A Unified Theory of Cats on the Internet
Title | A Unified Theory of Cats on the Internet PDF eBook |
Author | E.J. White |
Publisher | Stanford University Press |
Pages | 114 |
Release | 2020-07-21 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1503614034 |
This cultural history reveals how cats became the undisputed mascot of the internet—“an essential look at life online” (Ryan Milner, author of The World Made Meme). Journalists and their readers seem to need no explanation for the line, “The internet is made of cats.” Everyone understands the joke, but few know how it started. A Unified Theory of Cats on the Internet is the first book to explore the history of how the cat became the internet’s best friend. Internet cats can differ in dramatic ways, from the goth cats of Twitter to the glamourpusses of Instagram to the giddy, nonsensical silliness of Nyan Cat. But they all share common traits and values. Bringing together fun anecdotes, thoughtful analyses, and hidden histories of the communities that built the internet, Elyse White shows how japonisme, punk culture, cute culture, and the battle among different communities for the soul of the internet informed the sensibility of online felines. Internet cats offer a playful and useful way to understand how culture shapes—and is shaped by—technology. Western culture has used cats for centuries as symbols of darkness, pathos, and alienation. The communities that helped build the internet represented themselves as outsiders, with snark and alienation at the core of their identity. Thus cats became the sine qua non of cultural literacy for the Extremely Online, as well as an everyday medium of expression for the rest of us. Whatever direction the internet takes next, the “series of tubes” is likely to remain cat-shaped.
The Internet Is for Cats
Title | The Internet Is for Cats PDF eBook |
Author | Jessica Maddox |
Publisher | Rutgers University Press |
Pages | 254 |
Release | 2022-10-14 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1978827938 |
LOL cats. Grumpy Cat. Dog-rating Twitter. Pet Instagram accounts. It’s generally understood the internet is for pictures of cute cats (and dogs, and otters, and pandas). But what motivates people to make and share these images, and how do they relate to other online social practices? The Internet is for Cats examines how animal images are employed to create a lighter, more playful mood, uniting users within online spaces that can otherwise easily become fractious and toxic. Placing today’s pet videos, photos, and memes within a longer history of mediated animal images, communication scholar Jessica Maddox also considers the factors that make them unique. She explores the roles that animals play within online economies of cuteness and attention, as well as the ways that animal memes and videos respond to common experiences of life under neoliberalism. Conducting a rich digital ethnography, Maddox combines observations and textual analysis with extensive interviews of the people who create, post and share animal media, including TikTok influencers seeking to make their pets famous, activists tweeting about wildlife conservation, and Redditors upvoting every cute cat photo. The Internet is for Cats will leave you with a new appreciation for the human social practices behind the animal images you encounter online.
Online Virality
Title | Online Virality PDF eBook |
Author | Valérie Schafer |
Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |
Pages | 282 |
Release | 2024-08-19 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 3111311376 |
The book Online Virality, edited by Valérie Schafer and Fred Pailler (C2DH, University of Luxembourg), aims to provide a comprehensive examination of online virality. It explores the many ways we can think about this modern phenomenon and analyse the circulation, reception, and evolution of viral born-digital content. Virality and content sharing always intertwine material, infrastructural, visual and discursive elements. This involves various platforms, stakeholders, intermediaries, social groups and communities that are constantly (re)defining themselves. Regulation, curation and content moderation politics, as well as affects and emotions (fears, humour, empathy, hatred...), are also at the core of online virality. The publication offers an interdisciplinary overview on online virality by including different types of scientific inputs, such as precise case studies, various methodological approaches (including close and distant reading, visual studies, discourse analysis, etc.), as well as historical and socio-technical analyses. The book is organised around three main topics: Expressions and Genres; Mobilisations and Engagements; Circulation and Infrastructures. The first part explores the semiotics of virality, the diverse and creative forms of expression, specific genres, the relation to other media, and the affective side of virality, such as using humour or provocation. The second part focuses on the political dimension of memes and viral content and their use in the context of controversy or political and ideological opposition. Finally, the third part delves into the often understudied but essential side of virality, by examining the role of platforms and their curation, in short, the infrastructural dimension of virality. These three parts allow us to question such fundamental notions linked to virality as, among others, circulation, reception, economy of attention, instrumentalisation and affect. This volume brings together authors from various disciplines, including semiotics, history, information and communication sciences, computer science, digital humanities, media studies. In addition, the contributors approach the question via case studies that allow for a perspective that is not exclusively US and European-centred. Some chapters explore virality in Brazil, Chile, while the book also examines a wide variety of platforms (YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, video game platforms, etc.).
Digital Feeling
Title | Digital Feeling PDF eBook |
Author | Adrienne Evans |
Publisher | Springer Nature |
Pages | 174 |
Release | 2023-03-03 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 3031235622 |
This book offers a trailblazing account of postfeminist sensibility as a digital feeling that shapes how we understand the world around us. It explores how we feel in a world where the digital has become intertwined with our intimate relationships to ourselves and to others. The book develops a novel approach that draws on feminist theories of affect, emotion, and structures of feeling, to analyse the entanglements of the digital and the non-digital, and the public and the private, and to show how good feeling shapes a contemporary moment that often leads us back to normativity and reproduces systemic inequality. This is achieved through several different digital media spheres, including: the Instagram account Barbie Savior, #fitspo content, TikTok influencers and their Get Ready With Me videos, the archive of hot men on TubeCrush, and the intimacies of the internet cat, suggesting that each offers a snapshot of our current emotional landscapes.
Purrieties of Language
Title | Purrieties of Language PDF eBook |
Author | Edith Podhovnik |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 359 |
Release | 2023-03-31 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 1108843492 |
A fun entrance point to linguistics, this accessible book uses online cat discourse to introduce a wide range of concepts.
Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism
Title | Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism PDF eBook |
Author | Stefan Herbrechter |
Publisher | Springer Nature |
Pages | 1233 |
Release | 2022-11-28 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 3031049586 |
Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism is a major reference work on the paradigm emerging from the challenges to humanism, humanity, and the human posed by the erosion of the traditional demarcations between the human and nonhuman. This handbook surveys and speculates on the ways in which the posthumanist paradigm emerged, transformed, and might further develop across the humanities. With its focus on the posthuman as a figure, on posthumanism as a social discourse, and on posthumanisation as an on-going historical and ontological process, the volume highlights the relationship between the humanities and sciences. The essays engage with posthumanism in connection with subfields like the environmental humanities, health humanities, animal studies, and disability studies. The book also traces the historical representations and understanding of posthumanism across time. Additionally, the contributions address genre and forms such as autobiography, games, art, film, museums, and topics such as climate change, speciesism, anthropocentrism, and biopolitics to name a few. This handbook considers posthumanism’s impact across disciplines and areas of study.
Abstractions and Embodiments
Title | Abstractions and Embodiments PDF eBook |
Author | Janet Abbate |
Publisher | JHU Press |
Pages | 473 |
Release | 2022-08-30 |
Genre | Technology & Engineering |
ISBN | 1421444380 |
Cutting-edge historians explore ideas, communities, and technologies around modern computing to explore how computers mediate social relations. Computers have been framed both as a mirror for the human mind and as an irreducible other that humanness is defined against, depending on different historical definitions of "humanness." They can serve both liberation and control because some people's freedom has historically been predicated on controlling others. Historians of computing return again and again to these contradictions, as they often reveal deeper structures. Using twin frameworks of abstraction and embodiment, a reformulation of the old mind-body dichotomy, this anthology examines how social relations are enacted in and through computing. The authors examining "Abstraction" revisit central concepts in computing, including "algorithm," "program," "clone," and "risk." In doing so, they demonstrate how the meanings of these terms reflect power relations and social identities. The section on "Embodiments" focuses on sensory aspects of using computers as well as the ways in which gender, race, and other identities have shaped the opportunities and embodied experiences of computer workers and users. Offering a rich and diverse set of studies in new areas, the book explores such disparate themes as disability, the influence of the punk movement, working mothers as technical innovators, and gaming behind the Iron Curtain. Abstractions and Embodiments reimagines computing history by questioning canonical interpretations, foregrounding new actors and contexts, and highlighting neglected aspects of computing as an embodied experience. It makes the profound case that both technology and the body are culturally shaped and that there can be no clear distinction between social, intellectual, and technical aspects of computing. Contributors: Janet Abbate, Marc Aidinoff, Troy Kaighin Astarte, Ekaterina Babinsteva, André Brock, Maarten Bullynck, Jiahui Chan, Gerardo Con Diaz, Liesbeth De Mol, Stephanie Dick, Kelcey Gibbons, Elyse Graham, Michael J. Halvorson, Mar Hicks, Scott Kushner, Xiaochang Li, Zachary Loeb, Lisa Nakamura, Tiffany Nichols, Laine Nooney, Elizabeth Petrick, Cierra Robson, Hallam Stevens, Jaroslav Švelch