"Over the past decade, digital technologies have profoundly reshaped the Chinese cultural landscape. With a focus on the creative agency of new media and online communities, this volume examines this development through the notion of the Sinocybersphere - the networked spaces across the globe that n
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ot only operate on the Chinese script, but also imaginatively negotiate the meanings of Chinese culture in the digital age. Instead of asking what makes the internet or new media "Chinese," the chapters situate contemporary entanglements of cultural and digital practices within specific historical, social, and discursive contexts. Covering topics as diverse as live-streaming, AI poetry, online literature, poetry memes, cyberpunk fiction, virtual art exhibitions, cooking videos, censorship, and viral translations, the collection as a whole not only engages with a wide range of Chinese new media phenomena, but also demonstrates their relevance to our understanding of contemporary digital culture." (Publisher description)
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"Web series are, in some ways, tailored for capturing everyday life in a pandemic. As shortform episodic content distributed via online platforms, the creators of Web series commonly work with tight budgets, recruiting crew and cast from their own networks, and making use of the home as an inexpensi
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ve location, methods well suited to the conditions of creative work in lockdown. This essay examines 3 of the many Web series that sought to chronicle everyday life during a pandemic: Cancelled, a Spanish-Australian Web series drama; If I Were There With You, an experimental Brazilian Web series; and the German comedy Web series Drinnen—Im Internet sind alle gleich (Inside: Everyone is equal on the Internet). The essay explores the ways in which international Web series made during lockdown interrogate and expand our understanding of the role of digital culture in everyday life for a post–COVID-19 future." (Abstract)
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"Visibility and its counterpart, invisibility, are critical concepts in digital communication, although research on these concepts in communication studies has rarely been reflected on in an integrative way. This article aims to map key discussions in current research on in/visibility from a communi
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cation studies perspective. Therefore, through a literature review, we elaborate on these discussions in research areas dealing extensively with in/visibility. The resulting mapping highlights similarities and differences between definitions of in/visibility and systematizes the various approaches according to three essential understandings (perceptibility, presence, and valuation) and three paradigmatic perspectives (functionalist, interpretive, and critical). The article offers a deeper understanding of the range of previous studies on the undertheorized concepts of in/visibility and demonstrates the concepts’ potential for future research within communication studies." (Abstract)
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"Hidden information, double meanings, double-crossing, and the constant processes of encoding and decoding messages have always been important techniques in negotiating social and political power dynamics. Yet these tools, "cryptopolitics," are transformed when used within digital media. Focusing on
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African societies, Cryptopolitics brings together empirically grounded studies of digital media to consider public culture, sociality, and power in all its forms, illustrating the analytical potential of cryptopolitics to elucidate intimate relationships, political protest, and economic strategies in the digital age." (Publisher description)
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"This publication, developed in partnership between UNESCO and the LiiV Center, maps the landscape of innovation in digital anthropology as an approach to ensure a better understanding of how human communities and societies interact and are shaped by technologies and, knowing this, how policies can
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be rendered more ethical and inclusive. Briefly, the research found that innovation in digital anthropology is in a state of transition and is perceived differently across sectors and regions. In the span of just a couple of decades, innovation has come from doing anthropology digitally and doing the digital anthropologically, two movements that give life to space where creation happens within the blurry lines among disciplines, fuelled by increasingly fluid movement between academia and the private sector. The innovation space in-between these trends seems to be where the most exciting and forward-thinking digital innovations are occurring, like novel blended algorithms or computational and techno-anthropology, and opens opportunities to educate a new breed of digitally and anthropologically skilled professionals." (Executive summary)
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"Mixed Methods Perspectives on Communication and Social Media Research addresses the need for a discipline-cum-methodology-tailored book that navigates the current research spectrum of communication and social media ("CommSocMed"). It examines contemporary and relevant issues that intertwine the exp
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ansive spheres of CommSocMed. Authored by professionals with extensive academic and in-depth research and industry experience, the book highlights research-based themes that mirror qualitative and quantitative methodologies vis-à-vis socio-cultural, political, educational, and organisational issues and challenges. The first two sections present the mutually interwoven disciplines of CommSocMed where research works cover a comprehensive range of designs such as narrative analysis, case study, recombinant memetics, discourse analysis, visual semiotics, ethnography, content analysis, feminist theory, descriptive-survey, descriptive-correlational, model-building/testing, experimental, and mixed methods. The third section is a concluding segment which synthesises all the scholarly contributions in this volume." (Publisher description)
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"Son tres las preguntas importantes que articulan este libro. En primer lugar, si el auge de un nuevo pensamiento realista, que reflexiona sobre nuestra relación con los objetos materiales, con la naturaleza y con las ideas, es un pensamiento político. Con ese interrogante queremos examinar el mod
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o en que la política piensa lo real. En segundo lugar, nos preguntamos por los acercamientos y rodeos que vienen haciendo el arte y la ficción literaria para abordar los nuevos objetos de la realidad tecnológica. Nos preguntamos cómo el arte está pensando lo real. En tercer lugar, nos inquieta indagar de qué modo los cuerpos expandidos por la tecnología, conminados al goce del consumo, explotados y sufrientes, hablan y piensan sobre lo real. Los capítulos de este libro, agrupados alrededor de esas preguntas, proponen diferentes acercamientos del orden de la escritura, de la teoría y de la praxis estético-política." (Páginas 11-12)
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"This collection considers how digital images and social media reconfigure the way conflicts are played out, represented and perceived around the globe. Devoted to developing original theoretical frameworks and empirical insights, the volume addresses the role of user images and social media in rela
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tion to urgent subjects such as public opinion and emotion, solidarity, evidence and verification, censorship and fake news, which are all central to the ways current conflicts are represented and unfold. Essays include a unique range of case studies from different regional and political contexts (Middle East, Europe, Asia, North America) and in connection with different conflict types (war, terror, riots, everyday resistance, etc.). They also consider performative genres such as memes, selfies and appropriations as well as images conforming to the realism and authenticity of conventional photojournalism. In this way, the collection responds to the challenges of swiftly evolving image genres as well as to the continually shifting policies and algorithms of commercial digital platforms." (Publisher description)
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"Music and Digital Media is the first comparative ethnographic study of the impact of digital media on music worldwide. It offers a radical and lucid new theoretical framework for understanding digital media through music, showing that music is today where the promises and problems of the digital as
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sume clamouring audibility. The book contains ten chapters, eight of which present comprehensive original ethnographies; they are bookended by an authoritative introduction and a comparative postlude. Five chapters address popular, folk, art and crossover musics in the global South and North, including Kenya, Argentina, India, Canada and the UK. Three chapters bring the digital experimentally to the fore, presenting pioneering ethnographies of an extra-legal peer-to-peer site and the streaming platform Spotify, a series of prominent internet-mediated music genres, and the first ethnography of a global software package, the interactive music platform Max. The book is unique in bringing ethnographic research on popular, folk, art and crossover musics from the global North and South into a comparative framework on a large scale, and creates an innovative new paradigm for comparative anthropology. It shows how music enlarges anthropology while demanding to be understood with reference to classic themes of anthropological theory." (Publisher description)
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"Memes dienen nicht nur der popkulturellen Unterhaltung oder der Kunst, sie werden auch in der Politik, in lokalen und internationalen Wahlkämpfen oder auf Demonstrationen verwendet. In ihrer typischsten Form sind sie Text-Bild-Gefüge, die sich digital mit viraler Geschwindigkeit verbreiten und tr
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ansformieren. Joanna Nowotny und Julian Reidy nehmen sich dieses Internetphänomens aus kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive an. Sie betreten Neuland, indem sie einzelne Memes kasuistisch analysieren und ihre Erkenntnisse systematisieren, um diese digitale Kommunikationsform definitorisch neu zu bestimmen – in stetem Bezug zu anderen digitalen Phänomenen wie dem trolling." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Annekathrin Kohout und Wolfgang Ullrich versammeln Beiträge, die sich verschiedenen Aspekten der zeitgenössischen visuellen Kultur widmen: Was zeichnet die Kommunikation über Memes aus, und warum sind sie so beliebt? Wie funktionieren GIFs, und wie haben sich das Dateiformat und seine Nutzung ü
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ber die Zeit verändert? Was bedeutet der zunehmende Einfluss von Influencerinnen und Influencern für die Rezeption und Verbreitung von Mode? Und welche Konsequenzen hat es, dass die Allgegenwart von Bildern mit der zunehmenden Verbreitung von Software einhergeht, die in der Lage ist, automatisiert Gesichter zu erkennen? Die Beiträge nehmen unterschiedliche Facetten eines tiefgreifenden kulturellen Wandels in den Blick und zeigen seine Grundlagen, Potenziale und Ambivalenzen auf." (Buchrücken)
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"Wie sozial sind Soziale Medien? Es gibt mindestens zwei asoziale Dimensionen im jetzigen Regime der Sozialen Medien: Sie sind sozial vor allem für die Betreiber und ihre Eigentümer. Der in Deutschland geltende Verfassungsgrundsatz der "informationellen Selbstbestimmung" wird für Nutzer und Nutze
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rinnen de facto außer Kraft gesetzt: In den Vereinbarungen, die wir "freiwillig" mit den Plattformen durch ein paar lästige Klicks schließen, verzichten wir meist, ohne näher hinzusehen, auf vieles, was uns an Rechten zustünde. Das Geschäft mit unseren sozialen Beziehungen und Daten ist auch in Deutschland bisher wenig wirksam reguliert, angesichts ihrer weltweiten Macht steht die politische Einhegung der Konzerne noch am Anfang. Ohne öffentliche Debatten, organisierten Druck und unsere eigene massenhafte Beteiligung daran wird die Politik hier eher schwach bleiben." (Editorial, Seite 3)
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"Beinahe täglich posten oder liken wir etwas auf Twitter, Facebook oder Instagram. Als Orte direkter Kommunikation und Interaktion sind die Sozialen Medien längst zu Plattformen für die Verhandlung und Verbreitung kultureller Ausdrucksformen unseres Alltags geworden. Doch bei näherer Betrachtung
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entziehen sich die komplexen Prozesse medial vermittelter Interaktionen und Artikulationen von Akteur*innen, die gemeinsam kulturelle Bildungsräume und -prozesse im Rahmen informeller, digitaler Alltagspraktiken realisieren, dem einfachen Zugriff. Ausgehend von der Interdependenz von Technik, Aisthesis und Artikulation entfalten die Beiträger*innen des Bandes aus unterschiedlichen disziplinären Perspektiven den Versuch eines (Auf-)Lesens von Spuren kultureller Bildungs- und Transformationsprozesse in Sozialen Medien." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Digitale Technologien sind eine Zumutung! Um dies zu ändern, sollten wir uns nicht von ihnen abwenden, sondern uns eingehender mit ihrer transformatorischen Macht befassen. Shintaro Miyazaki ruft dazu auf, die alternativen Rhythmen des kooperativen, solidarischen Zusammenlebens (Commoning) operabe
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l zu machen und die Digitalität so zum Tanzen zu bringen. Er macht ein Leben vorstellbar, in dem Profit und Eigentum keine Rolle mehr spielen, sondern das nachhaltige Zusammenspiel der Bedürfnisse unserer lebendigen Ökosysteme mit jenen aller Menschen oberste Priorität hat. Hier trifft Kapitalismuskritik auf eine kritische, marxistisch-informierte Medientheorie der algorithmischen Modellierung anderer Zukünfte." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Amid the proliferation of a range of new and ubiquitous online platforms, YouTube, a video-based platform, remains a key driver in the democratisation of creative, playful, vernacular, intimate, as well as political expressions. As a critical node of contemporary communication and digital cultures,
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its steady uptake and appropriation in a social media-savvy nation such as the Philippines requires a critical examination of its role in the continued reconstruction of identities, communities, and broader social institutions. This book closely analyses the diverse content and practices of amateur Filipino YouTubers, exposing and problematising the dynamics of brokering the contested aspirational logics of beauty and selfhood, interracial relationships, world-class labour, and progressive governance in a digital sphere." (Publisher description)
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"Als Selfie oder im politischen Prozess, als gleichermaßen fluide wie langlebige Postings, in verstörenden Hassbildern oder als Labor des Feminismus wirken digitale Bilder in je eigenen Kontexten: Menschen inszenieren sich und werden inszeniert, vernetzen und bekämpfen sich, posieren und protesti
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eren, verfremden, ringen um Anerkennung, Deutungshoheiten und Aneignungen. Digitale Bilder brechen Normen auf, spiegeln oder verschleiern Realitäten, sind Propaganda oder Vehikel politischer Veränderungen, spalten Gegner, verbinden Gleichgesinnte oder fungieren als Glutnester von Hass und Menschenfeindlichkeit. Zugleich wirken all diese Formen visualisierter sozialer Handlungen als Katalysatoren gesellschaftlicher Prozesse, die ihrerseits wieder Dynamiken anstoßen. Die Autorinnen und Autoren beleuchten in fünf Beiträgen Formen, Absichten und Wirkungen digitaler Bildkulturen: den Bildprotest, den Screenshot, das Hassbild, den Netzfeminismus und das Selfie." (Buchrücken)
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