By André Brock, Jr.

From BlackPlanet to #BlackGirlMagic, Distributed Blackness places Blackness at the very center of internet culture. André Brock Jr. claims issues of race and ethnicity as inextricable from and formative of contemporary digital culture in the United States. Distributed Blackness analyzes a host of platforms and practices (from Black Twitter to Instagram, YouTube, and app development) to trace how digital media have reconfigured the meanings and performances of African American identity. Brock moves beyond widely circulated deficit models of respectability, bringing together discourse analysis with a close reading of technological interfaces to develop nuanced arguments about how “Blackness” gets worked out in various technological domains.

As Brock demonstrates, there’s nothing niche or subcultural about expressions of Blackness on social media: internet use and practice now set the terms for what constitutes normative participation. Drawing on critical race theory, linguistics, rhetoric, information studies, and science and technology studies, Brock tabs between Black-dominated technologies, websites, and social media to build a set of Black beliefs about technology. In explaining Black relationships with and alongside technology, Brock centers the unique joy and sense of community in being Black online now.

New York: NYU Press, 2020 266p.

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Neil Postman

Neil Postman's groundbreaking book, Technopoly, delves deep into the pervasive influence of technology on modern society. With keen insight and intellectual rigor, Postman challenges readers to critically examine the role of technology in shaping culture. By exploring how technology has become the dominant force in our lives, he raises crucial questions about the impact of this shift on human values, communication, and the very essence of our humanity. A timely and thought-provoking read, Technopoly offers a compelling exploration of the complex relationship between technology and culture in the digital age.

NY. Vintage. 1993. 233p.

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By Herbert S. Dordick and Georgette Wang

The Information Society: A Retrospective View offers a comprehensive exploration of the evolution and impact of information and communication technologies on our world. From the early days of the internet to the current era of social media and artificial intelligence, this book delves into the complex interplay between technology, society, and culture. Readers will gain valuable insights into how the information age has shaped our lives, transformed industries, and redefined the way we connect and communicate. Engaging and thought-provoking, this retrospective provides a compelling overview of the key developments that have defined the information society as we know it today.

London. Sage. 1993. 174p.

By Eric Wilson

"Eric Wilson’s work poses crucial challenges to social theory, unsettling our understanding of the nature of the liberal democratic state. In The Spectacle of the False Flag, he urges the reader to examine the, often unconsidered, deep state practices that confound conventional notions of the state as monolithic or uniform. This compelling volume traces deep state conflicts and convergences through central cases in the development of American political economic power — JFK/Dallas, LBJ/Gulf of Tonkin, and Nixon/Watergate. Rigorously documented and unflinchingly analyzed, “The Spectacle of the False Flag” provides a stunning example of a new criminological practice—one that takes the state seriously, making the inner workings of the state rather than its effects the primary object of study. Drawing upon a wealth of historical records and developing the theoretical insights of Guy Debord’s writings on spectacular society, Wilson offers a glimpse into a necessary criminology to come."

Brooklyn, NY: punctum books, 2014. 348p.

By Vian Bakir and Andrew McStay

This open access book deconstructs the core features of online misinformation and disinformation. It finds that the optimisation of emotions for commercial and political gain is a primary cause of false information online. The chapters distil societal harms, evaluate solutions, and consider what must be done to strengthen societies as new biometric forms of emotion profiling emerge. Based on a rich, empirical, and interdisciplinary literature that examines multiple countries, the book will be of interest to scholars and students of Communications, Journalism, Politics, Sociology, Science and Technology Studies, and Information Science, as well as global and local policymakers and ordinary citizens interested in how to prevent the spread of false information worldwide, both now and in the future.

Cham: Springer, 2022. 280p.

Edited by Felice Blake Paula Ioanide and Alison  Reed

"Antiracism Inc. traces the ways people along the political spectrum appropriate, incorporate, and neutralize antiracist discourses to perpetuate injustice. It also examines the ways organizers continue to struggle for racial justice in the context of such appropriations. Antiracism Inc. reveals how antiracist claims can be used to propagate racism, and what we can do about it. While related to colorblind, multicultural, and diversity discourses, the appropriation of antiracist rhetoric as a strategy for advancing neoliberal and neoconservative agendas is a unique phenomenon that requires careful interrogation and analysis. Those who co-opt antiracist language and practice do not necessarily deny racial difference, biases, or inequalities. Instead, by performing themselves conservatively as non-racists or liberally as ‘authentic’ antiracists, they purport to be aligned with racial justice even while advancing the logics and practices of systemic racism. Antiracism Inc. therefore considers new ways of struggling toward racial justice in a world that constantly steals and misuses radical ideas and practices. The collection focuses on people and methods that do not seek inclusion in the hierarchical order of gendered racial capitalism. Rather, the collection focuses on aggrieved peoples who have always had to negotiate state violence and cultural erasure, but who work to build the worlds they envision. These collectivities seek to transform social structures and establish a new social warrant guided by what W.E.B. Du Bois called “abolition democracy,” a way of being and thinking that privileges people, mutual interdependence, and ecological harmony over individualist self-aggrandizement and profits. These aggrieved collectivities reshape social relations away from the violence and alienation inherent to gendered racial capitalism, and towards the well-being of the commons. Antiracism Inc. articulates methodologies that strive toward freedom dreams without imposing monolithic or authoritative definitions of resistance. Because power seeks to neutralize revolutionary action through incorporation as much as elimination, these freedom dreams, as well as the language used to articulate them, are constantly transformed through the critical and creative interventions stemming from the active engagement in liberation struggles."

Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books, 2019. 382p.

Edited By Sean E. Anderson and Gregory J. Howard

When ti first appeared in 1993, the Journalof CriminalJustice and Popular Culture was breaking ground in more ways than one. At that point,the idea of electronicpublication was still innovative in itself, but more adventurous still was the whole notion of a serious academic journal devotedto the interaction of criminal justice and popular culture. Historically, criminologists and criminal justice scholars had usually viewed themselves a s objective social scientists whose highest goal was to analyze the problems of crime and deviance in terms of rigorous quantitative or qualitative research, which often meant denouncing the vulgarand harmfulmyths presented by the m e d i aa n dpopular culture. From the 1970s, however, newer scholarship, influenced by media research and particularly the cultural studies movement, showed how impos- sible it was to frame problems without paying due attention to the role of popular culture, which performed s o crucial a role in shaping the social and political attitudes not merely of the "uninformed masses," but also of legisla- tors, experts and policymakers.

Harrow and Heston Publishers Guilderland. New York. 1998. 144p.

By Brooke Kroeger

In her provocative book, Brooke Kroeger argues for a reconsideration of the place of oft-maligned journalistic practices. While it may seem paradoxical, much of the valuable journalism in the past century and a half has emerged from undercover investigations that employed subterfuge or deception to expose wrong. Kroeger asserts that undercover work is not a separate world, but rather it embodies a central discipline of good reporting—the ability to extract significant information or to create indelible, real-time descriptions of hard-to-penetrate institutions or social situations that deserve the public’s attention. Together with a companion website that gathers some of the best investigative work of the past century, Undercover Reporting serves as a rallying call for an endangered aspect of the journalistic endeavor.

Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 2012. 518p.

Edited by Martin Demant Frederiksen & Ida Harboe Knudsen

The devilish has long been integral to myths, legends, and folklore, firmly located in the relationships between good and evil, and selves and others. But how are ideas of evil constructed in current times and framed by contemporary social discourses? Modern Folk Devils builds on and works with Stanley Cohen’s theory on folk devils and moral panics to discuss the constructions of evil. The authors present an array of case-studies that illustrate how the notion of folk devils nowadays comes into play and animates ideas of otherness and evil throughout the world. Examining current fears and perceived threats, this volume investigates and analyzes how and why these devils are constructed. The chapters discuss how the devilish may take on many different forms: sometimes they exist only as a potential threat, other times they are a single individual or phenomenon or a visible group, such as refugees, technocrats, Roma, hipsters, LGBT groups, and rightwing politicians. Folk devils themselves are also given a voice to offer an essential complementary perspective on how panics become exaggerated, facts distorted, and problems acutely angled.;Bringing together researchers from anthropology, sociology, political studies, ethnology, and criminology, the contributions examine cases from across the world spanning from Europe to Asia and Oceania.

Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2021. 296p.

Edited by Daniel Trottier, Rashid Gabdulhakov, and Qian Husang.

"This ground-breaking collection of essays examines the scope and consequences of digital vigilantism – a phenomenon emerging on a global scale, which sees digital audiences using social platforms to shape social and political life. Longstanding forms of moral scrutiny and justice seeking are disseminated through our contemporary media landscape, and researchers are increasingly recognising the significance of societal impacts effected by digital media. The authors engage with a range of cross-disciplinary perspectives in order to explore the actions of a vigilant digital audience – denunciation, shaming, doxing – and to consider the role of the press and other public figures in supporting or contesting these activities.”

Open Book Publishers, 2020. 362p.