So you’re interested in what you can read to become a better journalist, designer, architect, urban planner, or neighbour living and working in a super-diverse city? We’ve asked our DCFA-fellows OneWorld to name their favourite must-reads books related to their Fellowship Redesigning Journalism. For all you city designers that want to empower yourself (and others), let these reads guide your practice of transforming cities for the better. And guess what? You can order these books with a pretty neat discount* via our local bookstore Athenaeum!
At the beginning of the 21st century, it hardly goes uncontested anymore that media organisations play an important role in democracy. The main questions have now become whether the contemporary media conjuncture offers enough to our democracies, how their democratic investment can be deepened and how our communication rights can be expanded. Reclaiming the Media: Communication Rights and Democratic Media Roles aims to look at four thematic areas that structure the opportunities for democratising (media) democracy.
Journalism remains one of the main sites of communication power, an expanded space where citizens, protesters, PR professionals, tech developers and hackers can directly shape the news. Adrienne Russell reports on media power from one of the most vibrant corners of the journalism field, the corner where journalists and activists from countries around the world cross digital streams and end up updating media practices and strategies. Russell demonstrates the way the relationship between digital journalism and digital activism has shaped coverage of the online civil liberties movement, the Occupy movement, and the climate change movement. Journalism as Activism explores the ways everyday meaning and the material realities of media power are tied to the communication tools and platforms we have access to, the architectures of digital space we navigate, and our ability to master and modify our media environments.
Extra Bold is the inclusive, practical, and informative career handbook for designers that we’ve all been waiting for. Written collaboratively by a diverse team of authors, the book opens with critical essays that rethink design principles and practices through theories of feminism, racism, inclusion, and nonbinary thinking. Extra Bold features interviews, essays, typefaces, and projects from dozens of contributors with a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, abilities, gender identities, and positions of economic and social privilege. The book adds new voices to the dominant design canon.Part textbook and part comic book, zine, manifesto, survival guide, and self-help manual, Extra Bold is filled with stories and ideas that don’t show up in other career books or design overviews.
Who is the human in media philosophy? Although media philosophers have argued since the twentieth century that media are fundamental to being human, this question has not been explicitly asked and answered in the field. Armond R. Towns demonstrates that humanity in media philosophy has implicitly referred to a social Darwinian understanding of the human as a Western, white, male, capitalist figure. Building on concepts from Black studies and cultural studies, Towns develops an insightful critique of this dominant conception of the human in media philosophy and introduces a foundation for Black media philosophy. Delving into the narratives of the Underground Railroad, the politics of the Black Panther Party, and the digitization of Michael Brown’s killing, On Black Media Philosophy deftly illustrates that media are not only important for Western Humanity but central to alternative Black epistemologies and other ways of being human.
*All books can be ordered at Athenaeum Bookstore by emailing [email protected]. With code DCFA2122 you get a 10% discount on non-Dutch publications. Please mention the code when ordering your books.
