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Using sources from classical to modern that broach the phenomenon of uncertainty and its relation to risk, this book creates a novel approach to the recognized but theoretically often unattended issue of uncertainty. Andreas Klinke develops a new, general theory of uncertainty that provides a taxonomy of categories which are deduced from a critical inventory in philosophy, social and natural sciences, and risk research. Comprising six parts, the philosophical grounding of uncertainty sets the stage for the following philosophical and social scientific accounts and explanation of four distinctive guises of uncertainty that form a taxonomic notion and rationale: ontological, epistemological, l...
This book explores commodification processes of personal data and provides a critical framing of the ongoing debate of privacy in the Internet age, using the example of social media and referring to interviews with users. It advocates and expands upon two main theses: First, people’s privacy is structurally invaded in contemporary informational capitalism. Second, the best response to this problem is not accomplished by invoking the privacy framework as it stands, because it is itself part of the problematic nexus that it struggles against. Informational capitalism poses weighty problems for making the Internet a truly social medium, and aspiring to sustainable privacy simultaneously means to struggle against alienation and exploitation. In the last instance, this means opposing the capitalist form of association – online and offline.
Today, a new kind of freedom fighter has emerged in our midst: liberal and open-minded, these individuals champion liberty and resent the imposition of more and more rules and exhortations that constrain their freedom. They are angry, disgruntled, offended. Why should they have to wear a face mask, get vaccinated or follow new rules on diversity and equality? They should be free to choose. They do not long for a glorified past or the strong arm of the state but argue instead for individual freedoms at all costs. Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey see this new freedom fighter as symptomatic of the rise of a new political current in Western societies – what they call ‘libertarian authori...
The weight of constant digital connection is the default condition of working life, home life, and everyday personal life – driving us to engage more with platforms than with people, a new state of constant disconnection that we cannot escape. Overflowing email inboxes, deluges of mobile phone notifications and torrents of social media posts—the flow of communication in its abundance is today's individualized interface for interpersonal and professional practices. Communication technologies and their use are both the needle and the thread of the wider social tapestry of everyday contemporary life. This ever-changing communication environment is where the neoliberal economic policies of t...
In the face of a world in crisis, Digitalization and Learning as a Worlding Practice: Why Dialogue Matters examines the significance of digital technologies in human learning. The book explores how learning is not just an internalization of knowledge but a problem- oriented activity of engaging with the world, a process of both meaning making and world making. It raises a pivotal question: how can digital technologies help to expand and enrich learning as a collaborative worlding practice? It discusses the importance of digital artifacts in shaping students’ learning experiences, discerning how they nourish meaningful engagement and where they pose a hindrance. The book also investigates t...
More than 130 years after Karl Marx’s death and 150 years after the publication of his opus magnum Capital: Critique of Political Economy, capitalism keeps being haunted by period crises. The most recent capitalist crisis has brought back attention to Marx’s works. This volume presents 16 contributions that show how Marx’s analyses of capitalism, the commodity, class, labour, work, exploitation, surplus-value, dialectics, crises, ideology, class struggles, and communism, help us to understand the Internet and social media in 21st century digital capitalism. Marx is back! This book is a key resource on the foundations of Marxist Internet and Digital Media Studies.
‘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 ...
This book provides a critical perspective on the digitalisation of universities and precarisation of academic labour. While research and teaching become more virtual and digital at universities, academic labour is becoming more and more casualised and temporary. This book aims to analyse and theorise academic labour and study the experiences academic workers have made at universities that are shaped by economic, political and cultural contexts. It will be a valuable tool for international scholars and students of subjects such as media, communication and cultural studies, sociology, education, management and labour studies. The insights will also be of particular relevance for unions and other initiatives that are concerned about the working conditions at universities.
This book explores how the Internet is connected to the global crisis of liberal democracy. Today, self-promotion is at the heart of many human relationships. The selfie is not just a social media gesture people love to hate. It is also a symbol of social reality in the age of the Internet. Through social media people have new ways of rating and judging themselves and one another, via metrics such as likes, shares, followers and friends. There are new thirsts for authenticity, outlets for verbal aggression, and social problems. Social media culture and neoliberalism dovetail and amplify one another, feeding social estrangement. With neoliberalism, psychosocial wounds are agitated and authori...
Labor resides at the center of all media and communication production, from the workers who create the information technologies that form the dynamic core of the global capitalist system and the designers who create media content to the salvage workers who dismantle the industry’s high-tech trash. The Routledge Companion to Labor and Media is the first book to bring together representative research from the diverse body of scholarly work surrounding this often fragmentary field, and seeks to provide a comprehensive resource for the study and teaching of media and labor. Essays examine work on the mostly unglamorous side of media and cultural production, technology manufacture, and every oc...