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Brian Spitzberg as Co-PI (along with Ming-Hsiang Tsou--Geography, Dipak Gupta--Political Science, Mark Gawron--Linguistics, Li An--Geography), San Diego State University, received $1,300,000 from the National Science Foundation, Division of Computer and Network Systems, to conduct a 4-year study entitled "Mapping Cyberspace to Realspace: Visualizing and Understanding the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Global Diffusion of Ideas and the Semantic Web." The project seeks to identify geo-spatial patterns of web-related communication activities associated with events and processes such as militia development, disaster response, and disease outbreak.

Katrin Döveling, Christian von Scheve, and Elly A. Konijn are the editors of the newly published Routledge Handbook of Emotions and Mass Media. (Routledge, ISBN: 978-0-415-48160-1). Adopting an interdisciplinary approach to the study of emotions within a mass media context, the Handbook of Emotions and Mass Media addresses areas such as evolutionary psychology, media entertainment, sociology, cultural studies, media psychology, political communication, persuasion, and new technology. Leading experts from across the globe explore cutting-edge research on issues including the evolutionary functions of mediated emotions, emotions and media entertainment , measurements of emotions within the context of mass media, media violence, fear-evoking media, politics and public emotions, features , forms and functions of emotions beyond the message, and provide the reader a glimpse into future generations of media technology. This compelling and authoritative Handbook is an essential reference tool for scholars and students of media, communication studies, media psychology, emotions, cultural studies, sociology, and other related disciplines. See http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415481601/