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“Digital Wellbeing masterfully explores the intersection of technology and human potential. This book is a must-read for those who want to leverage the power of AI to unlock their creativity and imagination and ultimately invent new means of expression that will go way beyond human language, art, and science of today.” —Ray Kurzweil, inventor, futurist, and author of New York Times bestseller The Singularity Is Nearer Elevate your digital wellbeing by embracing wonder, creativity, and technology Digital Wellbeing is a transformative guide that offers leaders, business professionals, educators, and lifelong learners a path to thrive in the digital age. Krause provides innovative strategies to enhance mindfulness, creativity, and wellbeing in a world enriched by technology. This book empowers readers to leverage digital tools to create meaningful, positive connections and improve their overall quality of life. Discover how to integrate principles of wonder, awe, creativity, and imagination with cutting-edge technology to achieve a balanced and fulfilling digital experience. Learn about frameworks for digital wellbeing and how to apply them effectively. Gain insights on using technology to enhance connection and a sense of belonging. Explore the impact of spatial computing, immersive imagination, virtual reality, and AI on wellbeing. Understand social media's impact on societal expectations and personal interactions. Access actionable strategies for leaders, educators, and individuals to excel digitally. Learn how tech usage can be more intentional and less reactionary. Engage with reflection questions and exercises to deepen understanding and application. Combining the structure of a how-to guide with the depth of a reflective workbook, this book offers practical advice and engaging exercises, all delivered in Krause's distinctive voice. Explore the transformative potential of Digital Wellbeing and learn how to excel in a digitally connected world with wonder and imagination. Begin your journey towards a balanced, enriching digital life today.

Why does doing your job feel so flooded and so pointless at the same time? Nobody knows better than millennial and Gen Z professionals how rapid technological development has inundated post-pandemic work. Organizational researcher Craig Mattson listens to their stories and builds a framework for coping with digital overwhelm at work. This book won't tell you to declutter your digital life or to end capitalism now. But what you can do, suggests Professor Mattson, is change how you attend to zones where technological disruption meets emotional pressure. Calling these zones modes of communication, this book urges you to practice mode-switching. Addressed to millennial and Gen Z professionals, Digital Overwhelm draws on biblical wisdom literature to offer a primer on organizational communication. Each chapter is followed by a short Mode Switch Workshop addressing questions such as how to survive the Zoom room, how to write an email that sounds like you, how to get unstuck when tools break down, and how to get people to do things--so you can, too. Even technologically disrupted organizations are more navigable than they feel--if you know how to switch up your modes of communication.

Superheroes and Digital Perspectives: Super Data examines the intersection of the superhero genre and issues of the internet, data, and digital media to provide not only a posthuman study of the superhero, but also an examination of the ways in which the superhero acts as a lens for our interactions with technology. Contributions to this collection range from the virality of the superhero as political expression to human-nonhuman relations, social expectations, and trends in cultural products. Providing fruitful, rigorous analysis of this genre in the context of ubiquitous handheld networked technology, social media, and data harvesting techniques, this book will be of particular interest to scholars of media studies, posthuman studies, communication, and popular culture.

For as long as there has been a press, fake news has played a role in the disruption of how factual information is shared among people. Misinformation goes back even further, spreading through the use of lies and rumors, spoken or written, for various political and social purposes. In this book, we will trace a brief history of fake news, examine its antecedents and precursors, before looking at the way it is currently employed using digital information technologies. The current consensus on what comprises fake news is somewhat contested; as such, a more detailed look at the phenomenon is in order. Not only does fake news include false news stories spread with the intent to deceive, its purpose can be instructive and parodic, providing the very tools needed to puncture misinformation bubbles. This book will examine in detail a comprehensive model for fake news that might be used to help predict and neutralize its negative effects, as well as examine the traits that contribute to a person's susceptibility to falling for false stories, conspiracies, and other misinformation.In this regard, the book is unique in its approach to fake news, seeing it as situated within a matrix of behaviors, conditions, and contexts that must be accounted for before its effects can be completely neutralized. The context also explores the relationship of the creator and the user of fake news, speculating on the intertwined actions and motives of both. It is hypothesized that specific conditions exploited by ‘bad actors'would contribute to the spread of fake news and that low levels or lack of certain identifiable characteristics in users (i.e. ability to scaffold, conduct parallel thinking, be aware of one's ignorance, know one's strengths and weaknesses) would also make it more likely to be consumed and shared. This book also examines the wider impacts of fake news on societies, especially in the areas of education, politics, and public policy. This book makes the case for developing strategies that rely not merely upon information literacy to help individuals deal with fake news, but also on wider national and international policies that specifically aid users of information and address human behavioral characteristics. As in information behavior research, the scale and scope of examining fake news requires both a local focus and a large-scale inquiry into societal and cultural norms

This book offers an interdisciplinary analysis of current formations of publics that is informed by in-depth knowledge of affect and emotion theory.Using empirical case studies from contexts as diverse as India, Pakistan, Tanzania, and the Americas as well as Europe, the book challenges dichotomous distinctions between private and public. Instead, publics are understood as a relational structure that encompasses both people and their physical and mediatized environment. While each kind of public is affectively constituted, the intensity of its affective attunement varies considerably.The volume is aimed at academic readers interested in understanding the dynamic and fluid forms of contemporary formation of publics—be it digital or face-to-face encounters as well as in the intersection of both forms. This includes researchers from media and communication studies, social anthropology, theatre or literary studies. It is aimed at advanced students of these disciplines who are interested in the unfolding of contemporary publics.

In this book, Yılmaz Alışkan discusses the capitalist exploitation of digital media and examines how free time and creativity can be exploited in open source communities, with corporations often benefiting from community-generated knowledge. Focusing on open-source hardware communities, in which hackers give up a considerable amount of free time and creativity to create open technology, Alışkan investigates how free time becomes a “hyper-exploited” commodity from which capital is increasingly accumulated. Whereas paid workers are still often exploited, Alışkan posits that open-source workers are further “hyper-exploited” by technology companies as they receive no compensation for their labour. Ultimately, this book reveals how the time and activity of volunteers in open-source communities are ripe for capitalist exploitation that blurs the line between leisure and work time, often disguised by assertions that such labour is “fun” or in line with volunteers'personal interests or values. Scholars of communication, digital media, sociology, and labour studies will find this book of particular interest.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive policy issues associated with discrete subject areas.This essential book documents the current configuration of digital society worldwide and examines its social, economic, political and cultural consequences. Presenting state-of-the-art empirical analysis and academic research, preeminent author Manuel Castells explores the profound impact that technology and digital transformation continues to have on the world as we know it.Chapters present an in-depth examination of how digitalization affects communication, state surveillance and privacy, financial markets, spatial structure, and education. This Advanced Introduction also deftly outlines digital influence on social movements, exploring social media disinformation, digital inequality, geopolitics and war-making technologies. Ultimately, Castells demonstrates how today's digital society is the socio-technological foundation of the ‘network society', the social structure of our time.Key Features:Situates digital transformation within Castells'theory of the ‘network society'.Presents complete empirical evidence of the configuration of digital society.Explores the relationship between digital society, data capitalism, state surveillance and privacy.Highlights the implications of artificial intelligence, social media, teleworking and cryptocurrenciesThis authoritative Advanced Introduction will be a crucial read for students, academics and researchers specializing in sociology, sociological theory, communication, public policy, politics, regulation, education, science and technology studies and business studies. Offering vital analysis of our continually developing digital society, it will also be of interest to global policymakers regulating digital technologies.

Mieux connaître les codes et les non-dits des réseaux sociaux, découvrir leurs bons et mauvais côtés, rester soi-même, cultiver un équilibre, voilà ce que propose ce livre où de nombreux ados témoignent de leur réalité.

In today's rapidly evolving world, digital communication has become both a boon and a challenge. The proliferation of social media and innovative technologies has transformed the way we interact, communicate, and access information. However, navigating this complex landscape poses significant difficulties for scholars, researchers, and students in various disciplines. The integration of social media into fields like communication science, public relations, advertising, and more has created a demand for comprehensive and authoritative resources that can shed light on the current state and future expectations of digital communication. Additionally, the ever-changing nature of social media platforms and digital technologies necessitates up-to-date and relevant research to understand their impact on society and communication practices. Advancements in Socialized and Digital Media Communications emerges as the definitive solution to address the challenges posed by the digital communication revolution. Edited by Ebru Gülbug Erol and Michael Kuyucu, this book offers a comprehensive collection of empirical and theoretical insights. It delves into various aspects of digital communication, providing authoritative overviews, research findings, comparative studies, and analyses of specific cases across disciplines. By focusing on social media's influence on fields like public relations, journalism, cinema, radio-television, marketing, and more, this book equips researchers, academicians, and students with the knowledge they need to thrive in this ever-changing landscape. With its thought-provoking chapters exploring topics ranging from social networks, video-sharing platforms, digital radio, and digital cinema to digital public relations, reputation management, advertising, and more, this book caters to a diverse audience. From seasoned scholars seeking to deepen their research to undergraduate and postgraduate students looking to grasp the intricacies of digital communication, this book is a valuable resource. Moreover, it appeals to professionals and the public interested in understanding how digital media has permeated every aspect of contemporary life. By offering a comprehensive and up-to-date exploration of digital communication and social media, this book empowers readers to navigate the complexities of this rapidly evolving field.

How do digital capitalism and the evolving landscape of new media intersect, and what does this mean for the future of media? It is necessary to begin the excavation process, to unearth the insights of experts in these fields to better understand the transformation of the globalized world. In Digital Capitalism in the New Media Era, the intricate relationship between media and society takes center stage, examined through the lens of contemporary technology's impact on this dynamic. Within the confines of this meticulously researched book lies a comprehensive analysis of how the established political economy of traditional media has adapted and responded to the surge of new technologies. As our planet metamorphoses into an interconnected global marketplace, the book expounds on how this phenomenon has created a platform for both the enhancement of societal accessibility and the exacerbation of social disparities. The rise of new tools has inadvertently ushered in a new age of surveillance, marked by sophisticated techniques like digital trace tracking and micro-targeting strategies. This book covers comprehensive topics, including exploiting personal data for both commercial and political ends, the pervasive influence of algorithmic mechanisms and filter bubbles, and the dominion of tech giants in this digital landscape. By contextualizing these developments within the historical trajectory of capitalism, the book paints a vivid portrait of the emergence of digital capitalism. By offering a panoramic view of the contemporary media landscape, this book not only equips researchers, sociologists, and media professionals with an understanding of the intricate interplay between technology and society but also facilitates a deeper comprehension of pressing concerns such as open science, gender equality, and the digital divide.

A short, thought-provoking book about what happens to our online identities after we die. These days, so much of our lives takes place online—but what about our afterlives? Thanks to the digital trails that we leave behind, our identities can now be reconstructed after our death. In fact, AI technology is already enabling us to “interact” with the departed. Sooner than we think, the dead will outnumber the living on Facebook. In this thought-provoking book, Carl Öhman explores the increasingly urgent question of what we should do with all this data and whether our digital afterlives are really our own—and if not, who should have the right to decide what happens to our data. The stakes could hardly be higher. In the next thirty years alone, about two billion people will die. Those of us who remain will inherit the digital remains of an entire generation of humanity—the first digital citizens. Whoever ends up controlling these archives will also effectively control future access to our collective digital past, and this power will have vast political consequences. The fate of our digital remains should be of concern to everyone—past, present, and future. Rising to these challenges, Öhman explains, will require a collective reshaping of our economic and technical systems to reflect more than just the monetary value of digital remains. As we stand before a period of deep civilizational change, The Afterlife of Data will be an essential guide to understanding why and how we as a human race must gain control of our collective digital past—before it is too late.

Digital media are a key part of everyday social life for international migrants. However, we don't know enough about how these migrants critically understand and cope with the cultures and infrastructures of ubiquitous connectivity while on the move. Social Media in the Lives of Young Connected Migrants explores and theorises what it means for young migrants to live in a digital age. Presenting a richly detailed analysis of Chinese international students'everyday social media practices, the book unravels the meanings of digital connectivity in general and how contemporary mobile young generations respond to such changes. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, this book highlights the enabling aspects of connective media in migration journeys and shows how and why young Chinese migrants manage or even resist being connected. With close attention to diasporic, intercultural, family, and professional migrant identities and relationships, the author provides a nuanced account of living with digital media in everyday settings. Focusing on the boundary practices associated with social media, the book offers a unique analytical framework through which to capture the complex intersections of digital communication technologies and migrant social life. This volume will appeal to students and scholars interested in researching Chinese diasporas, digital migration, and youth cultures.

Schaffen digitale Netzwerke eine neue Art von Kollektivität? Bringen intelligente Algorithmen bessere Formen von Kooperation, Sozialität oder politischer Teilhabe hervor? Derlei Erwartungen sind fest mit unserem Bild digitaler Medien verbunden - und das, obwohl heutzutage unverkennbar ist, wie oft sie stattdessen gesellschaftliche Spaltungen forcieren und neue Kontroll- und Kapitalisierungsmechanismen ermöglichen. Tim Othold geht der hartnäckigen Idee digitaler Kollektivität auf den Grund. Anhand von drei einflussreichen Denkfiguren - Netzwerke, Massen und Schwärme - analysiert er, wie wir digitale Medien als vermeintlich kollektive, kooperative Größen imaginieren und was wir dabei allzu oft nicht hinterfragen.

This comprehensive Handbook explores the multiple ways in which people experience digital life. It maps the transitions in human civilization generated by such digital technologies as the internet, mobile telephony, artificial intelligence, the metaverse, social media platforms and algorithms. It explores how the scarcity or abundance of digital affordances impacts access, governance and livelihoods in various parts of the world. The book's 27 chapters are organised in five sections: Social Media and Digital Lifeworlds; Digital Affordances and Contestations; Digital Divides and Inclusion Strategies; Work, Culture and Digital Consumption, and New Media and Digital Journalism. The present and future of digital transitions are interrogated in the context of everyday social production and consumption.

Performing Contemporary Childhoods: Being and Becoming a Viral Child examines the changing nature of contemporary childhoods by exploring how children's and young people's digital media create new ideas about youth agency. Visual cultures of childhood have been traditionally traced in photography. Material cultures of childhood have been likewise traced in archives, scripts and even toys. This book shows that performance cultures and their digital literacies – expressed in viral forms such as TikTok dance challenges, tweets and viral GIFs – create new ideas about childhood by positioning young people as authors and owners of their self-representations. With the global pandemic in its immediate backdrop, the book finds that reshaped social relations and a context of crisis in our political, social and ecological realms cultivate nostalgia for ideals of innocent childhood that only promise to be disrupted by the complex, ambiguous and ultimately resistive acts young people appear to generate for and about themselves. This book is ideal for students and scholars of childhood studies, performance studies, social and cultural history and visual and digital culture.

The objective of this work, born within this contextual framework, is to express the concepts of digital activism and design used in terms of activism with texts from unique perspectives. It seeks to analyze the phenomenon of “Digital Activism and Design” across various sub-headings including information and communication technologies and systems, media policies, film studies, culture, visual arts, visual communication, and mass communication media. Additionally, it aims to scrutinize aspects such as interaction, control, and transformation, and to carry out a memory study that can serve as a source for further research in this field.

This book explores the ways in which adolescents in Nigeria domesticate technology and the role of digital gatekeepers such as parents, guardians, and teachers in their digital lifeworlds. Using a child-centred framework, what emerges is a rounded and textured analysis of how technology fits into pivotal aspects of the lives of teenagers. Here, teens are understood as ‘actors'rather than just users of media and technology. The digital lifeworlds of young people in advanced economies of the Minority World are well researched. In contrast, research focusing on pre-teens'and teenagers'digital practices and participation in Majority World such as Africa, is still fundamentally narrow. The book is relevant to fields like sociology, media studies, youth studies, mobile media studies, African studies, and global media studies.

Digital Media as Ambient Therapy explores the ways “mental illness” can emerge from our relationships (with ourselves, others, and the world), to address the concern around what kind of relationality is conducive for “mental health” and what role digital technologies can play in fostering such relationality.Exploring the rise of ambient—that is to say, ubiquitous, surrounding, and environmental—technologies and their impact on our understanding of “mental health,” sanity, and therapy, this book critically examines the work of influential contemporary social theorists such as Hartmut Rosa and investigates case studies that reveal new modes of digitally mediated intimacy and attention, such as ASMR and QAnon. It also poses the question of what “mental health” and “mental illness” mean for subjects increasingly faced with a maddening sense of interconnectedness.This book offers new perspectives for academics and postgraduates interested in critical discussions of alienation, digital technology, and contemporary social theory.

'This book addresses both the potential negative effects and the positive effects of various forms of media, leading to the need for media literacy across all demographics. Written for psychologists, educators, researchers, and parents, this book discusses the impact of video games, popular music, television, social media and screen addiction, fake news and misinformation, representation in media, as well as the role of big tech in the lives of consumers. The text emphasises the need for a healthy media diet and focuses on the need for media literacy in all societal groups, providing empirically based approaches to teaching media literacy as well as sample media literacy lesson plans'--

This book is a first-of-its-kind critical interdisciplinary introduction to the economic, political, cultural, and technological dimensions of work in the rapidly growing digital media and entertainment industries (DMEI).Tanner Mirrlees presents a comprehensive guide to understanding the key contexts, theories, methods, debates, and struggles surrounding work in the DMEI. Packed with current examples and accessible research findings, the book highlights the changing conditions and experiences of work in the DMEI. It surveys the DMEI's key sectors and occupations and considers the complex intersections between labor and social power relations of class, gender, and race, as well as tensions between creativity and commerce, freedom and control, meritocracy and hierarchy, and precarity and equity, diversity, and inclusivity. Chapters also explore how work in the DMEI is being reshaped by capitalism and corporations, government and policies, management, globalization, platforms, A.I., and worker collectives such as unions and cooperatives. This book is a critical introduction to this growing area of research, teaching, learning, life, labor, and organizing, with an eye to understanding work in the DMEI and changing it, for the better.Offering a broad overview of the field, this textbook is an indispensable resource for instructors, undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars.

How today's digital devices got their voices, and how we learned to listen to them.From early robots to toys like the iconic Speak & Spell to Apple's Siri, Vox Ex Machina tells the fascinating story of how scientists and engineers developed voices for machines during the twentieth century. Sarah Bell chronicles the development of voice synthesis from buzzy electrical current and circuitry in analog components to the robotic sounds of early digital signal processing to today's human sounding applications. Along the way, Bell also shows how the public responded to these technologies and asks whether talking machines are even good for us. Using a wide range of intriguing examples, Vox Ex Machina is embedded in a wider story about people—describing responses to voice synthesis technologies that often challenged prevailing ideas about computation and automation promoted by boosters of the Information Age. Bell helps explain why voice technologies came to sound and to operate in the way they do—influenced as they were by a combination of technical assumptions and limitations, the choices of the corporations that deploy them, and the habits that consumers developed over time.A beautifully written book that will appeal to anyone with a healthy skepticism toward Silicon Valley, Vox Ex Machina is an important and timely contribution to our cultural histories of information, computing, and media.

This collection makes the case for existing critical discourse analysis theory and methods to meaningfully engage with the communicative parameters, power dynamics, and technological affordances of contemporary digital spaces.This book lends a critical focus on discursive practices operating through the paradigm of social media communication, addressing the crucial interface of discourse and the participatory web with disciplinary rigour and a well-balanced focus. This volume features chapters highlighting a diverse range of methods, including multi-sited ethnography, multimodality, argumentation studies, and topic modelling, as applied to a global range of case studies to present a holistic portrait of the latest methodological and theoretical debates in this space. The collection demonstrates the many and pervasive impacts of digital mediation on established discursive practices that are (re-)shaping existing social values, practices, and demands. In so doing, the collection advocates for a new tradition in critical discourse research, one which is rigorous in accounting for both solid discursive frameworks and the evolving complexity of digital platforms, and which triangulates methodologies in order to fully make sense of contemporary discursive practices and power relations on the online-offline continuum.This collection will be of interest to students and scholars in critical discourse studies, digital communication, media studies, and anthropology.

This book examines the mediated shift in the contemporary human condition, focusing on the ways in which we synthesise with media content in daily life, essentially transmediating ourselves into new forms and (re)creating ourselves across media.Across an international roster of essays, this book establishes a transdisciplinary theory for the ‘transmedia self', exploring how technological ubiquity and digital self-determination combine with themes and disciplines such as celebrity culture, fandom, play, politics, and ultimately broader self-conception and projection to inform the creation of transmedia identities in the twenty-first century. Specifically, the book repositions transmediality as key to understanding the formation of identity in a post-digital media culture and transmedia age, where our lives are interlaced, intermingled, and narrativised across a range of media platforms and interfaces.This book is ideal for scholars and students interested in transmedia storytelling, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, philosophy, and politics.

A feminist rallying cry for women to recognize and reject the ways social media is being weaponized against us — and instead wield it to empower ourselves.Actionable solutions for women, parents, and educators to fight online disinformation, sexism, and misogyny—so we can create healthier digital spaces for girls and teens.In Over the Influence, communication professor and CNN Opinion contributor Kara Alaimo reveals how social media is affecting every aspect of the lives of women and girls—from our relationships and our parenting to our physical and mental well-being. Over the Influence is a book about what it means to live in the world social media has wrought—whether you're constantly connected or have deleted your accounts forever. Alaimo explains:Why you're likely to get fewer followers if you're a woman.How fake news is crafted to prey on women's vulnerabilities. Why so much of the content we find in our feeds is specifically designed to hold us back.How social media has made the offline world an uglier place for women.But we can change this. Alaimo offers up brilliant advice for how to get over the influence, including:How to handle our daughters'use of social mediaTips for using dating apps to find the partners we're looking forHow we can use social networks to bolster our careers Ways to protect ourselves from sextortionists, catfishers, and trolls. What we need to demand from lawmakers and tech companies.Over the Influence calls on women to recognize and call out the subtle (and not-so-subtle) sexism and misogyny we find online, reject misinformation that is targeted to us because of our gender, and use our platforms to empower ourselves and other women.

Delving into a burgeoning field of research, this enlightening book utilises case studies from across the globe to explore how digital media is used at the grassroots level to combat corruption. Bringing together an impressive range of experts, Alice Mattoni deftly assesses the design, creation and use of a wide range of anti-corruption technologies.This invaluable book introduces the concept of anti-corruption technologies (ACT) to answer critical questions about the opportunities and challenges that established and emerging digital media offers to practitioners. Chapters detail the situated nature of these technologies, before examining key technologies including anonymous crowdsourcing, collaborative platforms, whistleblowing platforms and online monitoring of electoral corruption. Finally, the book offers a critical understanding of the challenges that digital media poses to anti-corruption practitioners in different contexts, and how this is linked to different conceptions of democracy.Comprehensive and empirically-grounded, Digital Media and Grassroot Anti-Corruption will be an important resource for students and scholars of corruption studies, digital sociology, law and politics, public policy, regulation and governance, and the study of social movements. It will also be vital reading for anti-corruption practitioners and policymakers interested in civil society organisations working at the grassroots level.

The Anthropology of Digital Practices connects for the first time three distinct research areas – digital ethnography, causal ethnography, and media practice theory – to explore how we might track the effects of new media practices in a digital world. It invites media and communication students and scholars to overcome the field's old aversion to ‘media effects'and explores the messy, complex, open-ended effects of new media practices in a digital age.Based on long-term ethnographic research and drawing from recent advances in the study of causality and ethnography, this book tells the ‘formation story'of the anti-woke movement through a series of critical media events. It argues that digital media practices (e.g. podcasting, YouTubing, tweeting, commenting, broadcasting) will have ‘formative'effects on an emerging social world at different points in time. One important task of the digital ethnographer is precisely to distinguish between the formative and non-formative effects of specific media practices. This book makes three contributions to our understanding of media practices in the digital era, namely a theoretical, methodological, and empirical contribution. Theoretically, it furthers the ‘practice turn'in media and communication studies by engaging with the latest thinking on causality and ethnography. Methodologically, it serves as a compelling, up-to-date guide to doing digital ethnography, with special reference to the study of digitally mediated practices. Empirically, it is the first book-length study of the anti-woke movement, a major actor in the ‘culture wars'currently being fought across the Western world.With its accessible language and rich case studies, The Anthropology of Digital Practices will make an ideal supplementary textbook for a range of undergraduate and graduate courses in research methods, digital ethnography/anthropology, and digital activism.