Jack Linchuan Qiu: Working-Class Network Society: Communication Technology and the Information Have-Less in Urban China (2009)

“The idea of the “digital divide,” the great social division between information haves and have-nots, has dominated policy debates and scholarly analysis since the 1990s. In Working-Class Network Society, Jack Linchuan Qiu describes a more complex social and technological reality in a newly mobile, urbanizing China. Qiu argues that as inexpensive Internet and mobile phone services become available and are closely integrated with the everyday work and life of low-income communities, they provide a critical seedbed for the emergence of a new working class of “network labor” crucial to China’s economic boom. Between the haves and have-nots, writes Qiu, are the information “have-less”: migrants, laid-off workers, micro-entrepreneurs, retirees, youth, and others, increasingly connected by cybercafés, prepaid service, and used mobile phones. A process of class formation has begun that has important implications for working-class network society in China and beyond.

Qiu brings class back into the scholarly discussion, not as a secondary factor but as an essential dimension in our understanding of communication technology as it is shaped in the vast, industrializing society of China. Basing his analysis on his more than five years of empirical research conducted in twenty cities, Qiu examines technology and class, networked connectivity and public policy, in the context of massive urban reforms that affect the new working class disproportionately. The transformation of Chinese society, writes Qiu, is emblematic of the new technosocial reality emerging in much of the Global South.”

Foreword by Manuel Castells
Afterword by Carolyn Cartier
Publisher MIT Press, 2009
Information Revolution and Global Politics series
ISBN 026217006X, 9780262170062
320 pages

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Kazys Varnelis (ed.): Networked Publics (2008)

Digital media and network technologies are now part of everyday life. The Internet has become the backbone of communication, commerce, and media; the ubiquitous mobile phone connects us with others as it removes us from any stable sense of location. Networked Publics examines the ways that the social and cultural shifts created by these technologies have transformed our relationships to (and definitions of) place, culture, politics, and infrastructure.

Four chapters—each by an interdisciplinary team of scholars using collaborative software—provide a synoptic overview along with illustrative case studies. The chapter on place describes how digital networks enable us to be present in physical and networked places simultaneously (on the phone while on the road; on the Web while at a café)—often at the expense of non-digital commitments. The chapter on culture explores the growth of amateur-produced and -remixed content online and the impact of these practices on the music, anime, advertising, and news industries. The chapter on politics examines the new networked modes of bottom-up political expression and mobilization, and the difficulty in channeling online political discourse into productive political deliberation. And finally, the chapter on infrastructure notes the tension between openness and control in the flow of information, as seen in the current controversy over net neutrality. An introduction by anthropologist Mizuko Ito and a conclusion by architecture theorist Kazys Varnelis frame the chapters, giving overviews of the radical nature of these transformations.

Contributors: Walter Baer, François Bar, Anne Friedberg, Shahram Ghandeharizadeh, Mizuko Ito, Mark E. Kann, Merlyna Lim, Fernando Ordonez, Todd Richmond, Adrienne Russell, Marc Tuters, Kazys Varnelis.

Publisher MIT Press, 2008
ISBN 0262220857, 9780262220859
176 pages

author (includes a research blog and lecture videos)
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Andrej Chudý: Vplyv elektronickej komunikácie na súčasné zmeny v chápaní a zmysle autorstva (2008) [Slovak]

Práca načrtáva spoločenské zmeny, ktoré vedú od hierarchických usporiadaní k sieťovým a rozberá akým spôsobom v tomto prostredí umožňuje elektronická komunikácia remediáciu tradičných médií.

Predstavuje chronológiu koncepcií autorstva v západnej kultúre od antiky po súčasnosť. Bližšie skúma význam Múz v antike i stredoveku, anonymitu stredovekých autorov, vzťah orálneho a písaného. Prechádza od vplyvu kníhtlače k vznikajúcej autorskej profesii a súvisiacej koncepcii romantického autora (autor ako génius). Nahliada na literárne a filozofické chápania autorstva v 20. storočí a všíma si aspekty elektronickej kultúry vplývajúce na autorstvo, písanie v hypertextoch. Venuje sa tiež histórii autorského práva a popisuje iniciatívu Creative Commons ako alternatívu k tradičnému autorskému právu.

Analyzuje akú povahu nadobúda autorstvo v prostredí spoločenských médií (blogy, wiki, spoločenské siete) a ukazuje aspekty distribučných modelov, ktoré si potrebuje autor v elektronickom prostredí osvojiť.

Diplomová práca
Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave. Filozofická fakulta; Katedra knižničnej a informačnej vedy
Školiteľ: PhDr. Pavol Rankov, PhD
Bratislava: FiF UK, 2008.

Electronic communication and current changes in the understanding of the notion of authorship
The work outlines the social changes, reaching from the hierarchical organization to the network society, as well as analyses the remediation of the traditional media in the network environment. In the work, there is presented the chronology of the conceptions of authorship in the western culture from the Ancient Period until present.

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