Understanding Digital Culture

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

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.

• IntroductionRevolutionary Technologies?The Structure of the BookChapter 1: Key Elements of Digital MediaTechnical ProcessesCultural FormsImmersive ExperiencesChapter 2: The Economic Foundations of the Information AgePost-IndustrialismThe Information SocietyPost-Fordism and GlobalisationInformationalism and the Network SocietyWeightless Economies, Intellectual Property and the Commodification of KnowledgeChapter 3: Convergence and the Contemporary Media ExperienceTechnological ConvergenceRegulatory ConvergenceMedia Industry ConvergenceConvergence Culture ad the Contemporary Media ExperienceProducers, Consumers, Prosumers and ′Produsage′Chapter 4: ′Everyone is Watching′: Privacy and Surveillance in Digital LifeThe Changing Cultural Contexts of PrivacyDigital Surveillance: Spaces, Traces and ToolsThe Rise Surveillance: Causes and ProcessesCommercial Imperatives and the Political Economy of SurveillanceWhy Care about a Surveillance Society?Chapter 5: Information Politics and the Online Public SphereThe Poltical Context of Information PoliticsICT-Enabled PoliticsAn Internet Public Sphere?Chapter 6: Cybercrime, Cyberterrorism and CyberwareCybercrime: A Muddy FieldThe Tools and Techniques of Cybercrime, Cyberactivism and CyberwarfareCyber Politics by Another Means: Cyber WarfareChapter 7: Digital Identity′Objects to Think with′: Early Internet Studies and PoststructuralismPersonal Homepages and the ′Re-Centring′ of the IndividualPersonal Blogging, Individualisation and the Reflexive Project of the SelfAvatar and IdentitySocial Networks, Profiles and Networked IdentityWho needs Identity?Chapter 8: Digital Community? Space, Networks and RelationshipsSearching for Lost Community: Urbanisation, Space and Scales of ExperienceGlobalisation, Technology and the Rise of Individualism′Virtual′ Communities Over Before they Began?Network Societies, Network Socialities and Networked IndividualismBeing Together Online: Networks, Instrumentalism and IntimacyChapter 9: The Body and Information TechnologyThe Body, Technology and SocietyThe PosthumanTechnology, Embodiment Relations and ′Homo Faber′Conclusion: Base, Superstructure, Infrastructure (Revisited)