Understanding Digital Culture / Edition 1

by Vincent Miller

Overview

This is not simply a book about ‘internet studies’.

It is a book that considers many wider forms of digital culture, including mobile technologies, surveillance, algorithms, ambient intelligence, gaming, big data and technological bodies (to name a few) in order to explore how digital technology - in a broad sense - is used within the wider contexts of our everyday lives.

"The first edition of Understanding Digital Culture set a new benchmark as the most comprehensive, scholarly and accessible introduction to the area. This latest edition, thoroughly updated and substantially expanded, is even better – a perfectly balanced book that combines theory and empirical analysis to illuminate the cutting-edge of cultural and social change."
- Professor Majid Yar, Lancaster University

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847874979
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	03/02/2011
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Vincent Miller is Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent

Table of Contents

Introduction
Revolutionary Technologies?
The Structure of the Book
Chapter 1: Key Elements of Digital Media
Technical Processes
Cultural Forms
Immersive Experiences
Chapter 2: The Economic Foundations of the Information Age
Post-Industrialism
The Information Society
Post-Fordism and Globalisation
Informationalism and the Network Society
Weightless Economies, Intellectual Property and the Commodification of Knowledge
Chapter 3: Convergence and the Contemporary Media Experience
Technological Convergence
Regulatory Convergence
Media Industry Convergence
Convergence Culture ad the Contemporary Media Experience
Producers, Consumers, Prosumers and 'Produsage'
Chapter 4: 'Everyone is Watching': Privacy and Surveillance in Digital Life
The Changing Cultural Contexts of Privacy
Digital Surveillance: Spaces, Traces and Tools
The Rise Surveillance: Causes and Processes
Commercial Imperatives and the Political Economy of Surveillance
Why Care about a Surveillance Society?
Chapter 5: Information Politics and the Online Public Sphere
The Poltical Context of Information Politics
ICT-Enabled Politics
An Internet Public Sphere?
Chapter 6: Cybercrime, Cyberterrorism and Cyberware
Cybercrime: A Muddy Field
The Tools and Techniques of Cybercrime, Cyberactivism and Cyberwarfare
Cyber Politics by Another Means: Cyber Warfare
Chapter 7: Digital Identity
'Objects to Think with': Early Internet Studies and Poststructuralism
Personal Homepages and the 'Re-Centring' of the Individual
Personal Blogging, Individualisation and the Reflexive Project of the Self
Avatar and Identity
Social Networks, Profiles and Networked Identity
Who needs Identity?
Chapter 8: Digital Community? Space, Networks and Relationships
Searching for Lost Community: Urbanisation, Space and Scales of Experience
Globalisation, Technology and the Rise of Individualism
'Virtual' Communities Over Before they Began?
Network Societies, Network Socialities and Networked Individualism
Being Together Online: Networks, Instrumentalism and Intimacy
Chapter 9: The Body and Information Technology
The Body, Technology and Society
The Posthuman
Technology, Embodiment Relations and 'Homo Faber'
Conclusion: Base, Superstructure, Infrastructure (Revisited)

Editorial Reviews

'This is a terrifically wide-ranging and interesting dissection of the main causes, characteristics and consequences of increasingly all-pervasive digital cultures'
John Urry, Distinguished Professor,
Dept of Sociology, Lancaster University

'This is an outstanding book. It is one of only a few scholarly texts that successfully combine a nuanced theoretical understanding of the digital age with empirical case studies of contemporary media culture. The scope of this book is impressive, ranging from questions of digital inequality to emergent forms of cyberpolitics. It is essential reading for students and seasoned academics alike.'
Professor Nick Gane,
York University

From the Publisher

The first edition of Understanding Digital Culture set a new benchmark as the most comprehensive, scholarly and accessible introduction to the area. This latest edition, thoroughly updated and substantially expanded, is even better – a perfectly balanced book that combines theory and empirical analysis to illuminate the cutting-edge of cultural and social change.

Majid Yar

Vince Miller's new edition of Understanding Digital Culture is a key reading for everyone who wants to come to grips with the complexities of media, the economy, culture, society, privacy, surveillance, politics, the public sphere, identity, crime, terror, war, community, and the body in the digital age.

Christian Fuchs