The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media

by Marie-Laure Ryan, Lori Emerson, Benjamin J. Robertson

Overview

The first systematic, comprehensive reference covering the ideas, genres, and concepts behind digital media.

The study of what is collectively labeled “New Media”—the cultural and artistic practices made possible by digital technology—has become one of the most vibrant areas of scholarly activity and is rapidly turning into an established academic field, with many universities now offering it as a major. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media is the first comprehensive reference work to which teachers, students, and the curious can quickly turn for reliable information on the key terms and concepts of the field.

The contributors present entries on nearly 150 ideas, genres, and theoretical concepts that have allowed digital media to produce some of the most innovative intellectual, artistic, and social practices of our time. The result is an easy-to-consult reference for digital media scholars or anyone wishing to become familiar with this fast-developing field.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421412245
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2014
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	552
Product dimensions:	9.60(w) x 6.80(h) x 1.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Marie-Laure Ryan is a member of the Department of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and author of Narrative as Virtual Reality 2: Revisiting Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media from Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lori Emerson is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Benjamin J. Robertson is an instructor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

What People are Saying About This

Alan Liu

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media is a wide, panoramic window on the best humanistic and artistic thought about digital media today. Covering new media studies, digital humanities, electronic literature and art, digital gaming, and other areas, the volume is impressively broad and deep. It offers factual and theoretical approaches; attends to past and present developments; and is multinational in spirit. The list of contributors is a 'who's who' of both emerging and established authors in the digital media field, many of them the central authorities on their topics.

Katherine Hayles

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media has a spectrum of well-chosen terms and authoritative discussions by preeminent scholars in the field. A special bonus is that many of the practitioners are at the forefront of creating the kinds of works they discuss, investing their entries written with the double perspectives of scholar and creator. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to know more about this rapidly emerging field.

From the Publisher

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media has a spectrum of well-chosen terms and authoritative discussions by preeminent scholars in the field. A special bonus is that many of the practitioners are at the forefront of creating the kinds of works they discuss, investing their entries written with the double perspectives of scholar and creator. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to know more about this rapidly emerging field.
—Katherine Hayles, Duke University

As soon as I got this I started using it as a reference work. It has cogent, constrained entries on dozens of digital media and culture topics. Students and teachers alike should have this handy for background checks on stray concepts and cultural forms. It is very helpful for reducing the noise in the fluid and contested terrain of digital media. An essential work.
—McKenzie Wark, The New School for Social Research

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media is a wide, panoramic window on the best humanistic and artistic thought about digital media today. Covering new media studies, digital humanities, electronic literature and art, digital gaming, and other areas, the volume is impressively broad and deep. It offers factual and theoretical approaches; attends to past and present developments; and is multinational in spirit. The list of contributors is a 'who's who' of both emerging and established authors in the digital media field, many of them the central authorities on their topics.
—Alan Liu, University of California, Santa Barbara

McKenzie Wark

As soon as I got this I started using it as a reference work. It has cogent, constrained entries on dozens of digital media and culture topics. Students and teachers alike should have this handy for background checks on stray concepts and cultural forms. It is very helpful for reducing the noise in the fluid and contested terrain of digital media. An essential work.

Editorial Reviews

A splendid, sensitively written, solidly researched and thoroughly enjoyable reference work on the defining technologies of our day. A reference work that you want to read from cover to cover is an extraordinarily rare thing, The authors and editors of The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media have achieved a work worthy of that attention and have done with world of digital scholarship a substantial favor in the process. A quick glance at an entry on a subject you know well should be enough to convince you both of the merits of the entry and the substantial thought that went into selecting and situating the entries in such a readable and logical way. . . In a field where change comes so quickly and memories are fleeting, even for those who have grown up in and studied the computing revolution, The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media fills a void in scholarship and provides the needed authority to mark and gauge digital media's lineage and impacts. It is just what our culture needed.
—Sean S. Costigan, Publishing Research Quarterly

In encyclopedic format, this guide introduces nearly every digital format and genre conceived thus far. For collection managers concerned with documenting the digital, or getting a jump start on pondering the mind-boggling future problems of content access and curation, this volume will serve as a fantastic one-stop, all-inclusive introduction.
—Darby Orcutt, Collection Management

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media represents a valuable and lasting contribution to the field of media studies by revealing current attitudes toward media as digital and material, preserved in bits while moving through multiple communities of practice, and key in unraveling the multiple entwinements between culture and technology. Comprehensive and accessible, there are an impressive 154 entries in the Guide that in combination offer a glimpse of the current state of scholarly work in digital media that is both detailed and broad. . . It will serve as a key resource to which future students and scholars alike can turn for its representation of the current state of digital media studies.
—Alex Christie, Journal of Digital Humanities

An impressive undertaking and it will be well received by both newcomers to the field and more seasoned scholars. Like any good encyclopedia, it offers the reader an opportunity to get lost among its riches. Given that is a book and not a website or ebook, the text is also a unique and certain pleasure: take the book off the shelf, feel its weight in your hands, and then begin flipping through the pages to randomly encounter a new topic.
—Karen Gregory, Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy

From the Publisher

An impressive undertaking and it will be well received by both newcomers to the field and more seasoned scholars. Like any good encyclopedia, it offers the reader an opportunity to get lost among its riches. Given that is a book and not a website or ebook, the text is also a unique and certain pleasure: take the book off the shelf, feel its weight in your hands, and then begin flipping through the pages to randomly encounter a new topic.

Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy - Karen Gregory

06/15/2014
With more than 150 alphabetically arranged, easy-to-read entries from almost 120 contributors, this volume seeks to be "a systematic and comprehensive reference work" for both students and scholars of digital media. Editors Ryan, Lori Emerson, and Benjamin J. Robertson (all English, Univ. of Colorado Boulder) recognize that digital media is constantly changing, with the likelihood of new media emerging soon after the guide's publication. However, they intend this book as "a bridge between the past and the present," offering entries on historical as well as up-to-the-minute topics. Sections are written in clear, nontechnical language, and most are at least two pages in length. Each contains a bibliography and suggestions for further reading as well as "see also" references directing readers to related entries. The work is interdisciplinary in its coverage but focuses primarily on art, textuality, entertainment, and culture. As such, it will be of greater interest to those studying media's role in society or the digital humanities than to people seeking to develop technical expertise. Although the producers view this as a dictionary and an encyclopedia, readers simply wishing for definitions might find other sources more efficient, while those desiring in-depth knowledge of a topic, particularly on an introductory level, will likely be satisfied with this work. Information about the contributors' affiliations is not included; this is the only drawback. VERDICT This guide accomplishes its goals and is appropriate for any collection serving digital studies programs or emerging digital humanities scholars.—Amanda Folk, Univ. of Pittsburgh at Greensburg

Library Journal

In encyclopedic format, this guide introduces nearly every digital format and genre conceived thus far. For collection managers concerned with documenting the digital, or getting a jump start on pondering the mind-boggling future problems of content access and curation, this volume will serve as a fantastic one-stop, all-inclusive introduction.

Collection Management - Darby Orcutt

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media represents a valuable and lasting contribution to the field of media studies by revealing current attitudes toward media as digital and material, preserved in bits while moving through multiple communities of practice, and key in unraveling the multiple entwinements between culture and technology. Comprehensive and accessible, there are an impressive 154 entries in the Guide that in combination offer a glimpse of the current state of scholarly work in digital media that is both detailed and broad. . . It will serve as a key resource to which future students and scholars alike can turn for its representation of the current state of digital media studies.

Journal of Digital Humanities - Alex Christie

A splendid, sensitively written, solidly researched and thoroughly enjoyable reference work on the defining technologies of our day. A reference work that you want to read from cover to cover is an extraordinarily rare thing, The authors and editors of The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media have achieved a work worthy of that attention and have done with world of digital scholarship a substantial favor in the process. A quick glance at an entry on a subject you know well should be enough to convince you both of the merits of the entry and the substantial thought that went into selecting and situating the entries in such a readable and logical way. . . In a field where change comes so quickly and memories are fleeting, even for those who have grown up in and studied the computing revolution, The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media fills a void in scholarship and provides the needed authority to mark and gauge digital media's lineage and impacts. It is just what our culture needed.

Publishing Research Quarterly - Sean S. Costigan