Download or read book Critical Theory and Social Media written by Thomas Allmer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are enormously popular: they are continuously ranked among the most frequently accessed websites worldwide. However there are as yet few studies which combine critical theoretical and empirical research in the context of digital and social media. The aim of this book is to study the constraints and emancipatory potentials of new media and to assess to what extent digital and social media can contribute to strengthen the idea of the communication and network commons, and a commons-based information society. Based on a critical theory and political economy approach, this book explores: the foundational concepts of a critical theory of media, technology, and society users’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards the antagonistic character and the potentials and risks of social media whether technological and/or social changes are required in order to bring about real social media and human liberation. Critical Theory and Social Media examines both academic discourse on, and users’ responses to, new media, making it a valuable tool for international scholars and students of sociology, media and communication studies, social theory, new media, and information society studies. Its clear and interesting insights into corporate practices of the global new media sector will mean that it appeals to critical social media users around the world.
Download or read book Critical Theory of Communication written by Christian Fuchs and published by . This book was released on 2016-10-10 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contributes to the foundations of a critical theory of communication as shaped by the forces of digital capitalism. One of the world's leading theorists of digital media Professor Christian Fuchs explores how the thought of some of the Frankfurt School's key thinkers can be deployed for critically understanding media in the age of the Internet. Five essays that form the heart of this book review aspects of the works of Georg LukAcs, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Axel Honneth and Ju rgen Habermas and apply them as elements of a critical theory of communication's foundations. The approach taken starts from Georg LukAcs Ontology of Social Being, draws on the work of the Frankfurt School thinkers, and sets them into dialogue with the Cultural Materialism of Raymond Williams. Critical Theory of Communication offers a vital set of new insights on how communication operates in the age of information, digital media and social media, arguing that we need to transcend the communication theory of Habermas by establishing a dialectical and cultural-materialist critical theory of communication. "
Download or read book Nationalism on the Internet written by Christian Fuchs and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this timely book, critical theorist Christian Fuchs asks: What is nationalism and what is the role of social media in the communication of nationalist ideology? Advancing an applied Marxist theory of nationalism, Fuchs explores nationalist discourse in the world of contemporary digital capitalism that is shaped by social media, big data, fake news, targeted advertising, bots, algorithmic politics, and a high-speed online attention economy. Through two case studies of the German and Austrian 2017 federal elections, the book goes on to develop a critical theory of nationalism that is grounded in the works of Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, and Eric J. Hobsbawm. Advanced students and scholars of Marxism, nationalism, media, and politics won't want to miss Fuchs' latest in-depth study of social media and politics that uncovers the causes, structures, and consequences of nationalism in the age of social media and fake news.
Download or read book Critical Theory and the Digital written by David M. Berry and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-01-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Critical Theory and Contemporary Society volume re-examines critical theory in light of the challenges raised by today's digital revolution.
Download or read book Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies written by Christian Fuchs and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies lays down foundations for the analysis of media, information, and information technology in 21st century information society, as well as introducing the theoretical and empirical tools necessary for the critical study of media and information. Christian Fuchs shows the role classical critical theory can play for analyzing the information society and the information economy, as well as analyzing the role of the media and the information economy in economic development, the new imperialism, and the new economic crisis. The book critically discusses transformations of the Internet (‘web 2.0’), introduces the notion of alternative media as critical media, and shows the critical role media and information technology can play in contemporary society. This book provides an excellent introduction to the study of media, information technology, and information society, making it a valuable reference tool for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of subjects such as Media Studies, Sociology of Media, Social Theory, and New Media.
Download or read book Communication and Capitalism written by Christian Fuchs and published by University of Westminster Press. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘An authoritative analysis of the role of communication in contemporary capitalism and an important contribution to debates about the forms of domination and potentials for liberation in today’s capitalist society.’ — Professor Michael Hardt, Duke University, co-author of the tetralogy Empire, Commonwealth, Multitude, and Assembly ‘A comprehensive approach to understanding and transcending the deepening crisis of communicative capitalism. It is a major work of synthesis and essential reading for anyone wanting to know what critical analysis is and why we need it now more than ever.’ — Professor Graham Murdock, Emeritus Professor, University of Loughborough and co-editor of The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications Communication and Capitalism outlines foundations of a critical theory of communication. Going beyond Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action, Christian Fuchs outlines a communicative materialism that is a critical, dialectical, humanist approach to theorising communication in society and in capitalism. The book renews Marxist Humanism as a critical theory perspective on communication and society. The author theorises communication and society by engaging with the dialectic, materialism, society, work, labour, technology, the means of communication as means of production, capitalism, class, the public sphere, alienation, ideology, nationalism, racism, authoritarianism, fascism, patriarchy, globalisation, the new imperialism, the commons, love, death, metaphysics, religion, critique, social and class struggles, praxis, and socialism. Fuchs renews the engagement with the questions of what it means to be a human and a humanist today and what dangers humanity faces today.
Download or read book Critical Theory and Social Transformation written by Gerard Delanty and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-24 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Theory and Social Transformation provides an exploration of the major themes in critical social theory of recent years. Delanty argues that a critical theory perspective can offer much-needed insights into the pressing socio-political challenges of our time. In this volume, he advances the need to reconnect social theory and social research and to return to the foundational concerns of critical social theory. Delanty engages with the key topics facing critical social theorists: capitalism, cosmopolitanism, modernity, the Anthropocene, and legacies of history. The connecting thread is that the topics are all contemporary challenges for critical theory and relate to major social transformations. The notions of critique, crisis, and social transformation are central to the book. Critical Theory and Social Transformation will be of interest to the broad readership in social and political theory. It will appeal to those working in sociology, political sociology, politics, and international studies and to anyone with an interest in any of the chapter-specific topics, such as public space, memory, and neo-authoritarianism.
Download or read book New Media Cultural Studies and Critical Theory after Postmodernism written by R. Samuels and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-12-07 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that we have moved into a new cultural period, automodernity, which represents a social, psychological, and technological reaction to postmodernity. In fact, by showing how individual autonomy is now being generated through technological and cultural automation, Samuels posits that we must rethink modernity and postmodernity.
Download or read book Critical Theory and Interaction Design written by Jeffrey Bardzell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 840 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classic texts by thinkers from Althusser to Žižek alongside essays by leaders in interaction design and HCI show the relevance of critical theory to interaction design. Why should interaction designers read critical theory? Critical theory is proving unexpectedly relevant to media and technology studies. The editors of this volume argue that reading critical theory—understood in the broadest sense, including but not limited to the Frankfurt School—can help designers do what they want to do; can teach wisdom itself; can provoke; and can introduce new ways of seeing. They illustrate their argument by presenting classic texts by thinkers in critical theory from Althusser to Žižek alongside essays in which leaders in interaction design and HCI describe the influence of the text on their work. For example, one contributor considers the relevance Umberto Eco's “Openness, Information, Communication” to digital content; another reads Walter Benjamin's “The Author as Producer” in terms of interface designers; and another reflects on the implications of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble for interaction design. The editors offer a substantive introduction that traces the various strands of critical theory. Taken together, the essays show how critical theory and interaction design can inform each other, and how interaction design, drawing on critical theory, might contribute to our deepest needs for connection, competency, self-esteem, and wellbeing. Contributors Jeffrey Bardzell, Shaowen Bardzell, Olav W. Bertelsen, Alan F. Blackwell, Mark Blythe, Kirsten Boehner, John Bowers, Gilbert Cockton, Carl DiSalvo, Paul Dourish, Melanie Feinberg, Beki Grinter, Hrönn Brynjarsdóttir Holmer, Jofish Kaye, Ann Light, John McCarthy, Søren Bro Pold, Phoebe Sengers, Erik Stolterman, Kaiton Williams., Peter Wright Classic texts Louis Althusser, Aristotle, Roland Barthes, Seyla Benhabib, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Arthur Danto, Terry Eagleton, Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, Wolfgang Iser, Alan Kaprow, Søren Kierkegaard, Bruno Latour, Herbert Marcuse, Edward Said, James C. Scott, Slavoj Žižek
Download or read book Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism written by Jeremiah Morelock and published by University of Westminster Press. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After President Trump’s election, BREXIT and the widespread rise of far-Right political parties, much public discussion has intensely focused on populism and authoritarianism. In the middle of the twentieth century, members of the early Frankfurt School prolifically studied and theorized fascism and anti-Semitism in Germany and the United States. In this volume, leading European and American scholars apply insights from the early Frankfurt School to present-day authoritarian populism, including the Trump phenomenon and related developments across the globe. Chapters are arranged into three sections exploring different aspects of the topic: theories, historical foundations, and manifestations via social media. Contributions examine the vital political, psychological and anthropological theories of early Frankfurt School thinkers, and how their insights could be applied now amidst the insecurities and confusions of twenty-first century life. The many theorists considered include Adorno, Fromm, Löwenthal and Marcuse, alongside analysis of Austrian Facebook pages and Trump’s tweets and operatic media drama. This book is a major contribution towards deeper understanding of populism’s resurgence in the age of digital capitalism.
Download or read book Critical Theory written by Max Horkheimer and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1972-01-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays, written in the 1930s and 1940s, represent a first selection in English from the major work of the founder of the famous Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Horkheimer's writings are essential to an understanding of the intellectual background of the New Left and the to much current social-philosophical thought, including the work of Herbert Marcuse. Apart from their historical significance and even from their scholarly eminence, these essays contain an immediate relevance only now becoming fully recognized.
Download or read book Crime Justice and Social Media written by Michael Salter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is social media changing contemporary understandings of crime and injustice, and what contribution can it make to justice-seeking? Abuse on social media often involves betrayals of trust and invasions of privacy that range from the public circulation of intimate photographs to mass campaigns of public abuse and harassment using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, 8chan and Reddit – forms of abuse that disproportionately target women and children. Crime, Justice and Social Media argues that online abuse is not discontinuous with established patterns of inequality but rather intersects with and amplifies them. Embedded within social media platforms are inducements to abuse and harass other users who are rarely provided with the tools to protect themselves or interrupt the abuse of others. There is a relationship between the values that shape the technological design and administration of social media, and those that inform the use of abuse and harassment to exclude and marginalise diverse participants in public life. Drawing on original qualitative research, this book is essential reading for students and scholars in the fields of cyber-crime, media and crime, cultural criminology, and gender and crime.
Download or read book Critical Theory A Very Short Introduction written by Stephen Eric Bronner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical theory emerged in the 1920s from the work of the Frankfurt School, the circle of German-Jewish academics who sought to diagnose -- and, if at all possible, cure -- the ills of society, particularly fascism and capitalism. In this book, Stephen Eric Bronner provides sketches of leading representatives of the critical tradition (such as George Lukács and Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas) as well as many of its seminal texts and empirical investigations. This Very Short Introduction sheds light on the cluster of concepts and themes that set critical theory apart from its more traditional philosophical competitors. Bronner explains and discusses concepts such as method and agency, alienation and reification, the culture industry and repressive tolerance, non-identity and utopia. He argues for the introduction of new categories and perspectives for illuminating the obstacles to progressive change and focusing upon hidden transformative possibilities. In this newly updated second edition, Bronner targets new academic interests, broadens his argument, and adapts it to a global society amid the resurgence of right-wing politics and neo-fascist movements.
Download or read book Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory written by Angela M. Cirucci and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Mirror is The Twilight Zone of the twenty-first century. Already a philosophical classic, the series echoes the angst of an era, a civilization and consciousness fully engulfed in the 24/7 media spectacle spanning the planet. With clever plots and existential themes, Black Mirror presents near-futures where humans collide with technology and each other—tomorrows that might arrive in five years or five minutes. Featuring scholars from three continents and ten nations, Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory is an international collection of critical media theory applied to one of the most intellectually provocative TV shows of our time and the all-too-real conditions that inspire it. Drawing from thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Marshall McLuhan, and Paul Virilio, the authors reverse-engineer Black Mirror by probing the ideas, meanings, and conditions embedded in the episodes. This book is organized around six key topics reflected and explored in Black Mirror—human identity, surveillance culture, spectacle and hyperreality, aesthetics, technology and existence, and dystopian futures.
Download or read book Critical Social Theories written by Ben Agger and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2006-01-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praised for its clarity and accessibility, this fully updated edition of Critical Social Theories presents a comprehensive analysis of leading social and cultural theories today. The book addresses diverse perspectives, from feminism and cultural studies to postmodernism and critical theory. This second edition includes new chapters on the need for a new public sociology in the post-9/11 era--one that moves beyond both positivism and postmodernism.
Download or read book EBOOK Critical Theories of Mass Media Then and Now written by Paul Taylor and published by McGraw-Hill Education (UK). This book was released on 2007-12-16 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is a welcome critical corrective to complacent mainstream accounts of the media's cultural impact". Prof. Slavoj Zizek, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London "A powerful and highly engaging re-assessment of past critical thinkers (including those not normally thought of as critical) in the light of today's mediascape". Jorge Reina Schement, Distinguished Professor of Communications, Penn State University With the exception of occasional moral panics about the coarsening of public discourse, and the impact of advertising and television violence upon children, mass media tend to be viewed as a largely neutral or benign part of contemporary life. Even when criticisms are voiced, the media chooses how and when to discuss its own inadequacies. More radical external critiques are often excluded and media theorists are frequently more optimistic than realistic about the negative aspects of mass culture. This book reassesses this situation in the light of both early and contemporary critical scholarship and explores the intimate relationship between the mass media and the dis-empowering nature of commodity culture. The authors cast a fresh perspective on contemporary mass culture by comparing past and present critiques. They: Outline the key criticisms of mass culture from past critical thinkers Reassess past critical thought in the changed circumstances of today Evaluate the significance of new critical thinkers for today's mass culture The book begins by introducing the critical insights from major theorists from the past - Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor Adorno, Marshall McLuhan and Guy Debord. Paul Taylor and Jan Harris then apply these insights to recent provocative writers such as Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek, and discuss the links between such otherwise apparently unrelated contemporary events as the Iraqi Abu Ghraib controversy and the rise of reality television. Critical Theories of Mass Media is a key text for students of cultural studies, communications and media studies, and sociology.
Download or read book Critical Animal Studies and Social Justice written by Anthony J. Nocella and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential read for activists, community organizers, and justice scholars Critical Animal Studies and Social Justice: Critical Theory, Dismantling Speciesism, and Total Liberation is a collection that combines scholarship and activism in nine ground-breaking and provocative chapters. The book includes contributions from around the world influenced by critical theory, feminism, social justice, political theory, media studies, environmental justice, food justice, disability studies, and Black liberation. By promoting total liberation and liberatory politics, these essays challenge the reader to think about new approaches to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. The contributors examine and disrupt many of the exclusionary assumptions and behaviors by those working toward justice and liberation, encouraging the reader to reflect on their own thoughts and actions.
