Description
Book SynopsisGlobal politics has been completely transformed by the rise of digitalisation and the politicised use of everyday digital communication tools by ordinary people in citizen engagement and mass protest. And yet, digital politics as a field is rarely explored holistically and interdisciplinary beyond a narrow focus on digital activism, digital warfare or Internet governance.
Digital Politics, Digital Histories, Digital Futures addresses this gap. Bringing together contributions from junior and experienced scholars, the book examines digital politics theoretically, methodologically, and ethically, offering interdisciplinary perspectives and innovative pedagogies. The first part of the book presents research chapters that look at misinformation and reactionary online activism, digital imperialism and capitalism, future internet governance, digital memory, digital waste, and environmental imagination. The second part showcases several creative and experimental tools for studying digital politics historically, and for analysing and creating future imaginaries of digital politics. By sharing these tools and reflecting on the process of their creation, the book aims to simultaneously push the boundaries of, and inspire new teaching and research in, the field of digital politics.
Trade ReviewThis book offers a much needed holistic and interdisciplinary perspective on digital politics. Adi Kuntsman and Liu Xin stage an engaging conversation between leading and emerging scholars, who examine the history, political economy, and materiality of digital politics. Crucially, they do so from different geo-political, disciplinary, and conceptual angles, which generates vital new insights. And, as icing on the cake, the book offers two experimental research toolkits to explore the histories and social-technical imaginaries of digital politics. In sum, Digital Politics, Digital Histories, Digital Futures is a creative and thought-provoking contribution.
-- Thomas Poell, Professor of Data, Cultural & Institutions, University of Amsterdam
Combining theoretical reflections and empirical diversity, this collection gathers interdisciplinary conversations about how the digital and the political are reconfiguring one another with implications for social movements, global warfare, infrastructural governance, citizen rights, and the future of archives.
Entangling the socio-cultural and the environmental with the digital, leading scholars and dynamic researchers open up the field of digital politics to the political economy of disinformation, critiques of development discourses and digital divides, and materialities of dirty data. The volume presents insights curated inexperimental multi-dimensional and multi-authored forms—interviews, maps, toolkits, and essays—which will inspire researchers and teachers of social media and digital technologies, and set a new benchmark for future collaborative knowledge production.
This volume not only offers a powerful argument for historicising digital research but also provides innovative methodologies and alternative imaginaries to understand digital histories and futures.
-- Rahul Mukherjee, Associate Professor of Television and New Media, University of Pennsylvania and author of Radiant Infrastructures
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Crafting new approaches for historising, politicising and imagining the digital; Adi Kuntsman and Liu Xin
Part I. Theories, Concepts, Explorations
Chapter 1. Digital Politics: Defining, exploring and challenging the field; Athina Karatzogianni and Jonathan Ong
Chapter 2. Social Media, the Archives of Tomorrow; Nermin Elsherif
Chapter 3. Activism and the Anti-Vaccination Movement; Howard Grice
Chapter 4. The Scattered Nature or Sovereign Surveillance: On Internet Models in the Context of Tomorrow; Kris Kaleta
Chapter 5. A post-developmental critique of digital development and digital capitalism; Emeka Joseph Nwankwo
Chapter 6. Dirty, toxic, dumped: Waste as data metaphor; Laura Savolainen
Part II. Methodologies, Pedagogies, Imaginaries
Chapter 7. Historicising Digital Research: From the histories of the digital to histories written through the digital; Nermin Elsherif
Chapter 8. Sociotechnical imaginaries as an analytical tool for examining digital histories and digital futures; Liu Xin
Chapter 9. Digitalised home as shell / membrane; Nermin Elsherif, Kris Kaleta, and Laura Savolainen
Chapter 10. A Story about the futures of digital storytelling; Pierre Chadelle, Tatiana Klepikova, and Kerry Anne Maxwell
Chapter 11. Layers of Digital Governance: Governing the Self, Platforms and Engineering; Kirsikka Grön, Hannah Guy, and David Mee
