Digital Cultures And The Politics Of Emotion

Fifteen thought-provoking essays engage in an innovative dialogue between cultural studies of affect, feelings and emotions, and digital cultures, new media and technology. The volume provides a fascinating dialogue that cuts across disciplines, media platforms and geographic and linguistic boundaries.

Fifteen thought-provoking essays engage in an innovative dialogue between cultural studies of affect, feelings and emotions, and digital cultures, new media and technology. The volume provides a fascinating dialogue that cuts across disciplines, media platforms and geographic and linguistic boundaries.

Emotions work to define who we are as well as shape what we do and this is no more powerfully at play than in the world of politics. Ahmed considers how emotions keep us invested in relationships of power, and also shows how this use of emotion could be crucial to areas such as feminist and queer politics. Debates on international terrorism, asylum and migration, as well as reconciliation and reparation, are explored through topical case studies. In this book the difficult issues are confronted head on. The Cultural Politics of Emotion is in dialogue with recent literature on emotions within gender studies, cultural studies, sociology, psychology and philosophy. Throughout the book, Ahmed develops a theory of how emotions work, and the effects they have on our day-to-day lives. New for this editionA substantial 15,000-word Afterword on 'Emotions and Their Objects' which provides an original contribution to the burgeoning field of affect studiesA revised BibliographyUpdated throughout.

Feminism, Digital Culture and the Politics of Transmission argues that despite the prevalence of generational narratives within feminism, the technical processes through which knowledge is transmitted across generations remain unexplored. Taking Bernard Stiegler's concept of the already-there as its starting point the book considers how the politics of transmission operates within digital culture. It argues that it is necessary to re-orient feminism's political project within what is already-there so that it may respond to an emergent feminist tradition. Grounded in the author's work collecting and interpreting the music-making heritage of the UK Women's Liberation Movement, it explores how digital technologies have enabled empassioned amateurs to make 'archives' within the first decade of the 21st century. The book reflects on what is technically and politically at stake in the organization and transmission of digital artifacts, and explores what happens to feminist cultural heritage when circuits shut down, stall or become diverted.

This book explores the practices and the politics of relatable femininity in intimate digital social spaces. Examining a GIF-based digital culture on Tumblr, the author considers how young women produce relatability through humorous, generalisable representations of embarrassment, frustration, and resilience in everyday situations. Relatability is examined as an affective relation that offers the feeling of sameness and female friendship amongst young women. However, this relation is based on young women’s ability to competently negotiate the ‘feeling rules’ that govern youthful femininity. Such classed and racialised feeling rules require young women to perfect the performance of normalcy: they must mix self-deprecation with positivity; they must be relatably flawed but not actual ‘failures’. Situated in debates about postfeminism, self-representation and digital identity, this book connects understandings of digital visual culture to gender, race, and class, and neoliberal imperatives to perform the ‘right feelings’. Gender and Relatability in Digital Culture will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including gender studies, cultural studies, sociology, and media studies.

Activists use digital as well as mainstream media tools to attract supporters, advertise their campaigns, and raise awareness of issues in the broader community. Activism and Digital Culture in Australia examines the use of digital tools and culture by Australian and international activist organisations to facilitate public engagement, participation and deliberation in issues and advance social change. In particular the book engages media studies, cultural studies, social theory and various ethical and political philosophical perspectives to examine the use of digital multi-platform tools by activist organisations and advocates for social change to a) disseminate information and raise public awareness; b) invoke, inform and shape public debate through the provision of information and invocation of affect; and c) garner public support (including funding) for issues and for associated social change. Engaging both qualitative and quantitative approaches, these case studies will demonstrate the richness of digital culture for activism and advocacy, examining the use by activist organisations of such digital media tools as apps, blogging, Facebook, RSS, Twitter, and YouTube. The shows that digital culture offers productive mechanisms and spaces for the reshaping of society itself to take more of a participatory role in progressing social change.

This book is the first to thoroughly account for the changes in the landscape of cultural policy caused by digital communication and digital media. Valtysson investigates how communication infrastructures and dominant tech giants increasingly shape citizens’ production and consumption patterns, influencing how people meet and interact with cultural products. This book builds theoretical foundations to illuminate the complexities of the changing field of cultural policy and provides concrete manifestations of how policy relates to and shapes practice. The book focuses on archival politics, institutional politics and user politics, and includes analysis of Google Cultural Institute, Europeana, the BBC, the Brooklyn Museum and Te Papa Tongarewa. In order to further understand the complex nature of digital cultural politics, Valtysson provides an analysis of YouTube and Google’s privacy policies and how these relate to the EU’s regulatory frameworks within audio-visual media services, telecommunications, and data protection.

This book explores how digital media can extend care practices among friends and peers, researching young people’s negotiations of sexual health, mental health, gender/sexuality, and dating apps, and highlighting the need for a multifocal approach that centres young people’s expertise. Taking an "everyday practice" approach to digital and social media, Digital Media, Friendship and Cultures of Care emphasises that digital media are not novel but integrated into daily life. The book introduces the concept of "digital cultures of care" as a new framework through which to consider digital practices of friendship and peer support, and how these play out across a range of platforms and networks. Challenging common public and academic concerns about peer and friendship influences on young people, these terms are unpacked and reconsidered through attention to digital media, drawing on qualitative research findings to argue that digital and social media have created important new opportunities for emotional support, particularly for young people and LGBTQ+ people who are often excluded from formal healthcare and social support. This book and its comprehensive focus on friendship will be of interest to a range of readers, including academics, students, health promoters, educators, policymakers, and advocacy groups for either young people, LGBTQ+ communities, or digital citizenship. Academics most interested in this book will be working in digital media studies, health sociology, critical public health, health communication, sexualities, cultural studies, sex education, and gender studies.