Welcome to Mediactive 1.0 — the book version, at any rate.
Mediactive is available for purchase in print (Amazon, Lulu, Barnes & Noble, among others), and in ebook format for the Kindle and Nook. The Japanese edition, which was published by Asahi, is available there in stores and on Amazon-Japan; I wrote a new “Chapter 0” for that edition. (Here’s the Japanese version in PDF.)
Here are the Chinese version, the Armenian translation, and, just off the virtual press, the Ukrainian translation. I’m grateful to the people in those countries who’ve made these versions possible.
This project lives under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. You can download it here as a PDF, and share it with others, free for noncommercial use.
If you spot a mistake please let me know either in the comments or by sending me a message.
I think this is a great idea. I want to read every chapter.
Right now, I’m under contract to write a traditional book. You know, the kind with pages. But it is only sort of traditional. The characters will have cameo appearances on the book website as we near publication. The website will also have footage of me actually reporting the book. And I’ve been doing a lot of sound recording.
I’ve been struggling with how to create and maintain my web presence AS I write, because I am bound by a traditional book contract NOT to divulge the contents of the book before it comes out. So I can only blog about very general topics in the book until we near publication date.
I call the blog White Woman in the Barrio and it is very narrowly targeted to the book topic.
People tell me I don’t pimp myself and my career accolades enough in the website. I wonder if a journalist’s awards and past glories are all that interesting? What do you think?
Nothing wrong with mentioning that you’ve won awards. But no business hands itself so many as journalism, which tells you something about the fundamental insecurity inside the craft…
As a Latin and Greek scholar, I hate that word “mediactive”. It seems as though it is missing a syllable. OTOH, “mediaactive” would be even worse, although it would sound right. There ought to be some other stem that could be combined with “media-” to yield a really kewl new word, a coinage that would live through the ages. – Just my casual thoughts here…
I cannot locate any stock at amazon. Where else can this book be purchased?
It’s definitely available via Amazon — check this link.
They’re out of stock…
Wonderful subject matter and utterly essential for paddling through all the crap. I do not have kindle or nook, but did open the pdf file. Am i correct to assume that the links do not work in pdf? And if not, can I purchase an online version of the book that would allow me to follow the links?
Thanks, and thanks for undertaking such an important project.
jm
The links should work even in the PDF.
We have identified this as our study guide in our Digital Journalism class at Walla Walla Community College. While it is free to download the pdf, I’m happy to buy it on Kindle, as it is more convenient than reading off a laptop. But I wonder who is really getting paid if I buy the Kindle version, does Amazon take all or does the author get part of it. And if the author does get paid by Amazon, is it the same as the hard copy version? If not I’d be pleased to make up the difference as a supporter of Mediactive.
Thank you so much for your interest in the book. As the author I get a cut of the Kindle price (the majority, actually) as well as the hard-copy price.
I will definitely be investing in the kindle version!
“The web is awash with miss-information” – that phrase has been rattling around my head for a number of years. “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet” is another one, more commonly used.
A beer-loving friend recently landed a job in Tanzania, so at his leaving do I asked him why he’d move to an area of Africa that had a strict no-alcohol policy. Nobody at the party was aware of this, nor did they believe it, until they checked the facts on Wikipedia. Sure enough, it was true – since the Uganda-Tanzania “Liberation War” in the late 70s, the government had enforced a strict ban on alcohol. Illegal liquor had severe consequences for the Tanzania “People’s Defence Force”, being an instigator of corruption and bribery, as well as inebriation within the militia.
Truth be told, that was far from the truth. I typed it into Wikipedia during a brief visit to the bathroom, and it remained as an internet “fact” for at least an hour. Anyone reading that page during that time may still believe this to be true, and may relay it along the line to others. Who knows?
“Don’t believe what you read on the internet”.
Dan – really enjoying your book by the way. Thanks.
Links definitely do NOT work in the pdf version – either on Windows or Linux…
Great book, just started it for the MOOC from Edx.org.
We’re changing the PDF to one that will support links. Thanks for heads-up.
Hi, Dan – Is that new PDF available yet? Links do not work in the one I just downloaded. Thanks.
Best thing for now is to use the HTML version. No ETA on new pdf, regretablly…
Saw and heard you talk at the Summer Institute in Digital Media last month. I’m about half way into Mediactive and finding it both interesting and useful. 2009 seems like an awfully long time ago. The core ideas are time transcending but not so much the examples. (Though I was able to find information referencing the Tunisian Prison(er) Map, the map itself was not to be found on the server. I did have fun, accompanied by a degree of nausea, looking at the Walmart video timeline though.) Any thoughts about an updated revision?
Thought about an updated version a lot, but it’s a matter of time. Hope it might work out.