[Air-L] share a list of CMC textbook recommendations

[Min Wu]

I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to reply to my request for a textbook recommendation for an undergrad course on CMC. I've collected all the recommended titles and am sharing it here. Hope it will be helpful for some of you too :-) Min Wu

1.	For some wonderful reference, historical, and
foundation material for lectures you should look at
The Network Nation:  Human Communication via Computers (revised 1993, MIT
press) which can still be ordered at a very reasonable
price compared to most text books.    It provides a lot of material on work
done before CMC in many fields that was relevant as well as some ways of
thinking about the technology you will not find in most places as well as
all the very early work that most students never hear about.   The authors
were Hiltz and turoff and the original edition was 1978.   The 1993 as a new
chapter summarizing the next 15 years.   the cost benefit analysis done in
the book seems to have been forgotten and serves as a very good lecture.
So does the early related work in psychology and sociology.  The interesting
aspect were the predictions in the issue of the Boswash times that began
every chapter some of which came true and some which have not yet come
true.  It sets a nice tone for the students to try making predictions about
what might be the next prediction beyond current systems. I forgot to mention one item i consider important.  In the new chapter I did
a morphological exercise to come up with the three dimensions I felt was
most important for guiding the design of different forms of CMC and I have
always found that very useful for pointing out to students why the nature of
the group and the nature of the application (a Delphi concept from the 1975
Delphi method book) influences the design of CMC systems.  These were:

1.  the degree of problem complexity from the classic IS literature on the
design of information systems.
2.  the nature of evidence (C.W. Churchman) with the addition of "negotiated
reality" form management science (marketing and behavior, non scientific
evidence).
3.  An  extension of Thomasa's? dimensions of organizational communication
types between units or "groups" in the organizations.

there are sample group problems used to illustrate the differences for the
first two and a sample of how voting is used very differently to do many
things/objectives beyond reaching a consensus.  Most students (and some
faculty) never seem to realize this until it is explained to them.

2.	Thurlow, C., Lengel, L., & Tomic, A. (2004). Computer Mediated 
Communication: Social Interaction and the Internet. London; Thousand 
Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.

It comes with a companion website: http://www.com.washington.edu/cmc/

3.	I recommend Conversation and Community by Lynn Cherny and Always On by Naomi Baron.  

4.	I would take sections of both of these for a generalized class on CMCs, but
I'm personally looking at these two books for a class I'm designing on new
media - they take very different approaches.

Deuze, Mrk ed. (2011) *Managing Media Work*. Los Angeles and London: Sage.
This one's an industry insider's take on media industries. A good collection
but I'm judging it to be an "only textbook" for a particular kind of class.

Lister, Martin, John Dovery, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant and Kieran Kelly.
(2009) New Media: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edition. London and New York:
Routledge. This one is a broader introductory text, but I'm looking at it
for a sociology undergraduate class.

5.	Baym, N.K. (2010) Personal Connections in the Digital Age, Digital Media
and Society Series.
Malden, MA: Polity Press (this one is recommended by three

6.	Internet (Routledge Introductions to Media and Communications) Lorenzo Cantoni 
(Author), Stefano Tardini (Author)