Connectivity, Networks and Flows

This book offers its readers a critical engagement with three key concepts for social and communication theory today - connectivity, networks and flows. The contributors are committed to conceptualizing contemporary communications in a changing world. They point to globalizing and deterritorializing processes, and to the increasing significance of mobilities in late modern existence - yet this is also a book about the continuing importance of locality, senses of place and physically copresent interaction in daily living. The book combines theoretical reflection with analysis of specific media and cultural practices. Featured examples of such practices include uses of mobile phones and the Internet, activities of online (and offline) working and socializing, and constructions of liveness and immediacy in electronically mediated communication. The book will be of particular interest to researchers and students in communications, media and cultural studies, sociology and social theory.