From Sonia Livingstone at the LSE:

My colleague Leah Lievrouw and I have been asked to develop and edit a major compilation of "classic" must-read articles in new media studies - a sort of "desert island" collection that will be published as a (rather hefty) four-volume reference.

Leah and I have made our own preliminary list. However, our experience with the Handbook of New Media has taught us that this field is a very big umbrella, covering everything from media law and regulation, to studies of communities and social networks, to education and the workplace, to digital arts and culture (and more). The challenge is to assemble a collection that fairly and comprehensively covers the field as we specialists understand it.

So, we are seeking your help! We’d love you to tell us about up to three nominations for journal or proceedings articles, key book chapters, or other publications of similar length that you would consider essential reads for anyone wanting to know what new media studies (broadly construed) is about.

These might be readings you always assign to students, items you consistently cite in your own work, or pieces that have made a difference in the way you think about and study new media yourself. We are particularly interested in items that have historical value, tend to be overlooked, or concisely capture a writer's most important ideas. We’re also keen to make this an international list, since this is an international field. You may suggest your own publications, BUT we are more interested to know what or who has influenced you.

Leah and I will select the final list for the collection, but we will be happy to summarize and share everyone's nominees after we get feedback, which itself should be a very interesting resource. We'd like your suggestions and ideas by October 1 if possible - we're also eager to see if this exercise generates any discussion!

Thanks very much for your time and interest!

Sonia Livingstone - please reply to s.livingstone@lse.ac.uk

I have put a blog posting up about it on the unofficial LSE groupblog here: http://groupblog.workasone.net/ and nominated three papers I considered to be exemplary there - I would be interested to know what papers/chapters you sent to Sonia and welcome the chance for a discussion either on this list or in the comments for the blog. --- David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London School of Economics & Political Science <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm> Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/ (personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog) Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ dealingwithemail/> callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)