Digital Culture Banner

       ADDITIONAL READING ON DIGITIZING CULTURES

Below is a short, partially annotated list of important books and articles that raise key questions about various aspects of culture in relation to new media and cyberspaces, but do not easily fit into to various categories of this site.

The list includes some broadly theoretical pieces, as well as more specific treatments of issues not covered in the other portions of this site.

Featured Book

Anti-Social Media book cover

Siva Vaidhyanathan,  Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. Oxford: Oxford U Press, 2018. The best, most complete critique of the social impact of Facebook, and the wider issue of the cultural and political impact of social media. Vaidhyanathan argues that the key places to start legislation to make Facebook safer for democracy are privacy laws, data protection, and antitrust/competition law. And in addition to legal changes, users will need to be far more vigilant in learning how to spot fake news, digital propaganda and other sources of distortion and hate speech.

Overview Books and Articles

Since this website also functions as a companion to the site curator's book, Digitized Lives: Culture, Power, and Social Change in the Internet Era, (2019), I highly recommend that as one starting place. But in addition to that book and the bibliographies provided on each topic of this site, the books below offer some key materials for learning more about the social impacts of the increasing digitization of every aspect of our lives.

  • Consalvo, Mia and Robert Burnett, eds. The Handbook of Internet Studies. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Especially good on research methods. A very pricey volume best accessed via library.
  • Creeber, Glen, and Royston Martin. Digital Culture: Understanding New Media. Open University Press, 2008.
  • Gere, Charlie. Digital Culture. Chicago: Reaktion, 2008.
  • Kellner, Douglas. Cyberculture and Society. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Handles the ideological dimensions of cybercultures well.
  • Lister, Martin, and Jon Dovey. New Media: A Critical Introduction. Routledge, 2010 (2nd edition). A comprehensive survey aimed at communications students.
  • Miller, V. "Understanding Digital Culture- Introduction." Draft intro to a book cited just below.
  • ---. Understanding Digital Culture. Sage, 2011. Introduces both major theoretical approaches and key empirical case studies.
  • Nayar, Pramod K. Introduction to Cyberculture Studies. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Deals especially well with issues of materiality, race, class and gender.
  • Nayar, Pramod K. ed. The New Media and Cybercultures Anthology. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Wide ranging collection of strong essays.
  • Silver, David. "Introducing Cyberculture: Looking Backwards, Looking Forward", 1990-2000. Analyzes three stages in the early evolution of cyberculture studies in its first decade.
  • ---. "Introduction: Where is Internet Studies?" This intro to the anthology cited just below offers a useful survey of the field up to 2008. Silver, David. ed. Critical Cyberculture Studies. New York University Press, 2006. Excellent, varied collection of essays exemplifying the range of methods used to analyze cybercultures.

Some Key Classic & Contemporary Works of Digital Culture Theory

  • Aronowitz, Stanley. Technoscience and Cyberculture. Routledge, 1996.
  • Bakardjieva, Maria. Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life. SAGE, 2005.
  • Banks, Michael A. On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders. New York: Apress, 2008.
  • Bell, David. Cyberculture: The Key Concepts. Routledge, 2004.
  • ---. Cyberculture Theorists : Manuel Castells and Donna Haraway. Routledge, 2007.
  • ---. The Cybercultures Reader. 1st ed. Routledge, 2000.
  • Breakthrough collection of critical studies.
  • ---. An Introduction to Cybercultures. Routledge, 2001.
  • Accessible guide to major issues in the study of the diversity of digital cultures.
  • Boler, Megan, et al. eds, Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times. MIT, 2010.
  • Excellent collection of essays on the theory and practice of radically democratic digital media.
  • Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.
  • ---. Programmed Visions: Software and Memory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011.
  • Coleman, Stephen, and Jay G. Blumler. The Internet and Democratic Citizenship: Theory, Practice and Policy. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
  • Creeber, Glen, and Royston Martin. Digital Culture: Understanding New Media. Open University Press, 2008.
  • Darley, Andrew. Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres. Routledge, 2000.
  • Donath, Judith. "Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community." On identity play online.
  • Dutton, William. Society on the Line: Information Politics in the Digital Age. Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • Escobar, Arturo. "Welcome to Cyberia: Notes on the anthropology of cyberculture" in Z. Sardar and J.R. Ravetz, eds. Cyberfutures: Culture and Politics on the Information Superhighway. New York University Press, 1996: 111-137. Brilliant analysis of the complex task of understanding online cultures ethnographically.
  • Fuchs, Christian. Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age. Routledge, 2008. Balanced, theoretically sophisticated analysis of where the Internet fits into larger social formations.
  • Gauntlet, David, ed. Web Studies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age. Arnold Publishers, 2004. Set of essays surveying the range of issues in and approaches to cyberculture studies. See especially the piece by David Silver.
  • Gere, Charlie. Digital Culture. Chicago: Reaktion, 2008.
  • Gibbs, Jennifer. “Self-Presentation in Online Personals.” Communication Research 33.2 (2006): 152-177.
  • Gillespie, Joanie and Jane Gackenbach. Cyber.Rules: What You Really Need to Know About the Internet. Norton & Norton, 2007. Insightful survey of scholarship on the impact of new media on psycho-social development of chldren.
  • Gitelman, Lisa. Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. Rich exploration of historical rootedness versus newness in the adoption and use of communication media.
  • Gray, Chris Hables. Cyborg Citizen. Routledge, 2002. Best book yet on what a future, posthuman cyborgian politics might look like.
  • ---. Peace, War and Computers. Routledge, 2004. Excellent study of the matrix of connections between postmodern technology, the so-called 'war on terror' and democratic struggle for peace with justice.
  • Hand, Martin. Making Digital Cultures: Access, Interactivity, and Authenticity. Ashgate, 2008.
  • Haney, William S. Cyberculture, Cyborgs and Science Fiction: Consciousness and the Posthuman. Rodopi, 2006.
  • Harris, Jan L. Digital Matters: Theory and Culture of the Matrix. Routledge, 2005.
  • Hayles, N. Katheriine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetic Literature and Informatics. U of Chicago Press, 1999.
  • ---. How We Think: The Transforming Power of Digital Technologies. U of Chicago Press, 2012.
  • ---. My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts. U of Chicago Press, 2005.
  • Herman, Andrew, and Thomas Swiss, eds. The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory. New York: Routledge, 2000. Excellent advanced text demonstrating how various current cultural theories can be used to study cybercultures.
  • Howard, Philip E. N., and Steve Jones. Society Online: The Internet in Context. SAGE, 2004.
  • Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. MIT Press, 2009.
  • ---. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Revised. New York University Press, 2008.
  • Kannabiran, Gopinath, and Marianne Graves Peterson. "Politics at the Interface: A Foucauldian Power Analysis." Uses two very different case studies, gender designation in Facebook and digital control of a home heating system, to illustrate the power politics at play in design and use of technologies.
  • Karaganis, Joe. Structures of Participation in Digital Culture. Social Science Research Council, 2008.
  • Kellner, Douglas. Cyberculture and Society. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
  • Kleiman, Daniel Lee. Science and Technology in Society: From Biotechnology to the Internet. Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.
  • Kline, Stephen. Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003.
  • Matrix, Sidney Eve. Cyberpop: Digital Lifestyles and Commodity Culture. Routledge, 2006.
  • McPherson, Tara. Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected. MIT Press, 2007.
  • Mossberger, Karen, Caroline J. Tolbert, and Ramona S. McNeal. Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation. MIT Press, 2007.
  • Nayar, Pramod K. ed. The New Media and Cybercultures Anthology. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.  Wide ranging collection of strong essays.
  • Newlitz, Annallee. "Surplus Identity On-Line." Bad Subjects. On how and why online identities differ from offline ones.
  • Palfrey, John, and Urs Gasser. Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. Basic Books, 2008.
  • Parker, Ian. "Absolute Powerpoint: Can a Software Package Edit our Thoughts" Argues that PowerPoint programs shape our sense of issues, problems and fields in ways that privilege bullet-points over the elements of discourse, storytelling and other less linear forms of thought.
  • Poster, Mark. Information Please: Culture and Politics in the Age of Digital Machines. Duke U Press, 2006.
  • ---. What's the Matter with the Internet? U of Minnesota Press, 2001.
  • Rheingold, Howard. Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. MIT Press, 2000 [1994].  Classic early book on online communities.
  • Schafer, Mirko Tobias. Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production PDF version. Also available in book form from U of Chicago Press, 2011. Excellent critique of the over-hyped notion that digital technology levels the cultural playing field.
  • Schell, Bernadette H. The Internet and Society: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO, 2006.
  • Silver, David. ed. Critical Cyberculture Studies. New York University Press, 2006. Excellent, varied collection of essays exemplifying the range of methods used to analyze cybercultures.
  • Slevin, James. The Internet and Society. Polity, 2000.
  • Social Science Research Council (U.S.). Structures of Participation in Digital Culture. Social Science Research Council, 2007.
  • Trend, David, ed. Reading Digital Culture. Wiley-Blackwell, 2001.
  • Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen. Simon and Schuster, 1995. Landmark early study of the formation of online identities.
  • Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. U of Chicago Press, 2006. Fascinating book on the roots of early digital culture in the 60s hippie counterculture.
  • Vaidhyanathan, Siva. The Anarachist in the Library. Basic Books, 2004. Study of the struggle between opening up and diversifying, versus attempts by commerce and states to control and confine knowledge, in the digital age.
  • Watkins, C Craig. The Young and the Digital. Beacon, 2009. Well-researched study of the impact of young people "migrating to social networks, games and anytime anywhere media."
  • Woolgar, Steve. Virtual Society? Get Real!: Technology, Cyberbole, Reality. Oxford U Press, 2003. Challenges utopian hype (“cyberbole”) about the web solving all social ills.
  • Wu, Weihua. “Beyond Virtual Carnival and Masquerade.” Games and Culture 2.1 (2007): 59-89.

Selected Works On Particular Digital Devices, Apps, and Trends

  • Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2008. Argues that the notion of the Internet as a site of freedom and openness profoundly misunderstands its role as a site of control and neo-liberal ideology.
  • ---. Programmed Visions: Software and Memory. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2013 {2nd edition]. Brilliant argument about the ideology behind the notion of programmability and the presumed neutrality of software.
  • Dean, Jodi. Blog Theory. Polity, 2010. Rich theoretical examination of blogging cultures in relation to neoliberal, communicative capitalism.
  • Farman, Jason. Mobile Interface Theory: Embodied Space and Locative Media. NY: Routledge, 2011. Lucid analysis drawing upon poststructuralist and phenomenological approaches to unpack the psycho-social impact of mobile digital media (like smartphones, handheld gaming devices, and netbooks), particularly as they reshape the sense of space and place.
  • Fischer, Caude. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. Berkeley: U of California P, 1992. Model history of a communication technology that offers a cautionary tale vis-a-vis exaggerating the impact of new devices or media.
  • Hills, Ken, et al. Google and the Culture of Search. Taylor and Francis, 2012. Challenges the notion that Google does no evil, while exploring the wider terrain of how search engines function and how users use and are used by them.
  • Horst, Heather A., and Daniel Miller. The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication. Berg, 2006. Superb, long-range history of the cell phone as a series of devices whose impact has included many positive transformations in the lives of poor people as evidenced by their ethnographic study of Jamaican communities.
  • Mandiberg, Michael. The Social Media Reader. NYU Press, 2012. Wide ranging collection of essays on various dimensions of social media.
  • Murphy, Dhiraj. Twitter. Polity, 2013. In-depth study of twitter and the phenomenon of microblogging.
  • Selfe, Cynthia L, and Richard J. Selfe, Jr."The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones." Classic essay examining how various computer interfaces shape interaction in a classroom, and how the design and use of interfaces often entails class, race and cultural biases.
  • Vaidhyanathan, Siva. Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. Oxford: Oxford U Press, 2018. The best, most complete critique of the social impact of Facebook.
  • ---. The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry). U of California P, 2011. Shows clearly that Google's slogan, "Don't be evil," hasn't kept it from some subtly and not-so-subtly evil impacts in terms of surveillance, knowledge fragmentation, search bias, and monopoly practices. (And recently it even dropped the slogan. Not a good sign.)
  • Winner, Langdon. "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" Classic essay examining the ways in which technological devices and processes are both the product of and shapers of political and social relations.