Communication studies

Unravelling the narratives surrounding EU–China relations, this book sheds light on how these diverse and often contradictory perspectives can play a crucial role in shaping decisions and warns of their influence on policy making.

This book charts the rise and fall of the ‘sharing economy’, the controversial lobbying tactics used by the central companies and the backlash seen so far. It offers key policy recommendations and presents state-of-the-art knowledge around the past, present and future of the platform economy.

This timely volume tackles the challenges of privacy in the digital sphere, addressing fundamental societal and structural issues from three perspectives: people, practices and politics. Experts from diverse fields provide a valuable contribution to key debates about privacy and data protection, surveillance capitalism and big tech companies.

This book explores how digital technologies shape our opinions and interactions, often in ways that limit our exposure to diverse perspectives and therefore can fuel polarization. Drawing on the ancient art of controversy, (arguing all sides of a case) it offers a way to revive public debate as a source of trust and legitimacy in our society.

This interdisciplinary collection rethinks the political economy of the digital market by asking what came before platforms and suggesting what might come after them. Addressing themes like internet decolonisation, the book makes a timely assessment of the impact of evolving connections between technology, information, society and markets.

This book challenges the conventional perspective of what ‘counts’ as participatory online culture. Presenting ‘lurking’ on social media newsfeeds as a communication and literacy practice that resists dominant power structures, it offers an innovative approach to digital qualitative methods.

This ground-breaking collection explores the ways in which digital information technologies form and influence human perception and experience. Defying technological determinism, it takes on board discursive perspectives from humanities, bringing digital media, affect and body studies into conversation with one another.

Emerging technologies eventually disappear into the atmosphere of everyday life – they become ordinary and enmeshed in ignored infrastructures and patterns of behaviour. This is how Mundania takes form.

Based on original research, this book uses the concept of mundania to better understand our relationship with technology.

Exploring the creative and destructive ways individuals and groups make use of new digital and social media in democratic societies across the world, this book presents a much-needed critical theory of the public sphere as we enter the new digital age.

This book examines the evolution of digital platform economies through the lens of online gaming with a unique economic sociology perspective.

Paying particular attention to Valve’s ‘Steam’ platform, the book examines the architecture of this online videogame marketplace and the way it enables new markets and economic transactions.

Discussing the political understandings of trust and mistrust in the context of data, AI and technology at large, this book defines a process of trustification used by governments, corporations, researchers and the media to legitimise exploitation and the increasing of inequalities.