This book is the first general social analysis that seriously considers the daily experience of information disruption and software failure within contemporary Western society. Through an investigation of informationalism, defined as a contemporary form of capitalism, it describes the social processes producing informational disorder. While most social theory sees disorder as secondary, pathological or uninteresting, this book takes disordering processes as central to social life. The book engages with theories of information society which privilege information order, offering a strong...
This book is the first general social analysis that seriously considers the daily experience of information disruption and software failure within ...
We are often told that we are "living in an information society" or that we are "information workers." But what exactly do these claims mean, and how might they be verified? In this important methodological study, Alistair S. Duff cuts through the rhetoric to get to the bottom of the "information society thesis." Wide-ranging in coverage, this study will be of interest to scholars in information science, communication and media studies and social theory. It is a key text for the newly-unified specialism of information society studies, and an indispensable guide to the future of this...
We are often told that we are "living in an information society" or that we are "information workers." But what exactly do these claims mean, and how ...
This study seeks to explain three models of network governance embedded in digital practices that the mainstream monotheistic religions-Judaism, Catholic Christianity, and Islam-have used to lead and manage the worldwide distribution of their local nodes, exploring the connection between network governance and its digital embeddedness and showing how the latter enhances the performance of the former.
This study seeks to explain three models of network governance embedded in digital practices that the mainstream monotheistic religions-Judaism, Catho...
Fengshu Liu situates the lives of Chinese youth and the growth of the Internet against the backdrop of rapid and profound social transformation in China. In 2008, the total of Internet users in China had reached 253 million (in comparison with 22.5 million in 2001). Yet, despite rapid growth, the Internet in China is so far a predominantly urban-youth phenomenon, with young people under thirty (especially those under twenty-four), mostly members of the only-child generation, as the main group of the netizens' population. As both youth and the Internet hold the potential to inflict, or at...
Fengshu Liu situates the lives of Chinese youth and the growth of the Internet against the backdrop of rapid and profound social transformation in Chi...
This book is the essential guide for understanding how state power and politics are contested and exercised on social media. It brings together contributions by social media scholars who explore the connection of social media with revolutions, uprising, protests, power and counter-power, hacktivism, the state, policing and surveillance. It shows how collective action and state power are related and conflict as two dialectical sides of social media power, and how power and counter-power are distributed in this dialectic. Theoretically focused and empirically rigorous research considers the...
This book is the essential guide for understanding how state power and politics are contested and exercised on social media. It brings together contri...
This book explores commodification processes of personal data and provides a critical framing of the ongoing debate of privacy in the Internet age, using the example of social media and referring to interviews with users. It advocates and expands upon two main theses: First, people's privacy is structurally invaded in contemporary informational capitalism. Second, the best response to this problem is not accomplished by invoking the privacy framework as it stands, because it is itself part of the problematic nexus that it struggles against. Informational capitalism poses weighty problems for...
This book explores commodification processes of personal data and provides a critical framing of the ongoing debate of privacy in the Internet age, us...
Bringing together empirical cultural and media studies of religion and critical social theory, Technologies of Religion: Spheres of the sacred in a post-secular modernity investigates powerful entanglement of religion and new media technologies taking place today, taking stock of the repercussions of digital technology and culture on various aspects of religious life and contemporary culture more broadly. Making the argument that religion and new media technologies come together to create "spheres"-environments produced by an architecture of digital technologies of all sorts, from...
Bringing together empirical cultural and media studies of religion and critical social theory, Technologies of Religion: Spheres of the sacred i...
Over the past few decades, various types of hate material have caused increasing concern. Today, the scope of hate is wider than ever, as easy and often-anonymous access to an enormous amount of online content has opened the Internet up to both use and abuse. By providing possibilities for inexpensive and instantaneous access without ties to geographic location or a user identification system, the Internet has permitted hate groups and individuals espousing hate to transmit their ideas to a worldwide audience.
Online Hate and Harmful Content focuses on the role of potentially...
Over the past few decades, various types of hate material have caused increasing concern. Today, the scope of hate is wider than ever, as easy and ...
Global Youth in Digital Trajectories explores the most recent developments regarding youth and media in a global perspective. Representing an innovative contribution to virtual research methods, this book presents research carried out in areas as diverse as Greece, the Netherlands, Germany, Brazil, Russia, and India. The volume examines which new anthropological, and cultural-historical conditions and changes arise in connection with the widespread presence of digital media in the lives of the networked teens. Indeed, it is highlighted that the differentiation between an offline...
Global Youth in Digital Trajectories explores the most recent developments regarding youth and media in a global perspective. Representing...