Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.How do we hold onto friends and communities in a world that feels increasingly fragmented?This timely collection explores how social connection unfolds across personal, physical, community and digital spaces. From loneliness to belonging, the collection explores the broader social forces that shape our interactions. Packed with fresh insights and accessible research, the contributors bridge theory and practice.

Automating Vision explores the rise of seeing machines through four case studies: facial recognition, drone vision, mobile and locative media and driverless cars. Proposing a conceptual lens of camera consciousness, which is drawn from the early visual anthropology of Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, Automating Vision accounts for the growing power and value of camera technologies and digital image processing.Behind the smart camera devices examined throughout t...

The AI revolution can seem powerful and unstoppable, extracting data from every aspect of our lives and subjecting us to unprecedented surveillance and control. But at ground level, even the most advanced ‘smart’ technologies are not as all-powerful as either the tech companies or their critics would have us believe.From gig worker activism to wellness tracking with sex toys and TikTokers' manipulation of the algorithm, this book shows how ordinary people are negotiating the datafi...

With pervasive use of mobile devices and social media, there is a constant tension between the promise of new forms of social engagement and the threat of misuse and misappropriation, or the risk of harm and harassment.Negotiating Digital Citizenship explores the diversity of experiences that define digital citizenship. These range from democratic movements that advocate social change via social media platforms to the realities of online abuse, racial or sexual intolerance, harassm...

This open access book provides practical guidance for non-profits and community sector organisations about how to get started with data analytics projects using their own organisations’ datasets and open public data. The book shares best practices on collaborative social data projects and methodology. For researchers, the work offers a playbook for partnering with community organisations in data projects for public good and gives worked examples of projects of various sizes and complexity....