Within the past ten years, social media such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, and others have grown at a tremendous rate, enlisting an astronomical number of users. Social media have inevitably become an integral part of the contemporary classroom, of advertising and public relations industries, of political campaigning, and of numerous other aspects of our daily existence. Social Media: Usage and Impact, edited by Hana S. Noor Al-Deen and John Allen Hendricks, provides a comprehensive and scholarly analysis of social media. Designed as a reader for upper-level undergraduate and graduate level courses, this volume explores the emerging role and impact of social media as they evolve. The contributors examine the implementation and effect of social media in various environments, including educational settings, strategic communication (often considered to be a merging of advertising and public relations), politics, and legal and ethical issues. All chapters constitute original research while using varied research methodologies for analyzing and presenting information about social media. Social Media: Usage and Impact is a tremendous source for educators, practitioners (such as those in advertising, PR, and media industries), and librarians, among others. This collection is an essential resource for any media technology course. With the rapid proliferation and adoption of social media, it is a juggernaut that must be addressed in the higher education curriculum and research.

This "gorgeously written" National Book Award finalist is a dazzling, heart-rending story of an oil rig worker whose closest friend goes missing, plunging him into isolation and forcing him to confront his past (NPR, One of the Best Books of the Year). One night aboard an oil drilling platform in the Atlantic, Waclaw returns to his cabin to find that his bunkmate and companion, Mátyás, has gone missing. A search of the rig confirms his fear that Mátyás has fallen into the sea. Grief-stricken, he embarks on an epic emotional and physical journey that takes him to Morocco, to Budapest and Mátyás's hometown in Hungary, to Malta, Italy, and finally to the mining town of his childhood in Germany. Waclaw's encounters along the way with other lost and yearning souls—Mátyás's angry, grieving half-sister; lonely rig workers on shore leave; a truck driver who watches the world change from his driver's seat—bring us closer to his origins while also revealing the problems of a globalized economy dependent on waning natural resources. High as the Waters Rise is a stirring exploration of male intimacy, the nature of memory and grief, and the cost of freedom—the story of a man who stands at the margins of a society from which he has profited little, though its functioning depends on his labor.

While Syria has been dominated since the 1960s by a determinedly secular regime, the 2011 uprising has raised many questions about the role of Islam in the country's politics. This book demonstrates that with the eradication of the Muslim Brothers after the failed insurrection of 1982, Sunni men of religion became the only voice of the Islamic trend in the country. Through educational programs, charitable foundations and their deft handling of tribal and merchant networks, they took advantage of popular disaffection with secular ideologies to increase their influence over society. In recent years, with the Islamic resurgence, the Alawi-dominated Ba'thist regime was compelled to bring the clergy into the political fold. This relationship was exposed in 2011 by the division of the Sunni clergy between regime supporters, bystanders and opponents. This book affords a new perspective on Syrian society as it stands at the crossroads of political and social fragmentation.

The research monograph Planetary Rent as an Instrument for Solving Global Problems is by Professor Aleksandr V. Bezgodov, Doctor of Economics, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and General Director of the Planetary Development Institute in Dubai, UAE. It is a logical follow-up to the humanitarian manifesto Planetary Project: From Sustainable Development to Managed Harmony. The second Planetary Project book focuses on the economic mechanisms of implementing managed harmony. The monograph spells out an innovative theory of planetary rent as an instrument for building a planetary budget, which would provide funding for addressing global challenges. It would lay foundations for a new economic system, which meets the standards of biocompatibility and the fair distribution of world income. A universal civilization would be created built on harmony between nature and society. Rent evolution and types are analyzed. The need to institutionalize planetary rent is advocated that would contribute to the universal unification of norms and regulations of resource management based on the principles of saving nature, optimization, equality and symmetry. Planetary rent is the next historical phase of the institution of rent in which its innate contradiction of excess income is removed. Several scenarios of global economic development are investigated. A model of the planetary economy is described that is the result of the transition to the biocentric paradigm of human activity and Sixth Techno-economic paradigm technologies. The place and role of planetary rent is examined in a new reality.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER! “There is an unforgettable, curious beauty to be found here.” —Han Kang, Winner of the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian Han Kang’s Human Acts meets Yōko Ogawa’s The Memory Police in this understated South Korean novella in translation: a restrained yet emotional magical realist examination of futility in a capitalist society written in response to the 2009 Yongsan Disaster. In a Seoul slum marked for demolition, residents’ shadows have begun to rise. No one knows how or why–but, they warn each other, do not follow your shadow if it wanders away. As the landscape of their lives is torn apart, building by building, electronics-repair-shop employees Eungyo and Mujae can only watch as their community begins to fade. Their growing connection with one another provides solace, but against an uncaring ruling class and the inevitability of the rising shadows, their relationship may not be enough. Winner of the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award and the Korean Bookseller’s Award, One Hundred Shadows is a tender working-class perspective with subtle and affecting social commentary. This edition features an introduction by Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Vegetarian, Han Kang, and an exclusive interview with the author.

A merchant sailor works for a decade, captaining a yacht up and down the coasts of Malaysia, in the hope that his crooked employer will stay true to a promise... Years after a pandemic sweeps across Europe, wiping out its all-white population, a pilgrim returns to his Polish birthplace in search of the only other non-white kid he knew at school... An inscrutable hotelier loses his composure when a secret passage is discovered in his hotel, leading to a mysterious room and a previously hidden existence... Born in what is now Ukraine to Polish parents, naturalised as a British citizen, and schooled on the high seas of international commerce, Joseph Conrad was a true citizen of the world. His novels bore witness to the dehumanising repercussions of empire, explored a world in which state-sponsored terrorism ruined individuals' lives, and pioneered complex narrative structures and subjective points-of-view in what was to become the first wave of literary modernism. To mark his 160th birthday, 14 authors and critics from Britain, Poland and elsewhere have come together to celebrate his legacy with new pieces of fiction and non-fiction. Conrad felt that the writer's task was to offer 'that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.' In an age of increasing isolationism, these celebrations remind you of the value of such glimpses.

Zein, Farhan, Rayya and their circle are migrants of the fifties, yearning for both their future and their past. Their children, Salah, Rima, Hussein and their friends are young Australians with a distinctive voice and place, succeeding or failing in the clash between generations, struggling for independence in the face of their parents hopes and dreams. Abdal-Rahman is an Iraqi refugee who has lost everything. And Ali, Ahmad, Akram and Yusuf are children in Palestine and Baghdad who have no future but whose stories soar. Mahjar is about lives, journeys and stories, about exile and the experiences that push people to new homelands. Through interwoven stories and fables, it evokes Australia s intimate connection with the Middle East. as well as the joys of living in a new land.