How and why the current public engagement model has run its course—and how AI-assisted listening at scale can help.We often assume that citizen participation is the biggest barrier to effective representation. In fact, governments are sitting on mountains of civic data that they cannot effectively process.In How Institutions Listen, Eric Gordon shows how we can marshal this wealth of data with human-centered AI—making sense of the available civic d...

This book establishes play as a mode of humanistic inquiry with a profound effect on art, culture and society. Play is treated as a dynamic and relational modality where relationships of all kinds are forged and inquisitive interdisciplinary engagement is embraced. Play cultivates reflection, connection, and creativity, offering new epistemological directions for the humanities. With examples from a range of disciplines including poetry, history, science, religion and media, this book trea...

Examinations of civic engagement in digital culture—the technologies, designs, and practices that support connection through common purpose in civic, political, and social life.Countless people around the world harness the affordances of digital media to enable democratic participation, coordinate disaster relief, campaign for policy change, and strengthen local advocacy groups. The world watched as activists used social media to organize protests during the Arab S...

The first book to provide an introduction to the new theory of Net Locality and the profound effect on individuals and societies when everything is located or locatable.Describes net locality as an emerging form of location awareness central to all aspects of digital media, from mobile phones, to Google Maps, to location-based social networks and games, such as Foursquare and facebook.Warns of the threats these technologies, such as data surveillance, p...

Public trust in the institutions that mediate civic life-from governing bodies to newsrooms-is low. In facing this challenge, many organizations assume that ensuring greater efficiency will build trust. As a result, these organizations are quick to adopt new technologies to enhance what they do, whether it's a new app or dashboard. However, efficiency, or charting a path to a goal with the least amount of friction, is not itself always built on a foundation of trust. Meaningful Ineffic...

In the beginning, the World Wide Web was exciting and open to the point of anarchy, a vast and intimidating repository of unindexed confusion. Into this creative chaos came Google with its dazzling mission—"To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible"—and its much-quoted motto, "Don’t be evil." In this provocative book, Siva Vaidhyanathan examines the ways we have used and embraced Google—and the growing resistance to its expansion across the globe. He exposes th...

Internet Studies has been one of the most dynamic and rapidly expanding interdisciplinary fields to emerge over the last decade. The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies has been designed to provide a valuable resource for academics and students in this area, bringing together leading scholarly perspectives on how the Internet has been studied and how the research agenda should be pursued in the future. The Handbook aims to focus on Internet Studies as an emerging field, e...

How did we get from Hollywood to YouTube? What makes Wikipedia so different from a traditional encyclopedia? Has blogging dismantled journalism as we know it?Our media landscape has undergone a seismic shift as digital technology has fostered the rise of "participatory culture," in which knowledge is originated, created, distributed, and evaluated in radically new ways. The Participatory Cultures Handbook is an indispensable, interdisciplinary guide to this rapidly changin...

Commercial social media platforms have become integral to contemporary forms of protests. They are intensely used by advocacy groups, non-governmental organisations, social movements and other political actors who increasingly integrate social media platforms into broader practices of organizing and campaigning. But, aside from the many advantages of extensive mobilization opportunities at low cost, what are the implications of social media corporations being involved in these grassroots m...

Cyberactivism is a timely collection of essays examining the growing importance of online activism. The contributors show how online activists have not only incorporated recent technology as a tool for change, but also how they have changed the meaning of activism, what community means, and how they conceive of collective identity and democratic change. Topics addressed range from the Zapatista movement's use of the web to promote their cause globally to the establishment of alter...

Musicians and music fans are at the forefront of cyberliberties activism, a movement that has tried to correct the imbalances that imperil the communal and ritualistic sharing and distribution of music. In Music and Cyberliberties, Patrick Burkart tracks the migration of music advocacy and anti-major label activism since the court defeat of Napster and the ascendancy of the so-called Celestial Jukebox model of music e-commerce, which sells licensed access to music.Music and Cyberli...

Dynamic Fair Dealing argues that only a dynamic, flexible, and equitable approach to cultural ownership can accommodate the astonishing range of ways that we create, circulate, manage, attribute, and make use of digital cultural objects.The Canadian legal tradition strives to balance the rights of copyright holders with public needs to engage with copyright protected material, but there is now a substantial gap between what people actually do with cultural forms and how th...