We are often told that social media well-being is simply the result of individual users making healthy digital choices. All it takes is a little self-discipline. In this book, Niall Docherty looks closely at this belief and exposes the complex relations of power expressed through its articulation and enactment. Docherty creatively and empirically shows how the discourses, designs, and habits of online well-being push user conduct in certain directions, at the expense of others. This is a c...

Paradoxes of Media and Information Literacy contributes to ongoing conversations about control of knowledge and different ways of knowing. It does so by analysing why media and information literacy (MIL) is proposed as a solution for addressing the current information crisis.Questioning why MIL is commonly believed to wield such power, the book throws into sharp relief several paradoxes that are built into common understandings of such literacies. Haider and Sundin take th...

This book provides practical guidance on processes of researching a range of relevant literature on a subject, planning and writing a literature review.

Digital technologies, digital media, and mobile technologies now shape the experience of everyday life in the Western world, yet the way our quotidian lives are enmeshed with these technologies is far from clearly understood.Through studies of the digital everyday, sociologists are beginning to reinvigorate the sociological imagination in light of digitization. Chapters in this Byte cover topics such as designing a research framework and how to work ethically as a digital researche...

In Doing Good Qualitative Research, Jennifer Cyr and Sara Wallace Goodman bring together over forty experts to provide one of the first comprehensive introductions to using qualitative methods across the social sciences. From concept formation and case selection to fieldwork, analysis, write-up, and publication, this volume provides accessible and practical advice to completing a qualitative research project. In addition to the basics of practicing qualitative research, chapters a...

This book offers students a task-based introduction to Computer-Mediated Communication and the impact of the internet on social interaction. Divided into four parts which require students to learn, (theory), critique, (current issues), explore, (methods), and reflect, (practice), the book aims to:Provide a foundation to the social and communicative nature of information and communication technologiesEnable students to engage with the key theoretical issues associate...

In the early days of the internet, we assumed that digital technologies would allow us to escape embodiment and its accompanying entanglements. Yet now our embodied selves are often targeted for abuse and harassment online. As we move into the Internet of Things, the digital is increasingly on and in our bodies. The pieces in this Byte raise important questions about what it means to bring our embodied selves into contact with digital media technologies.Read alongside one another, ...

How reconsidering digital media and participatory cultures from the standpoint of disability allows for a full understanding of accessibility.While digital media can offer many opportunities for civic and cultural participation, this technology is not equally easy for everyone to use. Hardware, software, and cultural expectations combine to make some technologies an easier fit for some bodies than for others. A YouTube video without closed captions or a social netw...

Ken Hyland provides an authoritative discussion of key aspects of writing for academic publication. What are the issues surrounding particular academic genres? What are the processes experienced by scholars writing in these genres on the way to publication? The book explores some of the biggest issues and challenges in academic publication, including: the impact of English as a global academic language, the growth of the assessment culture surrounding publication, the practices of knowledg...

Featuring a three-prong approach on culture, communication, and creative problem solving, The Intercultural Communication Playbook, with its unique, user-friendly layout and presentation, highlights how active, imaginative, and productive problem-solving methods can transform the way students understand intercultural communication. This framework from authors Teri Kwal Gamble, Michael W. Gamble, and Xiaowen Guan guides learners to understand their intercultural id...

A form of critical ethnography introduced to the social sciences in the late 1990s, institutional ethnography uncovers how things happen within institutional sites, providing a new and flexible tool for the study of how “work” is co-constituted within sites of writing and writing instruction. The study of work and work processes reveals how institutional discourse, social relations, and norms of professional practice coordinate what people do across time and sites of writing. Adop...

How we can enact meaningful change in computing to meet the urgent need for sustainability and justice.The deep entanglement of information technology with our societies has raised hope for a transition to more sustainable and just communities—those that phase out fossil fuels, distribute public goods fairly, allow free access to information, and waste less. In principle, computing should be able to help. But in practice, we live in a world in which opaque algorith...