"This book re-evaluates the way we examine today's digital media environment By looking at how popular culture uses different digital technologies, Digital Fandom bolsters contemporary media theory by introducing new methods of analysis Using the exemplars of alternate reality gaming and fan studies, this book takes into account a particular "philosophy of playfulness" in today's media in order to establish a "new media studies."" "Digital Fandom augments traditional studies of popular media fandom with descriptions of the contemporary fan in a converged media environment. The book shows how changes in the study of fandom can be applied in a larger scale to the study of new media in general, and formulates new conceptions of traditional media theories." ""In this web 2.0 world, where community and not content is king, the fan marks a new form of interactive subjectivity that deconstructs the usual categories of consumer and producer. Paul Booth's Digital Fandom breaks new ground in the investigation of this subject, demonstrating how it reorganizes and reorients the field of new media studies" ---David J. Gunkel, Presidential Teaching Professor, Northern Illinois University, Author of Hacking Cyberspace and Thinking Otherwise" ""From blogs to ARGS, wikis to social networking sites, Paul Booth provides an in-depth tour of how fans straddle and traverse the boundary between television and digital media. With a theoretically rich analytic eye, Digital Fandom breaks new ground for the next generation of media scholarship" ---Jason Mittell, Middlebury College, Author of Television & American Culture"--BOOK JACKET.

This book examines the shifting role of media trust in a digital world, and critically analyzes how news and stories are created, distributed and consumed. Emphasis is placed on the current challenges and possible solutions to regain trust and restore credibility. The book reveals the role of trust in communication, in society and in media, and subsequently addresses media at the crossroads, as evinced by phenomena like gatekeepers, echo chambers and fake news. The following chapters explore truth and trust in journalism, the role of algorithms and robots in media, and the relation between social media and individual trust. The book then presents case studies highlighting how media creates trust in the contexts of: brands and businesses, politics and non-governmental organizations, science and education. In closing, it discusses the road ahead, with a focus on users, writers, platforms and communication in general, and on media competency, skills and education in particular.

A WARNING FROM AN AUTHORITY: Save Our Freedom is an urgent plea by Bijan Moini, a human rights activist and expert on civil liberties. Freedom is something we take for granted—a fundamental human right we assume will always be there, and that we complain about vocally when we feel it’s being upon. But in reality, the number of countries in which people can live freely is decreasing for the first time in decades. Bijan Moini’s new book is a jarring wake-up call: if we aren’t careful, our freedoms may be stripped away, too, and it might be our own fault. Vividly describing the current landscape of civil liberties in our capitalistic and digital age, Save Our Freedom! explains the immense importance the principle plays in our day-to-day, and outlines concrete actionable measures to fight back.. TIMELY, IMPORTANT, AND URGENT: The voluntary ceding of freedoms is an alarming and highly relevant issue facing our digital world, and one that we are not giving sufficient attention. Save Freedom is a call to action to change our focus before it’s too late.

The recommendation of products, content and services cannot be considered newly born, although its widespread application is still in full swing. While its growing success in numerous sectors, the progress of the Social Web has revolutionized the architecture of participation and relationship in the Web, making it necessary to restate recommendation and reconciling it with Collaborative Tagging, as the popularization of authoring in the Web, and Social Networking, as the translation of personal relationships to the Web. Precisely, the convergence of recommendation with the above Social Web pillars is what motivates this book, which has collected contributions from well-known experts in the academy and the industry to provide a broader view of the problems that Social Recommenders might face with. If recommender systems have proven their key role in facilitating the user access to resources on the Web, when sharing resources has become social, it is natural for recommendation strategies in the Social Web era take into account the users’ point of view and the relationships among users to calculate their predictions. This book aims to help readers to discover and understand the interplay among legal issues such as privacy; technical aspects such as interoperability and scalability; and social aspects such as the influence of affinity, trust, reputation and likeness, when the goal is to offer recommendations that are truly useful to both the user and the provider.

There is on-going debate in youth and community work regarding its future. Driven by processes of neo-liberal governmentality, youth work has been bent in new and uncomfortable directions. For many, this threatens the very telos of praxis. However, despite this, a passionate commitment to youth work’s values and approaches doggedly remains. This edited volume invites academics working in different continents and contexts to move beyond a critique of youth work’s current state, towards imagining different professional futures. Rooted in the profession’s historic values, and drawing on the distinct political and cultural environments that have shaped youth work practice in different global locations, the authors explore possible new routes and approaches for the profession. These discussions are located geographically (in a devolved United Kingdom, Europe, United States, Australasia, and the Developing/Majority world) as well as across different sectors and approaches (voluntary sector, faith sector, online, young women’s work). The result is a rich picture of global practice. This provides both depth and perspective from which to gain new insights regarding possibilities for future practices, which imagine fairer and more participative societies.