The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age
The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age

Author: Darin Barney

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2016-11-01

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1452952043

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Just what is the “participatory condition”? It is the situation in which taking part in something with others has become both environmental and normative. The fact that we have always participated does not mean we have always lived under the participatory condition. What is distinctive about the present is the extent to which the everyday social, economic, cultural, and political activities that comprise simply being in the world have been thematized and organized around the priority of participation. Structured along four axes investigating the relations between participation and politics, surveillance, openness, and aesthetics, The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age comprises fifteen essays that explore the promises, possibilities, and failures of contemporary participatory media practices as related to power, Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring uprisings, worker-owned cooperatives for the post-Internet age; paradoxes of participation, media activism, open source projects; participatory civic life; commercial surveillance; contemporary art and design; and education. This book represents the most comprehensive and transdisciplinary endeavor to date to examine the nature, place, and value of participation in the digital age. Just as in 1979, when Jean-François Lyotard proposed that “the postmodern condition” was characterized by the questioning of historical grand narratives, The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age investigates how participation has become a central preoccupation of our time. Contributors: Mark Andrejevic, Pomona College; Bart Cammaerts, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); Nico Carpentier, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB – Free University of Brussels) and Charles University in Prague; Julie E. Cohen, Georgetown University; Kate Crawford, MIT; Alessandro Delfanti, University of Toronto; Christina Dunbar-Hester, University of Southern California; Rudolf Frieling, California College of Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute; Salvatore Iaconesi, La Sapienza University of Rome and ISIA Design Florence; Jason Edward Lewis, Concordia University; Rafael Lozano-Hemmer; Graham Pullin, University of Dundee; Trebor Scholz, The New School in New York City; Cayley Sorochan, McGill University; Bernard Stiegler, Institute for Research and Innovation in Paris; Krzysztof Wodiczko, Harvard Graduate School of Design; Jillian C. York.

The Audible Past
The Audible Past

Author: Jonathan Sterne

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2003-03-13

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 9780822330134

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The Spirit of Digital Capitalism
The Spirit of Digital Capitalism

Author: Jenny Huberman

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2022-09-12

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1509553975

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Digital technologies are now central to the machinations of capitalism. How are they giving rise to new forms of capital accumulation and domination? And in what terms are these changes being promoted and justified by a new and incredibly powerful elite? This book takes on such questions. Beyond demonstrating how digital technologies make new forms of capital accumulation possible, Huberman interrogates the ideological transformations that have accompanied the emergence of digital capitalism. She examines how business gurus, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists make claims about how digital technologies contribute to the common good, foster collaboration and connectivity, and render life more convenient, even if this convenience comes at the expense of values such as privacy and liberty. Ultimately, Huberman argues that the spirit of digital capitalism is Janus-faced and reveals deeper cultural contradictions at the heart of contemporary American society: promising, in the same moment, to liberate us and surveil us, enrich us, and yet render our lives more economically precarious. Smart and thought-provoking, this book offers new perspectives that will speak to anyone interested in the contours of contemporary capitalism, particularly students and scholars of economic anthropology and sociology.

Algorithmic Marketing and EU Law on Unfair Commercial Practices
Algorithmic Marketing and EU Law on Unfair Commercial Practices

Author: Federico Galli

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-08-30

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 3031136039

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly being deployed by marketing entities in connection with consumers’ interactions. Thanks to machine learning (ML) and cognitive computing technologies, businesses can now analyse vast amounts of data on consumers, generate new knowledge, use it to optimize certain processes, and undertake tasks that were previously impossible. Against this background, this book analyses new algorithmic commercial practices, discusses their challenges for consumers, and measures such developments against the current EU legislative framework on consumer protection. The book adopts an interdisciplinary approach, building on empirical findings from AI applications in marketing and theoretical insights from marketing studies, and combining them with normative analysis of privacy and consumer protection in the EU. The content is divided into three parts. The first part analyses the phenomenon of algorithmic marketing practices and reviews the main AI and AI-related technologies used in marketing, e.g. Big data, ML and NLP. The second part describes new commercial practices, including the massive monitoring and profiling of consumers, the personalization of advertising and offers, the exploitation of psychological and emotional insights, and the use of human-like interfaces to trigger emotional responses. The third part provides a comprehensive analysis of current EU consumer protection laws and policies in the field of commercial practices. It focuses on two main legal concepts, their shortcomings, and potential refinements: vulnerability, understood as the conceptual benchmark for protecting consumers from unfair algorithmic practices; manipulation, the substantive legal measure for drawing the line between fair and unfair practices.

Interactive Cinema
Interactive Cinema

Author: Marina Hassapopoulou

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2024-06-25

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1452971447

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Connecting interactive cinema to media ethics and global citizenship Interactive Cinema explores various cinematic practices that work to transform what is often seen as a primarily receptive activity into a participatory, multimedia experience. Surveying a multitude of unorthodox approaches throughout the history of motion pictures, Marina Hassapopoulou offers insight into a range of largely ephemeral and site-specific projects that consciously assimilate viewers into their production. Analyzing examples of early cinema, Hollywood B movies, museum and gallery installations, virtual-reality experiments, and experimental web-based works, Hassapopoulou travels across numerous platforms, highlighting a diverse array of strategies that attempt to unsettle the allegedly passive spectatorship of traditional cinema. Through an exploration of these radically inventive approaches to the medium, many of which emerged out of sociopolitical crises and periods of historical transition, she works to expand notions of interactivity by considering it in both technological and phenomenological terms. Deliberately revising and expanding Eurocentric scholarship to propose a much broader, transnational scope, the book emphasizes the ethical dimensions of interactive media and their links to larger considerations around community building, citizenship, and democracy. By combining cutting-edge theory with updated conventional film studies methodologies, Interactive Cinema presses at the conceptual limits of cinema and offers an essential road map to the rapidly evolving landscape of contemporary media.

Surveillance and Democracy in Europe
Surveillance and Democracy in Europe

Author: Kirstie Ball

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-09-03

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1317270770

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Many contemporary surveillance practices take place in information infrastructures which are from the public domain. Although they have far reaching consequences for both citizens and their rights, they are not always subject to regulatory demands and oversight. This being said, democratic fora where citizens and institutions may question such practices cannot be mobilised without widespread awareness of the dangers and consequences of surveillance practices and who is responsible for them. Through an analysis of surveillance controversies across Europe, this book not only examines the troublesome relationship between surveillance and democracy; but also highlights the vested interests which maintain the status quo. Using a participatory theory lens, Surveillance and Democracy in Europe reveals the historical, social, political and legal antecedents of the current state of affairs. Arguing that participation is a sensitising concept which enables a wide array of surveillance practices and processes to be interrogated, this insightful volume will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as public administration and policy, political studies, organisational behaviour and surveillance and privacy.

Digital Roots
Digital Roots

Author: Gabriele Balbi

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-09-07

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 3110740206

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As media environments and communication practices evolve over time, so do theoretical concepts. This book analyzes some of the most well-known and fiercely discussed concepts of the digital age from a historical perspective, showing how many of them have pre-digital roots and how they have changed and still are constantly changing in the digital era. Written by leading authors in media and communication studies, the chapters historicize 16 concepts that have become central in the digital media literature, focusing on three main areas. The first part, Technologies and Connections, historicises concepts like network, media convergence, multimedia, interactivity and artificial intelligence. The second one is related to Agency and Politics and explores global governance, datafication, fake news, echo chambers, digital media activism. The last one, Users and Practices, is finally devoted to telepresence, digital loneliness, amateurism, user generated content, fandom and authenticity. The book aims to shed light on how concepts emerge and are co-shaped, circulated, used and reappropriated in different contexts. It argues for the need for a conceptual media and communication history that will reveal new developments without concealing continuities and it demonstrates how the analogue/digital dichotomy is often a misleading one.

Spaces of Participation
Spaces of Participation

Author: Randa Aboubakr

Publisher: American University in Cairo Press

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 1649030533

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A rich interdisciplinary study of the relationships between space, both physical and virtual, and social and political participation Where do people meet, form relations of trust, and begin debating social and political issues? Where do social movements start? In this fascinating collection, scholars and activists from a wealth of disciplinary backgrounds, including sociology, anthropology, history, and political science, take a fresh look at these questions and the factors leading to political and social change in the Arab world from a spatial perspective. Based on original field work in Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, and Palestine, Spaces of Participation connects and reconnects social, cultural, and political participation with urban space. It explores timely themes such as formal and informal spaces of participation, alternative spaces of cultural production, space reclamation, and cultural activism, and the reconfiguring of space through different types of contestation. It also covers a range of spaces that include sports clubs, arts centers, and sites of protest and resistance, as well as virtual spaces such as social media platforms, in the process of examining the relationships and tensions between physical and virtual space. Spaces of Participation underlines the temporal and transformative quality of participatory spaces and how they are shaped by their respective political contexts, highlighting different forms of access, control, and contestation. Contributors: Randa Aboubakr, Cairo University, Egypt Hicham Ait-Mansour, Mohamed V University, Rabat, Morocco Fadma Aït Mous, Hassan II University of Casablanca, Morocco Mouloud Amghar, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakesh, Morocco Yazid Anani, A.M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah, Palestine Mai Ayyad, Cairo University, Egypt Youness Benmouro, Mohamed V University, Rabat, Morocco Yasmine Berriane, Centre Maurice Halbwachs (CNRS), Paris, France Mokhtar El Harras, Mohamed V University, Rabat, Morocco Ulrike Freitag, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, Germany Sarah Jurkiewicz, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, Germany Mona Khalil, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt Azzurra Sarnataro, La Sapienza University of Rome, Italy Renad Shqeirat, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah, Palestine Dorota Woroniecka-Krzyżanowska, German Historical Institute, Warsaw, Poland

Design and Political Dissent
Design and Political Dissent

Author: Jilly Traganou

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-27

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 135118797X

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This book examines, through an interdisciplinary lens, the relationship between political dissent and processes of designing. In the past twenty years, theorists of social movements have noted a diversity of visual and performative manifestations taking place in protest, while the fields of design, broadly defined, have been characterized by a growing interest in activism. The book’s premise stems from the recognition that material engagement and artifacts have the capacity to articulate political arguments or establish positions of disagreement. Its contributors look at a wide array of material practices generated by both professional and nonprofessional design actors around the globe, exploring case studies that vary from street protests and encampments to design pedagogy and community-empowerment projects. For students and scholars of design studies, urbanism, visual culture, politics, and social movements, this book opens up new perspectives on design and its place in contemporary politics.

The Digital and Its Discontents
The Digital and Its Discontents

Author: Aden Evens

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2024-02-27

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1452970645

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A groundbreaking critique of the digital world that analyzes its universal technological foundations Whence that nagging sense that something in the digital is amiss—that, as wonderful as our devices are, time spent on smartphones and computers leaves us sour, enervated, alienated? The Digital and Its Discontents uniquely explains that worry and points us toward a more satisfying relationship between our digital lives and our nondigital selves, one that requires a radical change in the way we incorporate technology into our lives. Aden Evens analyzes universal technological principles—in particular, the binary logic—to show that they encourage certain ways of thinking while making others more challenging or impossible. What is out of reach for any digital machine is contingency, the ontological principle that refuses every rule. As humans engage ourselves and our world ever more through digital machines, we are losing touch with contingency and so banishing from our lives the accidental and unexpected that fuel our most creative and novel possibilities for living. Taking cues from philosophy rather than cultural or media theory, Evens argues that the consequences of this erosion of contingency are significant yet often overlooked because the same values that make the digital seem so desirable also make contingency seem unimportant—without contingency the digital is confined to what has already been thought, and yet the digital’s ubiquity has allowed it to disguise this inherent sterility. Responsive only to desires that meet the demands of its narrow logic, the digital requires its users to practice those same ideological dictates, instituting a hegemony of thought and value sustained by the pervasive presence of digital mechanisms. Interweaving technical and philosophical concepts, The Digital and Its Discontents advances a powerful and urgent argument about the digital and its impact on our lives. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.