Facebook is now used by nearly 500 million people throughout the world, many of whom spend several hours a day on this site. Once the preserve of youth, the largest increase in usage today is amongst the older sections of the population. Yet until now there has been no major study of the impact of these social networking sites upon the lives of their users. This book demonstrates that it can be profound. The tales in this book reveal how Facebook can become the means by which people find and cultivate relationships, but can also be instrumental in breaking up marriage. They reveal how Facebook can bring back the lives of people isolated in their homes by illness or age, by shyness or failure, but equally Facebook can devastate privacy and create scandal. We discover why some people believe that the truth of another person lies more in what you see online than face-to-face. We also see how Facebook has become a vehicle for business, the church, sex and memorialisation. After a century in which we have assumed social networking and community to be in decline, Facebook has suddenly hugely expanded our social relationships, challenging the central assumptions of social science. It demonstrates one of the main tenets of anthropology - that individuals have always been social networking sites. This book examines in detail how Facebook transforms the lives of particular individuals, but it also presents a general theory of Facebook as culture and considers the likely consequences of social networking in the future.

Cell phones and the Internet have been the recipients of in-depth research on their increased and rapid integration into everyday life and the innovative appropriations associated with them in many societies. The cell phone has attracted particular attention in its perceived abilities to both enhance and destruct social relationships. Our increased access to social media and to the cell phone has taken social networking to an unprecedented level. These communication technologies are revered by many as great, all-purpose, all-positive communication devices in spite of their flaws. They are overwhelmingly bestowed with agency and superiority. Too often, they are idolized with little regard to how they affect and are affected by their users on a personal level. The mutual shaping between technology and society is not adequately acknowledged. Technologies, in spite of the seemingly endless possibilities offered by their many functions, can quite literally be sterile and useless objects outside of conscious and tangible human effort. Cell phones and the Internet, though undoubtedly capable of providing myriad beneficial opportunities for their users, need at long last to be put in their place. This book is a contribution in that regard. Kindled by her own intimate history with her cell phone and a growing curiosity about ICTs in general, this book is a culmination of Crystal Powells thoughts, reactions to and interpretations of some of the literature on these technologies. The book draws on and critically reviews contributions by some leading authors on the social shaping of ICTs and social media to offer a more nuanced and complex understanding of technology in relation to those who use and are used by it.

Exam Board: OCR Level: A-level Subject: Sociology First Teaching: September 2015 First Exam: June 2017 Build students' confidence to tackle the key themes of the 2015 OCR A-Level Sociology specification with this clear and accessible approach delivered by a team of leading subject authors. - Develop knowledge and understanding of key Year 2 concepts in a contemporary context, including globalisation and the digital social world - Strengthen essential sociological skills with engaging activities at every stage of the course - Reinforce learning and prepare for exams with practice and extension questions and exercises

"We are invited to think about the now ubiquitous everyday practices of interpreting and producing narratives across a range of modalities. The result is a text that inspires readers to think in new ways about narratives, invites them to analyse narrative texts available on the Web and, for those who wish, suggests how best to employ specialist software." - Ann Phoenix, Institute of Education, University of London "It’s high time we have a book like this. Brian Alleyne has managed to produce the best, clearest, and most comprehensive overview of narrative theory for social scientists I have yet to see. I wish I’d had access to a book like this when I was a student. It would have made my life so much easier. It will surely become the universally recognised go-to book on the subject." - David Graeber, London School of Economics & Political Science Narrative is a fundamental means whereby we make sense of our own lives and of the world around us. The stories we tell, and are being told, shape our identities, relationships and world-views. In a rapidly changing digital society where blogging and social networking have become fundamental communication channels, the platforms for the creation and exchange of all kinds of narratives have greatly expanded. This book responds to the dynamic production and consumption of stories of all kinds in popular and academic cultures. It offers a comprehensive discussion of the underlying philosophical and methodological issues of narrative and personal narrative research as well as applying these to the current digital landscape. The book provides practical guidance on data management and use of software for the narrative researcher. Illustrated with examples from a range of fields and disciplines as well as the author’s own work on hacking cultures and cultural activism, this title is a must for anyone wanting to learn about narrative approaches in social research and how to conduct successful narrative research in a digital age.

Nearly ten years of life conveniently and inconveniently occurring but entirely authenticthat is the journey Charles K. Poole had been on and shared in times good and bad. In this third volume of his I Am My Own Cause series, Poole picks up from 2010where the second volume endedand crafts more personal, insightful, and inspiring stories that will make you think and make you cry but ultimately make you glad you took time to read what he has to say. This third volume represents a period of even more significant change for Poole, much of it painful. But as he has often shown us, Poole learns lessons from even the most heartbreaking events and somehow uses those lessons for the greater good. And in doing so, he reminds us that it is something we are capable of too. Honest and written in his own irrepressible voice, I Am My Own Cause: The Third Act; Surviving and Thriving is a fitting conclusion to this series of chapters in Pooles life, but by no means is it the end. Its the beginning of something . . . new, something thatif he chooses to share itwill continue to remind us that there is great value in being our own cause.

This book traces the historical development of the American ghost story from its Indigenous, Puritan, and Enlightenment origins to its heyday in the nineteenth century and continued vibrancy in modern literary and visual culture. It explores the main tropes, thematic preoccupations, principal settings, and stylistic innovations of literary ghost stories in the United States, and the ghost story’s rich afterlife in cinema, television, and digital culture. Throughout, the role played by ghost stories in nation-building, and the questions these tales raise about race, class, sexuality, religion, and science, will be examined. The book examines major practitioners in the field, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, Shirley Jackson, Henry James, Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Edith Wharton, alongside prominent ghost narratives in cinematic, televisual, and online form, including podcasts, gaming, and ghost-hunting apps. This study also gives a new prominence to neglected or less familiar authors, including BIPOC writers, who have helped to shape the American ghost story tradition.

Daniel Miller spent 18 months undertaking an ethnographic study with the residents of an English village, tracking their use of the different social media platforms. Following his study, he argues that a focus on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram does little to explain what we post on social media. Instead, the key to understanding how people in an English village use social media is to appreciate just how ‘English’ their usage has become. He introduces the ‘Goldilocks Strategy’: how villagers use social media to calibrate precise levels of interaction ensuring that each relationship is neither too cold nor too hot, but ‘just right’.