Digitized Lives

Digitized Lives
Author: T.V. Reed
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2014-06-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136690034

In a remarkably short period of time the Internet and associated digital communication technologies have deeply changed the way millions of people around the globe live their lives. But what is the nature of that impact? In chapters examining a broad range of issues—including sexuality, politics, education, race, gender relations, the environment, and social protest movements—Digitized Lives seeks answers to these central questions: What is truly new about so-called "new media," and what is just hype? How have our lives been made better or worse by digital communication technologies? In what ways can these devices and practices contribute to a richer cultural landscape and a more sustainable society? Cutting through the vast—and often contradictory—literature on these topics, Reed avoids both techno-hype and techno-pessimism, offering instead succinct, witty and insightful discussions of how digital communication is impacting our lives and reshaping the major social issues of our era. The book argues that making sense of digitized culture means looking past the glossy surface of techno gear to ask deeper questions about how we can utilize technology to create a more socially, politically, and economically just world. Companion website available at: culturalpolitics.net/digital_cultures

Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy

Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy
Author: K. Brants
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2011-01-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0230294782

This edited collection examines the changing faces of political communication in contemporary democracy. Based on comparative investigations of recent trends in the Netherlands and Great Britain, the essays provide fresh insights and new empirical evidence into the public representation of media-centred politics.

The Art of Protest

The Art of Protest
Author: T. V. Reed
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 578
Release: 2019-01-22
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1452958653

A second edition of the classic introduction to arts in social movements, fully updated and now including Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and new digital and social media forms of cultural resistance The Art of Protest, first published in 2006, was hailed as an “essential” introduction to progressive social movements in the United States and praised for its “fluid writing style” and “well-informed and insightful” contribution (Choice Magazine). Now thoroughly revised and updated, this new edition of T. V. Reed’s acclaimed work offers engaging accounts of ten key progressive movements in postwar America, from the African American struggle for civil rights beginning in the 1950s to Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter in the twenty-first century. Reed focuses on the artistic activities of these movements as a lively way to frame progressive social change and its cultural legacies: civil rights freedom songs, the street drama of the Black Panthers, revolutionary murals of the Chicano movement, poetry in women’s movements, the American Indian Movement’s use of film and video, anti-apartheid rock music, ACT UP’s visual art, digital arts in #Occupy, Black Lives Matter rap videos, and more. Through the kaleidoscopic lens of artistic expression, Reed reveals how activism profoundly shapes popular cultural forms. For students and scholars of social change and those seeking to counter reactionary efforts to turn back the clock on social equality and justice, the new edition of The Art of Protest will be both informative and inspiring.

Smartphone Cultures

Smartphone Cultures
Author: Jane Vincent
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2017-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1315307057

Smartphone Cultures explores emerging questions about the ways in which this mobile technology and its apps have been produced, represented, regulated and incorporated into everyday social practices. The various authors in this volume each locate their contributions within the circuit of culture model. More specifically, this book engages with issues of production and regulation in the case of the electrical infrastructure supporting smartphones and the development of mobile social gambling apps. It examines issues of consumption through looking at parental practices relating to children’s smartphone use, children’s experience of the regulation of this technology, both in the home and in school, how they cope with the mass of communications via the smartphone and the nature of their attachment to the device. Other chapters cover the engagement of older people with smartphones, as well as how different cultural norms of sociability have a bearing on how the technology is consumed. The smartphone’s implications for other theoretical frameworks is illustrated through examining ramifications for domestication, and the sometimes-limited place of smartphones in certain aspects of life is examined through its role in the practices of reading and writing. Smartphone Cultures presents the latest international research from scholars located in the UK, Europe, the US and Australia and will appeal to scholars and students of media and cultural studies, communication studies and sociologists with interests in technology and social practices.