New Book: Alternative and Activist New Media

From the description: Alternative and Activist New Media provides a rich and accessible overview of the ways in which activists, artists, and citizen groups around the world use new media and information technologies to gain visibility and voice, present alternative or marginal views, share their own DIY information systems and content, and otherwise resist, talk back to, or confront dominant media culture. Today, a lively and contentious cycle of capture, cooptation, and subversion of information, content, and system design marks the relationship between the mainstream ‘center’ and the interactive, participatory ‘edges’ of media culture.

Five principal forms of alternative and activist new media projects are introduced, including the characteristics that make them different from more conventional media forms and content. The book traces the historical roots of these projects in alternative media, social movements, and activist art, including analyses of key case studies and links to relevant electronic resources. Alternative and Activist New Media will be a useful addition to any course on new media and society, and essential for readers interested in new media activism.

By Leah Lievrouw

Review

“Leah Lievrouw’s Alternative and Activist New Media provides the best text on new media and their political uses that I have read. Armed with an impressive arsenal of media and communication theory, Lievrouw offers as well detailed histories and analyses of a wealth of new media from the Internet to Twitter, presenting how activist groups and individuals have deployed them. The book should be extremely valuable to students and scholars alike, providing an exciting entry into a new world of culture and politics.”

Douglas Kellner, UCLA; Author of Media Culture and Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy

TOC

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: The Roots of Alternative and Activist New Media
Chapter 3: Monkeywrenching the Media Machine: Culture Jamming
Chapter 4: ‘Hacking the New Out of the Old’: Alternative Computing
Chapter 5: ‘Breaking Through the Information Blockade’: Participatory Journalism and Indymedia
Chapter 6: Getting People on the ‘Street’: Mediated Mobilization
Chapter 7: Challenging the Experts: Commons Knowledge
Chapter 8: New Media, Mediation

Book is available at wiley.com

Thanks to Malmö University co-worker Magnus Andersson for sharing the link!

eu.wiley.com