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Understanding Digital Culture
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Understanding Digital Culture

Second Edition


April 2020 | 344 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
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

 
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)

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
Lancaster University

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
University of Westminster

used the previous version, and excited to see the updates for the new one.

Professor Aaron D Sachowitz
Communication Dept, Saint Marys Clg Of California
August 19, 2024

I have used this book for a course on digital culture (bachelor’s degree). The author provides a wide list of references to literature in the field and have made a beautiful overview of literature, history, and various perspectives. I think it’s a very nice piece of work, which contextualizing a lot of contemporary issues related to digital media, social media, ICT, artificial intelligence. There you can find short introductions to most important theories on digital culture as well.

Dr Vincas Grigas
Library Science, Vilnius University
June 3, 2020

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