivery of information and entertainment services to consumers. He brings in specialists to present the finer points of management and planning responsibilities. Case studies from the International Radio and Television Society (IRTS) competition supplement the main text and offer an invaluable perspective on management issues. Developed for students in telecommunications management, electronic media management, and telecommunication economics, this volume also serves as a practical reference for the professional manager.
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Leadership: Theory and Practice
Peter G. Northouse
The Second Edition of this popular text provides a description and analysis of a wide variety of different theoretical approaches to leadership. The book contains the same user-friendly, chapter-consistent format, with each chapter examining a specific leadership approach, including a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. The new edition includes comprehensive updates and additions incorporating recent advances in the field, as well as suggestions from over 250 colleges and universities where the original edition was adopted.