Employability

Welcome to the Caledonian Academy located in the heart of Glasgow in the UK. The Academy is the focus of Glasgow Caledonian University’s aim to develop and research innovative forms of learning and teaching for a wide range of students - not only at our Glasgow base but also at outreach campuses abroad

This second edition attempts the seemingly difficult task of assessing and illustrating a range of debates around ‘new media’ in a very ‘old media’ context – a textbook. Whilst the book, like many publications in these times, pays lip service to what it observes through the provision of a ‘companion website’ it is clear that this is a very scholarly, conventional and authoritative text and there is no need for it to shy away from that despite the appearance of a ‘disconnect’ on one level. The content is divided into large sections, each with its own bibliography, and these are thematic – change and continuity, virtual images / images of the virtual, new media and identity, theories of cyberculture. Each of these is broken down into a large range of sub-themes and each of these in turn is overflowing with references so we really get the sense of a ‘completist’ approach to the subject but at the same time the tone of a thrown together ‘A-Z’ or a cursory ‘key concepts’ is always avoided. The obligatory case studies (always a hostage to fortune in such a rapidly changing arena) illustrate the key points and I have used a couple of these with students – Kate Modern and the Xbox and its ‘social shaping’, but many are from too narrow a time frame so they are neither contemporary nor sufficiently diverse in historical contexts.