SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies
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.
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.
Social Media Homicide Confessions
Stories of Killers and their Victims
The relationship between crime and social media has become an increasingly important topic. This unique book analyses what those involved in homicide do with social media. It investigates the practices of those involved and argues that confessions convey insights into the social and cultural context of contemporary homicide.
Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory
Classification, Ranking and the Sorting of the Past
Social media platforms hold vast amounts of data about our lives. Content from the past is increasingly being presented in the form of ‘memories’. Critically exploring this new form of memory making, this unique book asks how social media are beginning to change the way we remember.
Slow Computing
Why We Need Balanced Digital Lives
Is it possible to experience the joy and benefits of computing in a way that asserts individual and collective autonomy?
Drawing on the ideas of the ‘slow movement’, Slow Computing sets out numerous practical and political means to take back control and counter the more pernicious effects of living digital lives.
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.
Resisting AI
An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere, yet it causes damage to society in ways that can’t be fixed. Calling for the restructuring of AI, Dan McQuillan sets out an anti-fascist approach that replaces exclusions with caring and outlines new mechanisms that support collective freedom.
The Political Economy of Digital Monopolies
Contradictions and Alternatives to Data Commodification
As outrage over the socially damaging practices of technology companies intensifies, this book asks what it actually means to hold a 'monopoly' in the tech world and offers an in-depth analysis of how these corporate giants are produced, financialized, and regulated.
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.
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.
Parenting in an Algorithm Age
Parents talking algorithms and parenthood, amidst datafication
This book explores the intersection of parenthood and the digital age, where algorithms shape daily decisions.
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.