Social Research

Journalists today are inundated with data about which stories attract the most clicks, likes, comments, and shares. These metrics influence what stories are written, how news is promoted, and even which journalists get hired and fired. Do metrics make journalists more accountable to the public? Or are these data tools the contemporary equivalent of a stopwatch wielded by a factory boss, worsening newsroom working conditions and journalism quality?

Lee Eisenberg's The Number hit the New York Times best-seller list and became an instant classic with those wanting to learn more about retiring comfortably. Here he investigates the forces that compel Americans to shop till they drop. A timely exploration, Shoptimism takes a critical look at an often downplayed aspect of American economic prosperity.

The Sun and the Moon tells the delightful and surprisingly true story of how a series of articles in the Sun newspaper in 1835 convinced the citizens of New York that the moon was inhabited. Purporting to reveal discoveries of a famous British astronomer, the series described such moon life as unicorns, beavers that walked upright, and four-foot-tall flying man-bats. It quickly became the most widely circulated newspaper story of the era.

Where do journalists find the guts to keep telling the truth in places where truth-telling will get them murdered? Organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters sans frontières bring us the death toll from around the world, and that number is truly daunting: since 1992 more than 730 journalists have been killed - nearly three-quarters of them targeted and murdered. Over 85% of the fallen have been local journalists trying to unveil violence and corruption in their own back yards. Worse, 95% of the people who ordered their murder remain unpunished.

When Wisconsin became the first state in the nation in 1959 to let public employees bargain with their employers, the legislation catalyzed changes to labor laws across the country. In March 2011, when newly elected governor Scott Walker repealed most of that labor law and subsequent ones - and then became the first governor in the nation to survive a recall election fifteen months later - it sent a different message. Both times, Wisconsin took the lead, first empowering public unions and then weakening them.

In Cool, the neuroscientist and philosopher Steven Quartz and the political scientist Anette Asp bring together the latest findings in brain science, economics, and evolutionary biology to form a provocative theory of consumerism, revealing how the brain's "social calculator" and an instinct to rebel are the crucial missing links in understanding the motivations behind our spending habits.

¿Quién manda en España? ¿Por qué mandan los que ocupan puestos de poder en los ministerios, secretarías de Estado, direcciones generales? ¿Qué redes de intereses les unen entre sí? Más allá de las "puertas giratorias", unos grupos pequeños de altos funcionarios, personas vinculadas al poder real, sobre todo al económico, toman las decisiones y lo hacen sin responder ante los ciudadanos ni escucharles. Porque las élites de poder no se presentan a las elecciones ni defienden un programa electoral.

Long before the current preoccupation with "fake news", American newspapers routinely ran stories that were not quite, strictly speaking, true. Today, a firm boundary between fact and fakery is a hallmark of journalistic practice, yet for many readers and publishers across more than three centuries, this distinction has seemed slippery or even irrelevant.

In this holistic history, Will Mari traces American journalism from the 1920s through the 1960s, a time of great change and controversy in the field; one in which journalism was produced in “news factories”, by workers with dozens of different roles, using the latest technology, and setting the stage for the emergence of the information economy. Told from an empathetic, omnivorous, ground-up point of view, The American Newsroom uses memoirs, trade journals, textbooks, and archival material to show how the newsroom expanded our ideas of what journalism could and should be.

Bearing Witness While Black tells the story of this century's most powerful Black social movement through the eyes of fifteen activists who documented it. At the height of the Black Lives Matter uprisings, African Americans filmed and tweeted evidence of fatal police encounters in dozens of US cities - using little more than the device in their pockets. Their urgent dispatches from the frontlines spurred a global debate on excessive police force, which claimed the lives of African American men, women, and children at disproportionate rates.

Recounts the story of America’s last great newspaper war between the New York Daily News and the New York Post, as both papers’ long rivalry turned existential amid the rise of digital news. The story is told through the eyes of the reporters, or “runners”, and photographers who fought the war on the ground in cities across America.

Recounts the story of America’s last great newspaper war between the New York Daily News and the New York Post, as both papers’ long rivalry turned existential amid the rise of digital news. The story is told through the eyes of the reporters, or “runners,” and photographers who fought the war on the ground in cities across America.

In an era when numerous modern media outlets rail about the guilt of their political enemies for speaking untruths, Postgate proves that the media can often credibly be viewed as the party actually guilty of deception. Americans today mistrust the major media more than ever. Postgate will prove that this distrust is richly deserved.

Beginning with America’s first newspaper, investigative reporting has provided journalism with its most significant achievements and challenging controversies. In The Evolution of American Investigative Journalism, James L. Aucoin provides listeners with the first comprehensive history of investigative journalism.

In an increasingly secular, fragmented, and distracted culture, nothing brings Americans together quite like sports. On Sundays in September, more families worship at the altar of the NFL than at any church. This appeal, which cuts across all demographic and ideological lines, makes sports perhaps the last unifying mass ritual of our era, with huge numbers of people all focused on the same thing at the same moment. That timeless, live quality makes sports very powerful, and very lucrative. And the media spectacle around them is only getting bigger, brighter, and noisier.

On May 7, 1945, journalist Edward Kennedy bypassed military censorship to be the first to break the news of the Nazi surrender executed in Reims, France. While, at the behest of Soviet leaders, Allied authorities prohibited release of the story, Kennedy stuck to his journalistic principles and refused to manage information he believed the world had a right to know. No action by an American correspondent during the war proved more controversial.

Injuries to the peripheral nervous system often result in significant deterioration of the regular activities. Many of the peripheral nerve injuries in the upper extremity are commonly associated with altered shoulder postures and functional imbalance in the arm, forearm and hand. It is essential to know about the basics of the nervous system, the neuropathology, the transmission of pain and movement dysfunction before initiating nerve mobilization procedure.

In Democracy Lives in Darkness, Emily Van Duyn discovers and follows a secret political organization of progressive women in a conservative community in rural Texas. Its members met in secret to protect themselves from retaliation by their conservative neighbors, friends, and family. They discussed immigrant rights, women's reproductive rights, racism, and intolerance of those of different racial/ethnic and cultural backgrounds in their community. Democracy Lives in Darkness is about this group: their daily lives, their choices, and ultimately, their incubation.

Twenty-seven-year-old Nell Stevens was determined to write a novel, but life kept getting in the way. Then came a game-changing opportunity: she won a fellowship that would let her spend three months, all expenses paid, anywhere in the world to research and write a book. Would she choose a glittering metropolis, a romantic village, an exotic paradise? Not exactly. Nell chose Bleaker Island, a snowy, windswept pile of rock in the Falklands. There, in a guesthouse where she would be the only guest, she could finally rid herself of distractions and write.

In the past century, average life expectancies have nearly doubled, and today, for the first time in human history, many people have a realistic chance of living to 80 or beyond. As life expectancy increases, Americans need accurate, scientifically grounded information so that they can take full responsibility for their own latter years. In The Art and Science of Aging Well, Mark E. Williams, MD, discusses the remarkable advances that medical science has made in the field of aging and the steps that people may take to enhance their lives as they age.