Publications - Books

Gina Neff: Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries (new paperback edition)

January 19, 2015

In the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, employees of Internet startups took risks--left well-paying jobs for the chance of striking it rich through stock options (only to end up unemployed a year later), relocated to areas that were epicenters of a booming industry (that shortly went bust), chose the opportunity to be creative over the stability of a set schedule.

Anya Schiffrin: Global Muckraking - 100 Years of Investigative Journalism from Around the World

July 15, 2014

From Sinclair Lewis to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, crusading journalists have played a central role in American politics: checking abuses of power, revealing corporate misdeeds, and exposing government corruption. Muckraking journalism is part and parcel of American democracy.

Dean Starkman: The Watchdog That Didn't Bark

January 7, 2014

In this sweeping, incisive study, Dean Starkman exposes the critical shortcomings that softened coverage during the mortgage era and the years leading up to the financial collapse of 2008. He locates the roots of the problem in business news’s origin as a market messaging service geared toward investors in the early twentieth century. This access-dependent strain of journalism was opposed by the grand, sweeping work of the muckrakers.

State Power 2.0: Authoritarian Entrenchment and Political Engagement Worldwide

December 2, 2013

Digital media and online social networking applications have changed the way in which dissent is organized with social movement leaders using online applications and digital content systems to organize collective action, activate local protest groups, network with international social movements and share their political perspectives. In the past, authoritarian regimes could control broadcast media in times of political crisis by destroying newsprint supplies, seizing radio and television stations, and blocking phone calls.

Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring

March 29, 2013

Did digital media really “cause” the Arab Spring, or is it an important factor of the story behind what might become democracy’s fourth wave? An unlikely network of citizens used digital media to start a cascade of social protest that ultimately toppled four of the world’s most entrenched dictators.