Book Reviews
Digital and Strategic Communication Book Reviews are compiled from student discussions of digital media, strategic communication, and information design texts.
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Baby Carrots, the Internet, and The Filter Bubble
Why would a web service filter the information that I see? The information created in the entire history of humanity until 2010 is the same amount of information created online every two days. To filter that vast set of information, web companies have adopted the, “if you like this, you’ll like that” approach to curation.…
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Academically Adrift (Arum & Roksa, 2011)
Academically Adrift: Limited learning on college campuses (by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, 2011) Almost half of students in college may not learn anything in their first two years, say authors Arum and Roksa. In a discussion at Queens University of Charlotte’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), faculty members from around the…
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What’s Mine is Yours (Botsman & Rogers, 2010)
What’s Mine is Yours: The rise of collaborative consumption by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers (2010) “I knew I would love the book when I read the first paragraph,” says Catherine Whittaker. “After I read it, I was glad I borrowed it from the library.” The embedded lesson in the book is the gross consumption…
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Switch (Heath & Heath, 2010)
Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard by Chip & Dan Heath (2010) Change is often hard in any circumstance. The Heath brothers take on this issue by breaking change down into three specific areas that could each serve as catalyst for change. According to Laura Tillistrand, Leasa Tvedt, Leah Beth Parsons, and Jakita Jones,…
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Made to Stick (Heath and Heath 2007)
Made to Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die (Heath & Heath, 2007) To make the book stick in our minds, Jim Shoff and Miranda Ervin turn back to an interview with the authors on NPR. “The curse of knowledge is the arch-villain in our book,” they say. “If you know something, it’s hard to…
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Employees First, Customers Second (Nayar, 2010)
Employees First, Customers Second: Turning conventional management upside down (Nayar, 2010) “Usually business books focus on the what,” says Stacey Randall. “This book is focused on the how – the process.” Employees First, Customers Second is a vehicle for transparency in an organization. Nayar describes the process utilized by his company, HCL, to create a…
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Engage! (Solis, 2010)
Engage!: The complete guide for brands and business to build, cultivate, and measure success on the new web (Solis, 2010) I assigned several books for a graduate seminar in Digital Strategic Communication, taught at Queens University of Charlotte in the Knight School of Communication’s master’s program. The favorite, by far, was Brian Solis’ Engage! In…
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Wikinomics (Tapscott & Williams, 2006)
Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything (Tapscott & Williams, 2006) Premised around four major ideas of a new economy – (1) Openness; (2) Peering; (3) Sharing; and, (4) Acting Globally – Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything suggests that mass communication turns the traditional inward business model toward an outward focus. The authors point to…
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What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy (Gee, 2007)
What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy (Gee, 2007) James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy is less about video games and more about a theoretical approach to education, says Kristen Odell. The concept behind the book is a discussion about learning, arguing that…
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Blog Rules (Flynn, 2006)
Blog Rules: A business guide to managing policy, public relations, and legal issues (Flynn, 2006) The discussion surrounding Blog Rules: A business guide to managing policy, public relations, and legal issues by Nancy Flynn highlighted using business blogs as an internal tool for top-down communication. Flynn suggests that companies treat blogs as archives, ensure corporate policies…
J.A.McArthur 