New media, development and globalization are the key terms through which the future is being imagined and performed in governance, development initiatives and public and political discourse. Yet these authoritative terms have arisen within particular cultural and ideological contexts. In using them, we risk promoting over-generalized and seemingly unchallengeable frameworks for action and knowledge production which can blind us to the complex global patterns and promise of social reality. This compelling book forces us to look at these terms afresh. Drawing on more than ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in Latin America, West Africa and South Asia, Don Slater seeks to challenge these terms as voicing specific northern narratives rather than universal truths, and to see them from the perspective of southern people and communities who are equally concerned to understand new machines for communication, new models of social change and new maps of social connection. The central question the book poses is: how we can democratize the ways we think and practise new media, development and globalization, opening these terms to dialogue and challenge within North-South relations? Rooted in sociological debates, New Media, Development and Globalization will also be a provocative contribution to media and cultural studies, studies of digital culture, development studies, geography and anthropology.

The human condition has continued to improve phenomenally in today’s world with the development of technology and medicine. This includes developing countries in areas such as Africa, Asia, and South America. Despite the emergence of economy, education, and infrastructure in these regions, media outlets continue to forego their advancements in favor of the negativities that plague these states such as poverty, hunger, and corruption. There is a need to research international media portrayals of the less developed world to ascertain the myth that these areas are still struggling. Deconstructing Images of the Global South Through Media Representations and Communication provides emerging research exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of how global media analyzes developing countries. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as cultural affirmation, online platforms, and audience perception, this book is ideally designed for communications specialists, journalists, broadcasters, newscasters, conflict photographers, media practitioners, policymakers, international relation experts, column writers/editors, students, politicians, government officials, researchers, and academicians seeking current research on the world’s perception of developing countries through media coverage.

How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and explores the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we becoming more individual or more social? Why is public social media so conservative? Why does equality online fail to shift inequality offline? How did memes become the moral police of the internet? Supported by an introduction to the project’s academic framework and theoretical terms that help to account for the findings, the book argues that the only way to appreciate and understand something as intimate and ubiquitous as social media is to be immersed in the lives of the people who post. Only then can we discover how people all around the world have already transformed social media in such unexpected ways and assess the consequences

While a decade ago much of the discussion of new media in Asia was couched in Occidental notions of Asia as a "default setting" for technology in the future, today we are seeing a much more complex picture of contesting new media practices and production. As "new media" becomes increasingly an everyday reality for young and old across Asia through smartphones and associated devices, boundaries between art, new media, and the everyday are transformed. This Handbook addresses the historical, social, cultural, political, philosophical, artistic and economic dimensions of the region’s new media. Through an interdisciplinary revision of both "new media" and "Asia" the contributors provide new insights into the complex and contesting terrains of both notions. The Routledge Handbook of New Media in Asia will be the definitive publication for readers interested in comprehending all the various aspects of new media in Asia. It provides an authoritative, up-to-date, intellectually broad, conceptually cutting-edge guide to the important aspects of new media in the region — as the first point of consultation for researchers, advanced level undergraduate and postgraduate students in fields of new media and Asian studies.

Social media users fracture into tribes, but social media ecosystems are globally interconnected technically, socially, culturally, and economically. At the crossroads, Huatong Sun, author of Cross-Cultural Technology Design, presents theory, method, and case studies to uncover the global interconnectedness of social media design and reorient universal design standards. Centering on the dynamics between structure and agency, Sun draws on practice theories and transnational fieldwork and articulates a critical design approach. The "CLUE2 (CLUE squared)" framework extends from situated activity to social practice, and connects macro institutions with micro interactions to redress asymmetrical relations in everyday life. Why were Japanese users not crazed about Facebook? Would Twitter have had been more successful than its copycat Weibo in China if not banned? How did mobilities and value propositions play out in the competition of WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE, and KakaoTalk for global growth? Illustrating the cultural entanglement with a relational view of design, Sun provides three provocative accounts of cross-cultural social media design and use. Concepts such as affordance, genre, and uptake are demonstrated as design tools to bind the material with the discursive and leap from the critical to the generative for culturally sustaining design. Sun calls to reshape the crossroads into a design square where differences are nourished as design resources, where diverse discourses interact for innovation, and where alternative design epistemes thrive from the local. This timely book will appeal to researchers, students, and practitioners who design across disciplines, paradigms, and boundaries to bridge differences in this increasingly globalized world.

Media matters. From encouraging charitable donations and delivering public health messages to promoting democratic participation and state accountability, the media can play a crucial role in development. Yet the influence of the media is not always welcome. It can also be used as a mechanism of surveillance and control or to disseminate hate speech and propaganda. How then should we respond to the growing importance of the media - including journalism, radio, television, community media and social media - for poverty and inequality? The first step is to acquire an informed and critical understanding of the multiple roles that the media can have in development. To help achieve this, this book provides concise and original introductions to the study and practice of communication for development (C4D), media development and media representations of development. In doing so it highlights the increasing importance of the media, whilst at the same time emphasising the varieties, complexities and contingencies of its role in social change. The broad and interdisciplinary focus of this book will make it attractive to anyone with an interest in media, communication, development, politics and social change.