Author: Jack Parkin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197515096
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Following the catastrophic events of the 2008 global financial crisis, an anonymous hacker released Bitcoin to claw back power from commercial and central banks. It quickly garnered an enthusiastic following who sought to forge a stable and democratic global economy--a world free from hierarchy and control. In their eyes, Bitcoin's underlying architecture, blockchain, hailed the dawn of decentralisation. Money Code Space shatters these emancipatory claims. In their place, Jack Parkin constructs a new framework for revealing the geographies of power that lie behind blockchain networks. Drawing on first-hand experience in cryptocurrency communities and start-up companies from Silicon Valley to London, Parkin untangles the complex web of culture, politics, and economics that truly drive decentralisation.
Money Code Space
Author: Jack Parkin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197515096
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Following the catastrophic events of the 2008 global financial crisis, an anonymous hacker released Bitcoin to claw back power from commercial and central banks. It quickly garnered an enthusiastic following who sought to forge a stable and democratic global economy--a world free from hierarchy and control. In their eyes, Bitcoin's underlying architecture, blockchain, hailed the dawn of decentralisation. Money Code Space shatters these emancipatory claims. In their place, Jack Parkin constructs a new framework for revealing the geographies of power that lie behind blockchain networks. Drawing on first-hand experience in cryptocurrency communities and start-up companies from Silicon Valley to London, Parkin untangles the complex web of culture, politics, and economics that truly drive decentralisation.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197515096
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Following the catastrophic events of the 2008 global financial crisis, an anonymous hacker released Bitcoin to claw back power from commercial and central banks. It quickly garnered an enthusiastic following who sought to forge a stable and democratic global economy--a world free from hierarchy and control. In their eyes, Bitcoin's underlying architecture, blockchain, hailed the dawn of decentralisation. Money Code Space shatters these emancipatory claims. In their place, Jack Parkin constructs a new framework for revealing the geographies of power that lie behind blockchain networks. Drawing on first-hand experience in cryptocurrency communities and start-up companies from Silicon Valley to London, Parkin untangles the complex web of culture, politics, and economics that truly drive decentralisation.
Code/Space
Author: Rob Kitchin
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262525917
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
An analysis of the ways that software creates new spatialities in everyday life, from supermarket checkout lines to airline flight paths. After little more than half a century since its initial development, computer code is extensively and intimately woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. From the digital alarm clock that wakes us to the air traffic control system that guides our plane in for a landing, software is shaping our world: it creates new ways of undertaking tasks, speeds up and automates existing practices, transforms social and economic relations, and offers new forms of cultural activity, personal empowerment, and modes of play. In Code/Space, Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge examine software from a spatial perspective, analyzing the dyadic relationship of software and space. The production of space, they argue, is increasingly dependent on code, and code is written to produce space. Examples of code/space include airport check-in areas, networked offices, and cafés that are transformed into workspaces by laptops and wireless access. Kitchin and Dodge argue that software, through its ability to do work in the world, transduces space. Then Kitchin and Dodge develop a set of conceptual tools for identifying and understanding the interrelationship of software, space, and everyday life, and illustrate their arguments with rich empirical material. And, finally, they issue a manifesto, calling for critical scholarship into the production and workings of code rather than simply the technologies it enables—a new kind of social science focused on explaining the social, economic, and spatial contours of software.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262525917
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
An analysis of the ways that software creates new spatialities in everyday life, from supermarket checkout lines to airline flight paths. After little more than half a century since its initial development, computer code is extensively and intimately woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. From the digital alarm clock that wakes us to the air traffic control system that guides our plane in for a landing, software is shaping our world: it creates new ways of undertaking tasks, speeds up and automates existing practices, transforms social and economic relations, and offers new forms of cultural activity, personal empowerment, and modes of play. In Code/Space, Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge examine software from a spatial perspective, analyzing the dyadic relationship of software and space. The production of space, they argue, is increasingly dependent on code, and code is written to produce space. Examples of code/space include airport check-in areas, networked offices, and cafés that are transformed into workspaces by laptops and wireless access. Kitchin and Dodge argue that software, through its ability to do work in the world, transduces space. Then Kitchin and Dodge develop a set of conceptual tools for identifying and understanding the interrelationship of software, space, and everyday life, and illustrate their arguments with rich empirical material. And, finally, they issue a manifesto, calling for critical scholarship into the production and workings of code rather than simply the technologies it enables—a new kind of social science focused on explaining the social, economic, and spatial contours of software.
New Money
Author: Lana Swartz
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300252455
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
A new vision of money as a communication technology that creates and sustains invisible—often exclusive—communities One of the basic structures of everyday life, money is at its core a communication media. Payment systems—cash, card, app, or Bitcoin—are informational and symbolic tools that integrate us into, or exclude us from, the society that surrounds us. Examining the social politics of financial technologies, Lana Swartz reveals what’s at stake when we pay. This accessible and insightful analysis comes at a moment of disruption: from “fin-tech” startups to cryptocurrency schemes, a variety of technologies are poised to unseat traditional financial infrastructures. Swartz explains these changes, traces their longer histories, and demonstrates their consequences. Getting paid and paying determines whether or not you can put food on the table. She shows just how important these invisible systems are. The data that payment produces is uniquely revelatory—and newly valuable. New forms of money create new forms of identity, new forms of community, and new forms of power.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300252455
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
A new vision of money as a communication technology that creates and sustains invisible—often exclusive—communities One of the basic structures of everyday life, money is at its core a communication media. Payment systems—cash, card, app, or Bitcoin—are informational and symbolic tools that integrate us into, or exclude us from, the society that surrounds us. Examining the social politics of financial technologies, Lana Swartz reveals what’s at stake when we pay. This accessible and insightful analysis comes at a moment of disruption: from “fin-tech” startups to cryptocurrency schemes, a variety of technologies are poised to unseat traditional financial infrastructures. Swartz explains these changes, traces their longer histories, and demonstrates their consequences. Getting paid and paying determines whether or not you can put food on the table. She shows just how important these invisible systems are. The data that payment produces is uniquely revelatory—and newly valuable. New forms of money create new forms of identity, new forms of community, and new forms of power.
The Rebirth of Territory
Author: Gail Lythgoe
Publisher:
ISBN: 1009377922
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
The concept of territory is central in international law, but a detailed analysis of how the concept is used in both discourse and practice has been lacking until now. Rather than reproducing the established understanding of territoriality within the international legal order, this study suggests that the discipline of international law relies on an outmoded spatial paradigm. Gail Lythgoe argues for a complete update and overhaul of our understanding of territory and space, to engage more effectively with key processes, structures and actors relevant to contemporary global governance. In this new theoretical account of an essential aspect of public international law, she argues that territory is a dynamic social reality created by the exercise of power. Territories are constituted by the practices of a more diverse array of actors than is acknowledged. As a result, functions are re-assembling in territories constituted by state and non-state actors alike.
Publisher:
ISBN: 1009377922
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
The concept of territory is central in international law, but a detailed analysis of how the concept is used in both discourse and practice has been lacking until now. Rather than reproducing the established understanding of territoriality within the international legal order, this study suggests that the discipline of international law relies on an outmoded spatial paradigm. Gail Lythgoe argues for a complete update and overhaul of our understanding of territory and space, to engage more effectively with key processes, structures and actors relevant to contemporary global governance. In this new theoretical account of an essential aspect of public international law, she argues that territory is a dynamic social reality created by the exercise of power. Territories are constituted by the practices of a more diverse array of actors than is acknowledged. As a result, functions are re-assembling in territories constituted by state and non-state actors alike.
Hacking Hybrid Media
Author: Stephen R Barnard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197570275
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
In Hacking Hybrid Media, Stephen R. Barnard examines how networked media capital is changing the fields of politics and journalism. With a focus on the messaging strategies employed by Donald Trump and his most vocal online supporters, Barnard provides a theoretically oriented and empirically grounded analysis of the ways today's media afford deceptive political communication. He reflects not only on the tools and techniques of manipulative media campaigns, but also on the implications they hold for the future of journalism, politics, and democracy in the US and beyond.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197570275
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
In Hacking Hybrid Media, Stephen R. Barnard examines how networked media capital is changing the fields of politics and journalism. With a focus on the messaging strategies employed by Donald Trump and his most vocal online supporters, Barnard provides a theoretically oriented and empirically grounded analysis of the ways today's media afford deceptive political communication. He reflects not only on the tools and techniques of manipulative media campaigns, but also on the implications they hold for the future of journalism, politics, and democracy in the US and beyond.
Tweeting is Leading
Author: Annelise Russell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019758229X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
Social media is changing the business of representation in the Senate. If you want to know what your senator is up to, you don't need a newspaper, just your phone. Some senators are social media minimalists while others are digitally long-winded, but each senator has the ability to insert themselves into our daily digital routines and frame their political brand for a public audience. Drawing on a unique dataset of almost 200,000 senator tweets, Tweeting is Leading offers a critical analysis of senators' communication on Twitter, the individual and constituent forces that shape it, and the agendas that result. The public priorities that senators communicate through social media--what Annelise Russell calls their rhetorical agenda--offer a necessary tool for understanding how senators link their carefully crafted public image with potential voters. The rhetorical agenda challenges what we know about representation, removing the institutional and political constraints on congressional communication and giving lawmakers a messaging platform where individual discretion is high, the relative costs are low, and someone is always watching. Tweeting is Leading emphasizes why representation on social media matters for understanding media norms and how lawmakers digitally build a political brand, showing empirically how senators self-constrain their communications to curate different styles of representation that match constituent expectations.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019758229X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
Social media is changing the business of representation in the Senate. If you want to know what your senator is up to, you don't need a newspaper, just your phone. Some senators are social media minimalists while others are digitally long-winded, but each senator has the ability to insert themselves into our daily digital routines and frame their political brand for a public audience. Drawing on a unique dataset of almost 200,000 senator tweets, Tweeting is Leading offers a critical analysis of senators' communication on Twitter, the individual and constituent forces that shape it, and the agendas that result. The public priorities that senators communicate through social media--what Annelise Russell calls their rhetorical agenda--offer a necessary tool for understanding how senators link their carefully crafted public image with potential voters. The rhetorical agenda challenges what we know about representation, removing the institutional and political constraints on congressional communication and giving lawmakers a messaging platform where individual discretion is high, the relative costs are low, and someone is always watching. Tweeting is Leading emphasizes why representation on social media matters for understanding media norms and how lawmakers digitally build a political brand, showing empirically how senators self-constrain their communications to curate different styles of representation that match constituent expectations.
Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies
Author: Jason Gainous
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197680380
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 185
Book Description
"In this book, we use the case of China to examine how state actors can transform the Internet and online discourse into a key strategic element for maintaining the government and relieving domestic pressure on national institutions. While scholars have long known that the democratizing influence of the Internet can be blunted by autocratic states, in this book, we show that the online sphere can effectively be co-opted by states like China and transformed into a supporting institution. Our theory, Directed Digital Dissidence, explains how autocracies manage critical online information flows and the impact this management has on mass opinion and behavior. While the expansion of the Internet may stimulate dissidence, it also provides the central government an avenue to direct that dissent away and toward selected targets. Under the strategy of Directed Digital Dissidence, the Internet becomes a mechanism to dissipate threats by serving as a targeted relief valve rather than a building pressure cooker. We consider the process and impact of this evolving state led manipulation of the political Internet using data and examples from China. We use an original large-scale random survey of Chinese citizens to measure Internet use, social media use, and political attitudes. We also consider the impact of the state firewall. Beyond simply identifying the government strategy, we focus on testing the effectiveness of the strategy with empirical data. We also consider how the redirection of dissent can be done across a broader range of targets, including non-state actors and other nations"--
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197680380
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 185
Book Description
"In this book, we use the case of China to examine how state actors can transform the Internet and online discourse into a key strategic element for maintaining the government and relieving domestic pressure on national institutions. While scholars have long known that the democratizing influence of the Internet can be blunted by autocratic states, in this book, we show that the online sphere can effectively be co-opted by states like China and transformed into a supporting institution. Our theory, Directed Digital Dissidence, explains how autocracies manage critical online information flows and the impact this management has on mass opinion and behavior. While the expansion of the Internet may stimulate dissidence, it also provides the central government an avenue to direct that dissent away and toward selected targets. Under the strategy of Directed Digital Dissidence, the Internet becomes a mechanism to dissipate threats by serving as a targeted relief valve rather than a building pressure cooker. We consider the process and impact of this evolving state led manipulation of the political Internet using data and examples from China. We use an original large-scale random survey of Chinese citizens to measure Internet use, social media use, and political attitudes. We also consider the impact of the state firewall. Beyond simply identifying the government strategy, we focus on testing the effectiveness of the strategy with empirical data. We also consider how the redirection of dissent can be done across a broader range of targets, including non-state actors and other nations"--
We Tried to Tell Y'All
Author: Meredith D. Clark
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190068140
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201
Book Description
"For decades, Black folks in America have used different media technologies with the express purpose of telling the truth about themselves and their experiences. "We Tried to Tell Y'all" adds to this rich history by positioning Black Twitter as both a space for building and sustaining community connections, as well as a tool for the development of digital counternarratives that stand in juxtaposition to news media coverage that distorts the reality of what it's like to be Black in America in the early 21st century. Drawing on interviews, personal observation, and news analysis, the book offers insight on the dynamic nature of how Black social media users' experiences on platform shaped social movements, elevated the voices of Black women intellectuals from all walks of life, and repeatedly shifted popular culture. As part of the emerging canon on Black digital cultural studies, the book is a testament about the gap between who the news media say Black people are, and who we know ourselves to be"--
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190068140
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201
Book Description
"For decades, Black folks in America have used different media technologies with the express purpose of telling the truth about themselves and their experiences. "We Tried to Tell Y'all" adds to this rich history by positioning Black Twitter as both a space for building and sustaining community connections, as well as a tool for the development of digital counternarratives that stand in juxtaposition to news media coverage that distorts the reality of what it's like to be Black in America in the early 21st century. Drawing on interviews, personal observation, and news analysis, the book offers insight on the dynamic nature of how Black social media users' experiences on platform shaped social movements, elevated the voices of Black women intellectuals from all walks of life, and repeatedly shifted popular culture. As part of the emerging canon on Black digital cultural studies, the book is a testament about the gap between who the news media say Black people are, and who we know ourselves to be"--
Designing for Democracy
Author: Jennifer Forestal
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197568750
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
"How should we 'fix' digital technologies to support democracy instead of undermining it? In Designing for democracy, Jennifer Forestal argues that accurately evaluating the democratic potential of digital spaces means studying how the built environment-a primary component of our 'modern public square'-structures our activity, shapes our attitudes, and supports the kinds of relationships and behaviors democracy requires. Through extended analyses of Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, Forestal shows precisely how well these digital platforms meet the criteria for democratic spaces, or whether they do so at all. The result is a more nuanced analysis of the democratic communities that form-or fail to emerge-in these spaces, as well as more concrete suggestions for how to improve them."--Page 4 of cover
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197568750
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
"How should we 'fix' digital technologies to support democracy instead of undermining it? In Designing for democracy, Jennifer Forestal argues that accurately evaluating the democratic potential of digital spaces means studying how the built environment-a primary component of our 'modern public square'-structures our activity, shapes our attitudes, and supports the kinds of relationships and behaviors democracy requires. Through extended analyses of Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, Forestal shows precisely how well these digital platforms meet the criteria for democratic spaces, or whether they do so at all. The result is a more nuanced analysis of the democratic communities that form-or fail to emerge-in these spaces, as well as more concrete suggestions for how to improve them."--Page 4 of cover
Outside the Bubble
Author: Cristian Vaccari
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190858508
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Much time has been spent over the past decade debating whether social media contribute to democracy. Drawing on an original study of internet users across nine Western democracies, Outside the Bubble offers an unprecedented look at the effects of social media on democratic participation. This book argues that social media do indeed increase political participation in both online and face-to-face activities--and that they expand political equality across Western democracies. In fact, Cristian Vaccari and Augusto Valeriani find that, for the most part, social media do not constitute echo chambers or filter bubbles as most users see a mixture of political content they agree and disagree with. Various political experiences on social media have positive implications for participation and active political involvement: social media allow citizens to encounter clearly identifiable political viewpoints, facilitate accidental exposure to political news, and enable political actors and ordinary citizens to reach voters with electoral messages designed to mobilize them. Moreover, political interactions occurring on social media do not only benefit citizens who are already involved, but boost participation across the board. This is because social media offer both additional participatory incentives to the already engaged and new political opportunities for the less engaged. By adopting a comparative approach, Vaccari and Valeriani also show that political institutions matter since some political experiences on social media are more strongly associated with participation in majoritarian systems and in party-centric systems. While social media may contribute to many societal problems, they can help address at least two important democratic ills: citizens' apathy towards politics, and inequalities between those who choose to exercise their voice and those who remain silent.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190858508
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Much time has been spent over the past decade debating whether social media contribute to democracy. Drawing on an original study of internet users across nine Western democracies, Outside the Bubble offers an unprecedented look at the effects of social media on democratic participation. This book argues that social media do indeed increase political participation in both online and face-to-face activities--and that they expand political equality across Western democracies. In fact, Cristian Vaccari and Augusto Valeriani find that, for the most part, social media do not constitute echo chambers or filter bubbles as most users see a mixture of political content they agree and disagree with. Various political experiences on social media have positive implications for participation and active political involvement: social media allow citizens to encounter clearly identifiable political viewpoints, facilitate accidental exposure to political news, and enable political actors and ordinary citizens to reach voters with electoral messages designed to mobilize them. Moreover, political interactions occurring on social media do not only benefit citizens who are already involved, but boost participation across the board. This is because social media offer both additional participatory incentives to the already engaged and new political opportunities for the less engaged. By adopting a comparative approach, Vaccari and Valeriani also show that political institutions matter since some political experiences on social media are more strongly associated with participation in majoritarian systems and in party-centric systems. While social media may contribute to many societal problems, they can help address at least two important democratic ills: citizens' apathy towards politics, and inequalities between those who choose to exercise their voice and those who remain silent.