David Gauntlett (ed.): Web.Studies (2000)

The World Wide Web has transformed the media landscape. This exciting, engaging and accessible book, written by scholars from the USA, Europe and Australia, explores the ways in which people, organisations and companies are using the Web to assert themselves in the world, and build communities of communication. This is the first book to offer students a comprehensive and coherent introduction to the new Web-based media culture.

Beginning with an introduction to the Web and how it works, followed by the theories and methods of cyberculture studies, Web.Studies moves on to consider everyday Web life, art and culture, Web business, and global Web communities, politics and protest. Topics covered range from personal and fan websites, cyber-sexualities, webcams and Web-based art and entertainment, to global capitalism and the fight for Web domination, cybercrime, and internet propaganda. Uniquely, the book combines studies of the Web’s artistic and creative possibilities with political, economic and international perspectives. Each chapter includes suggestions for ways in which students can use the Web to further their own research; there are also illustrations, lists of useful websites, a glossary, and a bibliography.

Publisher Arnold, 2000
ISBN 0340760494
250 pages

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Noah Wardrip-Fruin: Expressive Processing: On Process-Intensive Literature and Digital Media (2006)

From the author: “This work represents my initial take on a set of topics that I currently wrap up under the heading “expressive processing.” There are two things I particularly mean to get at with this phrase:

• First, I’m pointing toward a sort of generalization of Michael Mateas’s Expressive AI. In essence, by this I mean that the definition of computational processes is an important aspect of the authoring of digital work (it is a site for authorial expression) and that undertaking this definition from an authorial perspective (rather than through a mysticism of the computer or a particular group of techniques) is a powerful approach.
• Second, I’m hoping to make clear that the computational processes of digital works express things about their relationship to the wider society — and, especially, the subcultures and materials of science and technology — that simply aren’t visible on the surface. Given this, interpretation of digital works that focuses only on what is visible to (and experienced by) the audience misses an important avenue of investigation.”

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Special Graduate Studies at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, May 2006

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Philip Armstrong: Reticulations: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Networks of the Political (2009)

“Significantly advancing our notion of what constitutes a network, Philip Armstrong proposes a rethinking of political public space that specifically separates networks from the current popular discussion of globalization and information technology.

Analyzing a wide range of Jean-Luc Nancy’s works, Reticulations shows how his project of articulating the political in terms of singularities, pluralities, and multiplicities can deepen our understanding of networks and how they influence community and politics. Even more striking is the way Armstrong associates this general complex in Nancy’s writing with his concern for what Nancy calls the retreat of the political. Armstrong highlights what Nancy’s perspective on networks reveals about movement politics as seen in the 1999 protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization, the impact of technology on citizenship, and finally how this perspective critiques the model of networked communism constructed by Hardt and Negri.

Contesting the exclusive link between technology and networks, Reticulations ultimately demonstrates how network society creates an entirely new politics, one surprisingly rooted in community.”

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2009
Volume 27 of Electronic mediations
ISBN 0816654905, 9780816654901
307 pages

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