SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies
Platform Politics
Corporate Power, Grassroots Movements and the Sharing Economy
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.
Encountering the World with I-docs
Interactive Documentary as a Research Method
This book examines the values of interactive documentary as a social research method, exploring their exciting potential for illuminating and communicating pressing social issues. Providing a template for planning an i-doc, the novel book shows how the planning process alone can open new ways of understanding social research topics.
Parenting in an Algorithm Age
Parents talking algorithms and parenthood, amidst datafication
Beyond Privacy
People, Practices, Politics
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.
Perspectives on Whistleblowing
Cases and Theories
Examining high profile cases including Kiriakou, Snowden, Foxley and Assange, this book offers crucial insights into the subject of whistleblowing.
Controversial Encounters in the Age of Algorithms
How Digital Technologies are Stifling Public Debate and What to Do About It
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.
Just Here for the Comments
Lurking as Digital Literacy Practice
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.
Activists in the Data Stream
The Practices of Daily Grassroots Politics in Southern Europe
Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-ND licence
This book pulls back the curtain on the link between technology and activism, showing shows how activists navigate the impact of digital media on today’s grassroots politics.
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 Trouble with Jokes
Humour and Offensiveness in Contemporary Culture and Politics
Exploring the relationship between humour and offensiveness, this book delves into offensive jokes, their impact, and the dark side of laughter. It blends cultural analysis, politics, and philosophy to offer an antidote to positive thinking and guide readers through offensive humour.
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.