Many might recall that this past summer there was a bit of moral panic over the Internet meme “The Slender Man.” The panic began when two Wisconsin twelve-year-old girls stabbed a third twelve-year-old girl 19 times to gain favor with an Internet horror character. While the girl survived the attack, this led to public outcry […]
Digitalization and Digitization
Pleased to share a draft of an article Daniel Kreiss and I are working on for the upcoming International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy. We think this compliments some of the great work being done through the Digital Keywords Project—especially Digital and Analog. We would appreciate any comments you care to give! ‘Digitization’ and ‘digitalization’ are two conceptual terms […]
A 4-Front War…
[Cross Posted: CASTAC, Gamasutra and #CultD] I was going to write about the butterfly effect, ethnography and a key informant’s book on the development of the game Jagged Alliance 2. But then the portion of the Internet surrounding videogames and game development exploded. I’ve started posts previously with the line, “I teach game design…” I’ll […]
Transformative Re-Use: The Re-Circulation of Fair Use Materials
In 2011 I opened an account on Critical Commons in order to upload a series of film clips I was analyzing for a journal article on films about the 1964 Kitty Genovese murder in New York City. I uploaded several clips from a number of films, many of which were obscure, difficult to find and hard […]
Announcement and Sample Chapter: New Book by Robert Gehl “Reverse Engineering Social Media Software, Culture, and Political Economy in New Media Capitalism”
It’s our pleasure to announce Robert Gehl’s new book titled “Reverse Engineering Social Media Software, Culture, and Political Economy in New Media Capitalism” (Amazon link). This book is a welcome contribution from a friend and colleague of this community to the growing critical perspectives that question the artifice of digital communication technologies, practices and social structure. Robert’s is […]