The Digital Difference

“Well-documented, methodical, provocative, and clear, The Digital Difference deserves a prominent place in communication proseminars and graduate courses in research methods because of its reorientation of media effects research and its application to media policy making.”—John P. Ferré, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

“This is an essential book. W. Russell Neuman, a towering figure in communication research, accurately charts the structure and dynamics of communication in the digital age by examining the interaction between technology, culture, institutions, business, and social evolution. His analysis is clear, empirically grounded, and theoretically meaningful.”—Manuel Castells, University of Southern California

“The social media have enhanced the power, and exacerbated the problems, of the ‘active audience.’ This ambitious book—by a maestro of communication research—is at once a history of the field and its changing zeitgeist, a critique and reconciliation of its dominant paradigms, a diagnosis of the cognitive and societal processes of reception, and an insistence on its relevance to the making of public policy.”—Elihu Katz, University of Pennsylvania