Media studies
Human Perception and Digital Information Technologies
Animation, the Body, and Affect
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.
The Internet Left
Ideology in the Age of Social Media
This book defines what political social media is and then takes a morphological approach to investigate political ideologies and reveal the ways in which interconnected concepts are arranged. It concludes by coining the term ‘proto-ideologies’ to approach the construction of concepts that generate ideologies in the making.
Democracy and the Public Sphere
From Dystopia Back to Utopia
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.
The Muscle Trade
The Use and Supply of Image and Performance Enhancing Drugs
The health and fitness industry has experienced a meteoric rise over the past two decades, yet its slick exterior conceals a darker side. Using ethnographic data from gyms, interviews and social media platforms, this book investigates the growing use of image and performance-enhancing drugs (IPEDs) and their role in masculine body image.
Games in the Platform Economy
Steam's Tangled Markets
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.
Mistrust Issues
How Technology Discourses Quantify, Extract and Legitimize Inequalities
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.
DataPublics
The Construction of Publics in Datafied Democracies
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Drawing on empirical data from US and UK as well as the unique example of Nordic countries where there is a high level of confidence in state and media institutions, this book shows how platforms and algorithms are transforming media, journalism and audiences’ civic practices.
The Unheard Stories of the Rohingyas
Ethnicity, Diversity and Media
The 2017 persecution of the Rohingyas resulted in around a million Rohingyas fleeing to Bangladesh, India and Malaysia. This book investigates the complex challenges of managing the large-scale refugee exodus in Bangladesh and how best to resolve these challenges in the future.
Making Information Matter
Understanding Surveillance and Making a Difference
This book advances a new view of information and surveillance practices, as well as their related agencies, politics, and powers. Drawing on case studies, the author crafts a new methodology of studying information life cycles which will help us navigate information regimes today.
The Disney Princess Phenomenon
A Feminist Analysis
Robyn Muir provides an examination of the worldwide Disney Princess commercial and cultural phenomenon in its key representations: films, merchandising and marketing, and park experiences. The book provides a lens through which to view and understand how this franchise has contributed to the depiction of femininity within popular culture.
Sex Work and COVID-19 in the New Zealand Media
Avoid the Moist Breath Zone
New Zealand’s decriminalisation of sex work, and its unusual success in combatting COVID-19, have both attracted international media interest. This accessibly written book uses the lens of news media coverage to consider the pandemic’s impacts on both sex workers and public perceptions of the industry.
The Life of a Number
Measurement, Meaning and the Media
Drawing on case studies, this book examines how politicians, academics and journalists gave meaning to data during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lawson sheds light on the distinct nature of the pandemic that led to the increased politicization of data and how it permanently changed the way we view health and society more broadly.