New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

It has become something of a cliché to say that social media is making us tribal. But what do self-styled tribespeople themselves think about social media, and how might they help us better understand the role of the internet in our current political moment? Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork among Bedouin in Jordan, Social Media Tribes: Jordan's Bedouin and the Margins of the State (U Texas Press, 2026) underscores the varied but broadly intelligible ways in which distinctive groups domesticate social media to suit their needs.

Organized around key concepts in Bedouin life (including tribalism, envy, and mercy), Social Media Tribes moves between Facebook-mediated tribal truces, upstart online media platforms, palatial urban villas where self-appointed sheikhs dispense justice, and street clashes organized over WhatsApp in rural communities ignored by state development projects. A meticulous researcher and insightful participant-observer, Geoffrey Hughes reframes social media as part of a global renegotiation of the state-society divide that both preceded the emergence of social media platforms and, in turn, feeds off of them. In this telling, the internet represents a new frontier that, like older frontiers, heralds both novel freedoms and novel forms of social control.

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Cybersecurity is often presented as a technological challenge: protecting computer networks, preventing attacks and investing in increasingly sophisticated security systems. Yet even the most advanced technology may prove inadequate if organisations cannot interpret threats, communicate their consequences or respond effectively. What role does communication play in building cyber resilience, and why should it matter to business leaders as much as to cybersecurity specialists?

In this episode, Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo speaks with Nina Paine and Ashley Sweetman about Communicating Cyber Risk: Build Cyber Resilience Through Compelling Communication (Kogan Page, 2026). They discuss the book's origins and the distinction between cybersecurity and cyber resilience. Their conversation examines the role of organisational structures and management practices in shaping responses to cyber threats, as well as the challenges of communicating risk across organisational levels.

Particular attention is paid to the financial sector, where banks depend on interconnected technological infrastructures, payment networks and external service providers. The discussion considers what makes cybersecurity particularly challenging in banking, how multinational financial institutions navigate diverse regulatory environments and organisational cultures, and whether lessons from large international banks can be applied to smaller financial institutions and fintech companies.

The interview also addresses the relationship between organisational and systemic resilience. Financial institutions do not operate in isolation, and cyber incidents can have consequences extending well beyond individual firms. This raises questions about the responsibilities of banks, regulators, governments and other participants in the financial system, as well as the challenges of sharing sensitive information across institutional boundaries.

Drawing on the authors' professional experience and their interviews with senior cybersecurity practitioners, the conversation considers what their research reveals about organisational responses to cyber risk and the extent to which these findings can be generalised across different institutional settings.

Ultimately, the book invites readers to think about cybersecurity not simply as a technical responsibility but as an organisational challenge involving leadership, communication and the management of risk in an increasingly interconnected world.

References and further reading: 
Arsenault, B. (Host). (2021, July 7). Leading an inclusive workforce: Emma Smith, Vodafone (No. 8) [Audio podcast episode]. In Security Unlocked: CISO Series with Bret Arsenault. Microsoft; The CyberWire Network. here

Bátiz-Lazo, B. (Host). (2022, November 1). Ashley Sweetman, "Cyber and the City: Securing London's Banks in the Computer Age" (Springer, 2022) [Audio podcast episode]. In New Books Network. here

Kaplan, J. M., Bailey, T., O'Halloran, D., Marcus, A., & Rezek, C. (2015). Beyond cybersecurity: Protecting your digital business. John Wiley & Sons. here

Paine, N., & Sweetman, A. (2026). Communicating cyber risk: Build cyber resilience through compelling communication. Kogan Page. here

Smith, E. (2026, July 29). Trust in a connected world: Why cyber resilience matters. Vodafone. here

Sweetman, A. (2022). Cyber and the city: Securing London's banks in the computer age. Springer. here

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Introduction to the new show, and a discussion of our AI moment with host, Lee Vinsel, co-host Paula Bialski, correspondents, Gretchen Von Koenig, and Javaid Sofi, as well as special guests danah boyd and Adam Wynne.

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Romantic Media and Wartime Networks (Stanford UP, 2026) by Dr. Deven Parker tells the story of how Britain revolutionized its state communication networks on an unprecedented scale during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, setting the stage for our modern infrastructure state where connectivity and surveillance go hand in hand. Dr. Parker argues that Romantic literary representations of this state communications network managed to reveal—and, on occasion, to resist—its ideological functions.

In a wide-ranging study drawing upon an archive of military surveys, spy reports, trial records, and even ladies' hand fans, Dr. Parker reveals the scope and impact of the British government's investments in shutter telegraphs, mapping projects, and postal routes across two decades of war with France. The writers of the Romantic period, meanwhile, were cognizant of the political motivations undergirding the state's overhauled networks, which were designed to facilitate and speed up but also to more easily control communications. Taking up familiar writers including Lord Byron, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Charlotte Smith, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and Thomas De Quincey—as well as lesser-known figures such as radical playwright John Dent, inventor Richard Lovell Edgeworth, and the proto-science fiction novelist Jane Loudon—Dr. Parker reads Romantic literature for its astute chronicling and interrogation of the material hardware of the state's media ecology.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Today I’m speaking with Peter N. Miller, historian and president of the American Academy in Rome, about his new book, Research: A Manifesto (Princeton University Press, 2026). Globally, we spend around $3 trillion dollars a year on research, roughly 2% of global GDP. This activity is the source of many breakthroughs and innovations, not only in the sciences but in all domains of life. Without research, we wouldn’t have as detailed an understanding of past events or cures to once-deadly diseases. Research, however, is also a source of skepticism and suspicion. The activity conjures fears of viral lab leaks, misaligned artificial intelligence, deadly weapons of war, and wasting of taxpayer money. Research: A Manifesto presents a history of the idea and activity of research to demystify a process that despite being so prevalent is so little understood. Research is at the heart of our contemporary world, inextricably tied to the forces that drive society. Peter’s research on research is thus invaluable today.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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In this episode, danah discusses proposed changes to the census that could lead to population undercounts, distort congressional apportionment, and have other far-reaching consequences. The public comment period closes November 2, 2026. You can submit a comment here.

Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census (U Chicago Press, 2026) is an eye-opening story of the people who make the census, the United States’ largest and most consequential dataset, and the growing threats to their crucial work. By many measures, the US census is the government’s largest non-wartime operation, and one of the world’s oldest and biggest data-making endeavors. The 2020 census required more than a decade of planning and technical work—not to mention managing nearly a quarter of a million temporary workers simultaneously—to collect data about the American public. That data was then processed to count each of 331,449,281 residents once—and only once—and in the right place. The operation is also one of the country’s most consequential. Census data determine how political power and federal funding are allocated. Census data make politics, and consequently, politics make census data. In this urgent book, danah boyd explores what it took for the Census Bureau to make the 2020 census, amidst a global pandemic and natural disasters, and while navigating political forces that constrained the budget, micro-managed the schedule, and attacked statisticians’ methods. With rare insider access to the Census Bureau, boyd observed and interviewed hundreds of government civil servants who made the 2020 census. By documenting the perspectives of government workers, Data Are Made, Not Found provides a rare glimpse into what it takes to make democracy’s data. Each chapter reveals a different challenge—ranging from the last-minute fights about a citizenship question to the not-so-helpful help of well-intended stakeholders to avoid undercounts—and shows how civil servants responded to each problem, controversy, and hurdle. Boyd shows how many of the challenges that the Census Bureau faced in 2020 resulted from decades of political operatives, data users, and various stakeholders playing what boyd calls “Jenga politics,” weakening the administrative state for short-term political gains by removing support and adding more requirements. Civil servants saved the 2020 census, but future censuses—and other data-making efforts related to elections, health, and the economy—are precarious. Boyd’s message is clear and compelling: protecting democracy means protecting the people and institutions that produce this data.

danah's website here

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We are often told that social media well-being is simply the result of individual users making healthy digital choices. All it takes is a little self-discipline. In Healthy Users: The Governance of Well-Being on Social Media (U California Press, 2025) Niall Docherty looks closely at this belief and exposes the complex relations of power expressed through its articulation and enactment. Docherty creatively and empirically shows how the discourses, designs, and habits of online well-being push user conduct in certain directions, at the expense of others. This is a contingent mode of governance that combines logics of neoliberalism, practices of psychologized person-making, and persuasive capitalist interfaces. By highlighting the damaging effects of this current arrangement, Healthy Users charts a path that will change how we understand and study social media well-being in the future.

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In Disaster Nationalism: Tsunami and Civil War in Sri Lanka (Duke UP, 2025), Vivian Y. Choi examines how the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami fostered new forms of governance and militarization during Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war that led to enduring forms of precarity and insecurity. Tracing the development of disaster management projects following the tsunami, Choi demonstrates how these projects rest on a logic that treats natural disasters and terrorism as inevitable risks in need of management. The tsunami’s destruction foreclosed the possibility of political resolution to the war, as the state leveraged these projects to justify its militarized aggression in the war against the Tamil Tigers and a new construction of the Sri Lankan nation. Choi reveals how, paradoxically, state-sponsored disaster management projects—from new buffer and border zones to early warning systems—created more insecurity. Choi amplifies the experiences of those affected by the tsunami, particularly Tamil and Muslim communities. In so doing, Choi shows how life perseveres against perpetual uncertainty and danger—caused by natural disasters and state-sanctioned violence alike.

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Will artificial intelligence soon be fighting our wars for us? Could a machine ever command an army? Anthony King is skeptical. In AI, Automation, and War: The Rise of a Military-Tech Complex (Princeton University Press, 2025), he argues that AI is changing war less by replacing soldiers than by bringing civilian tech experts into the headquarters where wars are run.

The conversation begins with how the September 11 attacks turned King toward war, and with his quarter-century of tracing changes in warfare. Then, drawing on 126 interviews across the United States, Britain, and Israel, King explains why AI can be intelligent without being an agent. King takes us inside his research, from Palantir's London office to confidential interviews with Israeli officers. He also previews his next project, a five-year, EU-funded study of the teams forming around AI software in military headquarters.

The machines are not taking over, King insists. Whether that is reassuring depends on how much we trust the humans still in charge.

Our guest is Anthony King, Professor of War Studies and Director of the Strategy and Security Institute at the University of Exeter.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). 

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In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah chats with Dr. Priyanka Bose. Priyanka is a lecturer in English Literacy Education at the School of Education at Western Sydney University, Australia and winner of the 2026 Michael Clyne Prize for outstanding postgraduate research into immigrant bilingualism and language contact.

Tazin and Priyanka talk about Priyanka’s research into heritage language maintenance amongst Bengali speakers in Australia and how emotions play a decisive role in sustaining heritage language use via digital means. Their conversation about Bengali transnational families explores how grandparents and grandchildren use all the resources in their linguistic repertoire in combination with the affordances of digital mediums to communicate in and maintain Bengali. In these exchanges, emotional factors play a crucial role, setting the scene for the continued use of Bengali between generations.

Reference

Bose, P., Starfield, S., & Perera, N. (2025). ‘Ōlē bābālē!!!’ – Exploring emotions and digital language practices in family language policy among Bengali transnational families: A multimodal approach. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13670069251336173. DOI here

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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