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This article introduces a special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist in which scholars of public deliberation address the theme of "Deliberative Play" from different conceptual and empirical approaches. Here I introduce the concept of deliberative play against a background of philosophical accounts of deliberative action, the theory of metacommunication, and trends in the study of public deliberation that are endeavoring to reduce the gap between normative theories and the empirical realities of deliberative democratic practice. Articles in the special issue address several aspects of deliberative play: how storytelling activities accomplish deliberative play in online forums (Black, Wolfe, and Han); how facilitators can cue and maintain the deliberative play frame during facilitated deliberative discussions (Sprain); how playful exchanges are enabled by the structure of New England town meetings and what they accomplish (Townsend and Milburn); how alternative scenarios for action presented with pros and cons by expert consultants influence deliberative play in online discussions in Poland (Przybylska, Bucholc, and Mazur); and how online discussion interfaces would benefit from applying principles of game design (Gastil). The concluding section reflects on the results of these studies and their implications for further investigations of deliberative play.

Communication theory is not only about society; it is also in society and contributes to the evolution of the communication practices that constitute society, thereby participating in processes of social change. This theme is illustrated by examining the ideas of network and ritual to show how each emerged as a practical concept in Western culture long before it was theorized explicitly for scientific purposes, and how each concept has developed in conjunction with profound changes in the communicative constitution of society. Next, it is argued more generally that communication theory and practice interact in the medium of metadiscourse, and that the discourse about communication, on both theoretical and practical levels, also engages critically with other discourses such as traditional authoritarianism and political realism, thus being caught up in social conflicts. In this complex scene of metadiscursive controversy and social conflict, communication theory participates in social change. Finally, it is suggested that this view on the role of communication theory in social change can contribute to recent conversations about the development of Asian communication theory.

William A. Scott ("Reliability of Content Analysis: The Case of Nominal Scale Coding," Public Opinion Quarterly, 1955, 19, 321-325) proposed an index of agreement between two independent coders that has been widely applied in content analysis & survey research. Scott's index is, however, limited to cases of agreement between two coders. Defined & illustrated is a generalization of Scott's index to cover cases in which the assessment of coding reliability is based on the agreement of all or any size subset of any number of independent coders. Such a measure would be useful, for example, when coding decisions are based on majority rule of several coders in order to improve the reliability of a difficult coding task. AA.

The Handbook of Communication History addresses central ideas, social practices, and media of communication as they have developed across time, cultures, and world geographical regions. It attends to both the varieties of communication in world history and the historical investigation of those forms in communication and media studies. The Handbook editors view communication as encompassing patterns, processes, and performances of social interaction, symbolic production, material exchange, institutional formation, social praxis, and discourse. As such, the history of communication cuts across s

"In 256 entries written by 249 authors representing 29 different countries, The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication addresses issues, theories, and concepts that have substantively contributed to the development of intercultural communication theory and research. Five themes of intercultural communication: cross-cultural communication, cultural communication, intergroup communication, intercultural training, and critical intercultural communication, address issues of ethnicity and race in intercultural communication as an integral part of each thematic area. This encyclopedia features the perspective of communication scholars as well as cross-cultural psychology, cultural anthropology, and social psychology."--Publisher description