This volume addresses the concept of “(in)nocent lies” in the media – beyond the concept of misleading information online, this extends to a deliberate effort to spread misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories – and proposes a critical approach to tackle the issue in related interdisciplinary fields. The book takes a multidisciplinary and international approach, addressing the digital divide and global inequality, as well as algorithmic bias, how misinformation harms vulnerable groups, social lynching and the effect of misinformation on certain social, political and cultural agendas, among other topics. Arranged thematically, the chapters paint a nuanced and original picture of this issue. This book will be of interest to students and academics in the areas of digital media, media and politics, journalism, development studies, gender and race.

Digital Media as Ambient Therapy explores the ways “mental illness” can emerge from our relationships (with ourselves, others, and the world), to address the concern around what kind of relationality is conducive for “mental health” and what role digital technologies can play in fostering such relationality. Exploring the rise of ambient—that is to say, ubiquitous, surrounding, and environmental—technologies and their impact on our understanding of “mental health,” sanity, and therapy, this book critically examines the work of influential contemporary social theorists such as Hartmut Rosa and investigates case studies that reveal new modes of digitally mediated intimacy and attention, such as ASMR and QAnon. It also poses the question of what “mental health” and “mental illness” mean for subjects increasingly faced with a maddening sense of interconnectedness. This book offers new perspectives for academics and postgraduates interested in critical discussions of alienation, digital technology, and contemporary social theory.

This book identifies the converging socio- cultural, economic, and technological conditions that have shaped, informed, and realised the identity of the contemporary virtual influencer, situating them at the intersection of social media, consumer culture, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and digital technologies. Through a critical analysis of virtual influencers and related media practices and discourses in an international context, each chapter investigates different themes relating to digitality and identity: virtual place and nationhood; virtual emotions and intimacy; im/ materialities of virtual everyday life; the biopolitics of virtual human-production; the necropolitics of pandemic virtuality; transmedial and mimetic virtualities; and the political economy of virtual influencers. The book argues that the virtual influencer represents the various ways in which contemporary identities have increasingly become naturalised with questions of virtuality, mediated by digital technologies across multiple realities. From practices relating to AI- driven, invasive data profiling needed for virtual influencer production to problematic online practices such as buying digital skin colour, the author examines how the virtual influencer’s aesthetic, social, and economic value obfuscates some of the darker aspects of their role as an extractivist technology of virtuality: one which regulates, oppresses, and/ or classifies bodies and datafied bodies that serve the visual, (bio)political, and digital economies of virtual capitalism. In the process, the book simultaneously offers a critique of the virtual influencer as a representational figure existing across multiple digital platforms, spaces, and times, and of how they may challenge, complicate, and reinforce normative ideologies surrounding gender, race, class, sexuality, age, and ableism. As such, the book sheds light on some of the more troubling realities of the virtual influencer’s existence, inasmuch as it celebrates their transformational potential, exploring the implications of both within an increasingly AI- driven, digital culture, society, and economy. Drawing from a wide range of disciplines, this book will appeal to scholars, researchers, and students working in the area(s) of: Popular Culture and Media; Internet, Digital and Social Media Studies; Data justice and Governance; Japanese Media Studies; Celebrity Studies; Fan Studies; Marketing and Consumer Studies; Sociology; Human– Computer Studies; and AI and Technology Studies.

This book offers an in- depth study of the quasi- political, self-deprecating, and parodic buzzwords and memes prevalent in Chinese online discourse. Combining discourse analysis with in- depth audience research among the young internet users who deploy these buzzwords in on- and offline contexts, the book explores the historical and social implications of online wordplay for sustaining or challenging the contemporary social order in China. Yanning Huang adopts a combination of media and communications, social anthropology, and socio- linguistic perspectives to shed light on various forms of agency enacted by different social groups in their embracing, negotiation of, or disengagement from online buzzwords, before addressing how the discourses of online wordplay have been co-opted by corporations and party-media. Offering a rigorous and panoramic analysis of the politics and logics of online wordplay in contemporary China, and providing a critical and nuanced analytical framework for studying digital culture and participation in China and elsewhere, this book will be an important resource for scholars and students of media and communication studies, Internet and digital media studies, discourse analysis, Asian studies, and social anthropology.

The modern world seems trapped between fantasies of infinite pleasure and the prospects of total global catastrophe. Global Media Apocalypse explores these contrary imaginings through an evolving cultural ecology of violence. Articulated through the global media, these apocalyptic fantasies express a profoundly human condition of crisis.

Bringing together the perspectives of more than 40 internationally acclaimed authors, The Handbook of Global Media Research explores competing methodologies in the dynamic field of transnational media and communications, providing valuable insight into research practice in a globalized media landscape. Provides a framework for the critical debate of comparative media research Posits transnational media research as reflective of advanced globalization processes, and explores its roles and responsibilities Articulates the key themes and competing methodological approaches in a dynamic and developing field Showcases the perspectives and ideas of 30 leading internationally acclaimed scholars Offers a platform for the discussion of crucial issues from a variety of theoretical, methodical and practical viewpoints

Ingrid Volkmer argues that the new global exchange can be regarded as a trans-societal sphere of mediation, which involves a global exchange of universal but also - increasingly - particular news and political information issues. This new diverse global information flow provides the communication platform, on which a global civil society emerges.