| Home | About | Subscribe | Search | Member Area |
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 678.
Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
Hosted by King's Digital Lab
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2020-03-18 10:28:09+00:00
From: Carmi, Elinor
Subject: Media Distortions - is OUT and OPEN ACCESS
Hi everyone,
I'm not sorry for cross-posting because this book is about spam so it's
kind of on brand.
In what seems to be the worst time in a century, I'm mildly excited to
announce my book is finally out, and it is OPEN ACCESS!
Media Distortions: Understanding the Power Behind Spam, Noise and Other
Deviant Media (Digital Formation Series, Peter Lang)
Here's the blurb:
Media Distortions is about the power behind the production of deviant
media categories. It shows the politics behind categories we take for
granted such as spam and noise, and what it means to our broader
understanding of, and engagement with media. The book synthesizes media
theory, sound studies, science and technology studies (STS), feminist
technoscience, and software studies into a new composition to explore
media power. Media Distortions argues that using sound as a conceptual
framework is more useful due to its ability to cross boundaries and
strategically move between multiple spaces—which is essential for
multi-layered mediated spaces.
Drawing on repositories of legal, technical and archival sources, the
book amplifies three stories about the construction and negotiation of
the ‘deviant’ in media. The book starts in the early 20th century with
Bell Telephone’s production of noise, tuning into the training of their
telephone operators and their involvement with the Noise Abatement
Commission in New York City. The next story jumps several decades to the
early 2000s focusing on web metric standardization in the European Union
and shows how the digital advertising industry constructed web-cookies
as legitimate communication while making spam illegal. The final story
focuses on the recent decade and the way Facebook filters out antisocial
behaviors to engineer a sociality that produces more value. These
stories show how deviant categories re-draw boundaries between human and
non-human, public and private spaces, and importantly, social and
antisocial.
Check out the book's website - https://media-distortions.net/ - where
you can find:
1. A link to download the book for FREE.
2. More info about the book.
3. What the wonderful endorsers - scholars who have inspired my work
since the beginning - had to say about the book, THANK YOU Tiziana
Terranova, Evelyn Ruppert, Jussi Parikka and Robert W. Ghel!
4. The book's playlist with songs/tracks that will bring the dark
atmosphere of the book to you, so you can dance in between the sections.
For the advanced music snobs who think they can create a better playlist
- this is the time to make a positive use of your reviewer 2 energy and
send me your playlist interpretation of the book so I can add them to
the website!
5. I also kept my shattered dreams, I mean USA book tour that had to be
cancelled due to the Coronavirus but which will be rescheduled for the
fall, if humanity will survive.
6. More info about me.
If you're interested in an inspection/review copy please write back to
(don't 'reply all' although spamming everyone is a duty when it comes to
this book 😉 ) me and I'll connect you with the publisher to get your copy.
I want to thank Liverpool University for making this book open access!
I hope you enjoy and May the Schwartz be with you.
Stay healthy and take care in your social distancing.
Dr. Elinor Carmi,
Postdoc Research Associate - Digital Media & Society,
Department of Communication and Media,
Faculty of the Humanities and Social Sciences,
School of the Arts,Liverpool University, UK.
https://elinorcarmi.com
Editor: Willard McCarty (King's College London, U.K.; Western Sydney University, Australia)
Software designer: Malgosia Askanas (Mind-Crafts)
This site is maintained under a service level agreement by King's Digital Lab.