This book examines the convergence of media in the largest residential virtual community to date in the gaming world: Second Life. This user content-driven platform has brought media makers and audiences together in interactive environments where news, entertainment, and art have become programming for virtual media networks with implications for traditional mainstream programming and distribution. New media moguls are emerging from Second Life and expanding to the larger Metaverse. This book explores media's role in reporting and reflecting the social, political, and economic issues within Second Life and beyond, and includes more than a dozen interviews of active Second Life residents.

The reference will discuss mass media around the world in their varied forms—newspapers, magazines, radio, television, film, books, music, websites, and social media—and will describe the role of each in both mirroring and shaping society.

′In his beautifully balanced, clear and broad-ranging account of a fast-changing field, Paul Hodkinson has successfully brought together myriad perspectives with which to critically analyse today′s media culture and media society.′– Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Media & Communication, LSE Paul Hodkinson′s bestseller is back, once again exploring the concepts and complexities of the media in an accessible, balanced and engaging style. Additions to the Second Edition include: A new chapter on advertising and sponsorship Extensive revision and updating throughout all chapters New material on technologies, censorship, online news, fan cultures and representations of poverty Greater emphasis on and examples of digital, interactive and mobile media throughout Fully reworked chapter on media, community and difference Up-to-date examples covering everything from social media, contemporary advertising, news events and mobile technologies, to representations of class, ethnicity and gender. Combining a critical survey of the field with a finely judged assessment of cutting-edge developments, this Second Edition cements its reputation as the must-have text for any undergraduate student studying media, culture and society.

This collection of new essays explores issues of identity, work and play in the virtual world of Second Life (SL). Fourteen women discuss their experiences. Topics include teaching in Second Life, becoming an SL journalist, and using SL as a means to bring human rights to health care; exploring issues of identity and gender such as performing the role of digital geisha, playing with gender crossing, or determining how identity is formed virtually; examining how race is perceived; and investigating creativity such as poetry writing or quilting. The text is unique in that it represents only women and their experiences in a world that is most often viewed as a man's world.

One of the big myths and metaphors of the postmodern age is the Cyborg, which includes a large amount of different meanings. The Cyborg often expresses the transformation and extension of the body and exemplifies a postmodern range of technical determinism and human comprehension. In this perspective the Cyborg is no longer a concept of science fiction, technical apocalypse or cyberpunk, but more a construct that highlights the relation of modern media technologies within our every day culture; as well as the body and mind of spectators and users of these media systems. We are connected with a variety of poly-sensual media systems, and we use its potential for communication, multiplying knowledge, spatial and temporal orientation or aesthetic experience. Therefore we are a kind of Cyborgs, connected to media by complex multimodal interfaces. This volume monitors and discusses the relation of postmodern humans and media technologies and therefore refers to Cyborgs, interfaces and apparatuses within the perspective of an autonomous image science.

The growing presence of discrimination and isolation has caused negative changes to human interactions. With the ubiquity of these practices, there is now an increasingly urgent need to close this divide. Discrimination and Diversity: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications provides a critical look at race, gender, and modern day discrimination and solutions to creating sustainable diversity across numerous contexts and fields. Including innovative studies on anti-discrimination measures, gender discrimination, and tolerance, this multi-volume book is an ideal source for professionals, practitioners, graduate students, academics, and researchers working in equality, as well as managers and those in leadership roles.

Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. At the time of its initial publication in 2008, Coming of Age in Second Life was the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe. Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He conducted his research as the avatar "Tom Bukowski," and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group. Coming of Age in Second Life shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself. Now with a new preface in which the author places his book in light of the most recent transformations in online culture, Coming of Age in Second Life remains the classic ethnography of virtual worlds.