You will never look at social media the same way again. Social media are an integral part of contemporary society. From news, warfare, politics, advertising, consumption, entertainment, friendships, labour, and economy to friendships, leisure, language, and everyday life, they have changed the way we communicate, use information and understand the world. Social media shape and are shaped by contemporary society. In order to understand contemporary society we have to ask critical questions about social media. This book is the ultimate guide for digging deeper into issues of ownership, power, class, and (in)justice. This book equips you with a critical understanding of the complexities and contradictions at the heart of social media's relationship with society. The Fourth Edition contains new chapters and has updated and revised versions of other chapters: ? The book includes a new chapter on TikTok in the context of global capitalism and the geopolitical conflict between China and the USA. ? It explores new topics such as information and social media warfare in the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the implications of Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter for democracy and the public sphere, the prospects of Twitter-alternative Mastodon, digital fascism, influencers and the attention economy on TikTok, digital capitalism, the role of big data in digital capitalism, The Public Service Media and Public Service Internet Manifesto, social media's digital alienation, and Putinism and information warfare. ? It explores populism, racism, nationalism, militant patriarchy in a chapter on right-wing authoritarianism on social media that includes two case studies of Donald Trump and Putinism. ? It analyses the phenomenon of social media influencers in the age of TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. ? It explains in an updated chapter what digital capitalism is and what role big data plays in it. ? It explores the growing prominence of platforms and platform capitalism. ? It analyses fake news, misinformation, and surveillance capitalism in the context of Facebook, WhatsApp, Cambridge Analytica, and the Internet Research Agency. ? It shows why Google is simultaneously the Internet's God and Satan. ? It discusses digital democracy and the digital public sphere in the context of Twitter. ? It challenges you to envision and achieve a truly social media that serves the purposes of a just and fair world. ? It introduces platform co-operatives and the Public Service Internet. There are winners and losers in the age of digital capitalism. This book is an essential guide for anyone who wants to critically understand how we got to digital capitalism and capitalist social media, what we can do about it, and what a democratic public sphere looks like.
Welcome to Social Theory is exactly what students want: a lucid and engaging introduction to social theory that carefully uses images, examples and quotations to illustrate new ways of examining contemporary social life. Tom Brock's comprehensive and accessible style produces an indispensable guide to social theory that examine the major theoretical traditions from Marxism through to poststructuralism, and from feminism through to postcolonial theory, new materialism and posthumanism. Welcome to Social Theory gives careful appraisal of classical ideas and debates in social theory and traces their impact on major contemporary theorists - including Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, Margaret Archer, Judith Butler, bell hooks, Kimberle Crenshaw, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Bruno Latour, Gilles Deleuze and Rosi Braidotti. Social theory matters and this book shows why through relevant and compelling examples, including the gig economy, everyday sexism, digital black feminism, animal and environmental activism, stigma and discrimination against migrants, the need to decolonise the sociology curriculum and many more. Chapters include boxed case studies, summaries, review questions, further reading and a glossary to help embed learning. Welcome to Social theory is an indispensable text for undergraduate students who are new to social theory. Dr. Tom Brock is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University.
America's Addiction Crisis and the Solution They Don't Want You to Have
America's addiction crisis is growing worse. More than 115 Americans die daily from opioid overdoses, with half a million deaths expected in the next decade. Time and again, scientific studies show that medications like Suboxone and methadone are the most reliable and effective treatment, yet more than 60 percent of US addiction treatment ......
Geographies of Embodiment provides a critical discussion of the literatures on the body and embodiment, and humanism and post-humanism, and develops arguments about "otherness" and "encounter" which have become key ideas in urban studies, and studies of the city. It situates these arguments in a wider political context, looking at power-relations through case studies at urban, national and transnational scales. These arguments are situated across disciplinary boundaries, at the borderline between between philosophy and social science that is associated to critical phenomenology, and reaches across Human Geography, Sociology, Philosophy, Anthropology, Cultural Studies and Urban Studies.
This collection of annotated oral histories records the personal stories of twenty Chinese women who lived in the wartime capital of Chongqing during China's War of Resistance against Japan during World War II. The women interviewed came from differing social, economic, and educational backgrounds and experienced the war in a variety of ways, some ......
How Increasing Inequality Destroys the Middle Class and Exploits the Poor
The growing gap between the most affluent Americans and the rest of society is changing the country into one defined more than almost any other developed nation by exceptional inequality of income, wealth, and opportunity. This book reveals that an infrastructure of inequality, both open and hidden, obstructs the great majority in pursuing ......
A bold new reconsideration of Hoodoo belief and practiceKatrina Hazzard-Donald explores African Americans' experience and practice of the herbal, healing folk belief tradition known as Hoodoo. She examines Hoodoo culture and history by tracing its emergence from African traditions to religious practices in the Americas. Working against ......
Across the world, animals are being domesticated at an unprecedented rate and scale. But what exactly is domestication, and what does it tell us about ourselves? In this book, Marcus Baynes-Rock seeks the common thread linking stories about the domestication of Australias native animals, arguing that domestication is part of a process by ......
A Practical Guide to Building Relationships and Enabling Change
Relationships and communication are the foundation of good social work practice. This book offers a new model, drawn from research and practical experience, which describes how to carry out effective relationship-based social work.
Doing Relationship-Based Social Work provides a refreshing ......
