Digital Performance in Everyday Life combines theories of performance, communication, and media to explore the many ways we perform in our everyday lives through digital media and in virtual spaces. Digital communication technologies and the social norms and discourses that developed alongside these technologies have altered the ways we perform as and for ourselves and each other in virtual spaces. Through a diverse range of topics and examples—including discussions of self-identity, surveillance, mourning, internet memes, storytelling, ritual, political action, and activism—this book addresses how the physical and virtual have become inseparable in everyday life, and how the digital is always rooted in embodied action. Focusing on performance and human agency, the authors offer fresh perspectives on communication and digital culture. The unique, interdisciplinary approach of this book will be useful to scholars, artists, and activists in communication, digital media, performance studies, theatre, sociology, political science, information technology, and cybersecurity—along with anyone interested in how communication shapes and is shaped by digital technologies.

A notable contribution to our understanding of ourselves. This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and cotnrol the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience. The discussions of these social techniques offered here are based upon detailed research and observation of social customs in many regions.

This is a compelling study of the often controversial role and meaning of the new media and digital cultures in contemporary society. Three decades of societal and cultural alignment of new media yielded to a host of innovations, trials, and problems, accompanied by versatile popular and academic discourse. "New Media Studies" crystallized internationally into an established academic discipline, which begs the question: where do we stand now; which new issues have emerged now that new media are taken for granted, and which riddles remain unsolved; and, is contemporary digital culture indeed all about 'you', or do we still not really understand the digital machinery and how it constitutes us as 'you'. From desktop metaphors to Web 2.0 ecosystems, from touch screens to bloggging to e-learning, from role-playing games to Cybergoth music to wireless dreams, this timely volume offers a showcase of the most up-to-date research in the field from what may be called a 'digital-materialist' perspective.

If you feel like your gadgets are stealing a lot of your time, focus, and energy, then this book may have the solution for you.

Digital Photography and Everyday Life: Empirical studies on material visual practices explores the role that digital photography plays within everyday life. With contributors from ten different countries and backgrounds in a range of academic disciplines - including anthropology, media studies and visual culture - this collection takes a uniquely broad perspective on photography by situating the image-making process in wider discussions on the materiality and visuality of photographic practices and explores these through empirical case studies. By focusing on material visual practices, the book presents a comprehensive overview of some of the main challenges digital photography is bringing to everyday life. It explores how the digitization of photography has a wide-reaching impact on the use of the medium, as well as on the kinds of images that can be produced and the ways in which camera technology is developed. The exploration goes beyond mere images to think about cameras, mediations and technologies as key elements in the development of visual digital cultures. Digital Photography and Everyday Life will be of great interest to students and scholars of Photography, Contemporary Art, Visual Culture and Media Studies, as well as those studying Communication, Cultural Anthropology, and Science and Technology Studies.

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 researcher, continually interrogating one’s position as a researcher and reflecting on the process of knowledge creation. Cumulatively, they highlight the value of sociological theory for understanding our digital world.

This volume critically analyzes the multiple lives of the "gamer" in India. It explores the "everyday" of the gaming life from the player’s perspective, not just to understand how the games are consumed but also to analyze how the gamer influences the products’ many (virtual) lives. Using an intensive ethnographic approach and in-depth interviews, this volume situates the practice of gaming under a broader umbrella of digital leisure activities and foregrounds the proliferation of gaming as a new media form and cultural artifact; critically questions the term gamer and the many debates surrounding the gamer tag to expand on how the gaming identity is constructed and expressed; details participants’ gaming habits, practices and contexts from a cultural perspective and analyzes the participants’ responses to emerging industry trends, reflections on playing practices and their relationships to friends, communities and networks in gaming spaces; and examines the offline and online spaces of gaming as sites of contestation between developers of games and the players. A holistic study covering one of the largest video game bases in the world, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of cultural studies, media and communication studies and science and technology studies, as well as be of great appeal to the general reader.

Across the life course, new forms of community, ways of keeping in contact, and practices for engaging in work, healthcare, retail, learning and leisure are evolving rapidly. This book examines how developments in smart phones, the Internet, cloud computing, and online social networking are redefining experiences and expectations around growing older in the twenty-first century. Drawing on contributions from leading commentators and researchers across the world, this book explores key themes such as caregiving, the use of social media, robotics, chronic disease and dementia management, gaming, migration, and data inheritance, to name a few.

In this ground-breaking book, Cambridge-trained sociologist Anthony Elliott argues that much of what passes for conventional wisdom about artificial intelligence is either ill-considered or plain wrong. The reason? The AI revolution is not so much about cyborgs and super-robots in the future, but rather massive changes in the here-and-now of everyday life. In The Culture of AI, Elliott explores how intelligent machines, advanced robotics, accelerating automation, big data and the Internet of Everything impact upon day-to-day life and contemporary societies. With remarkable clarity and insight, Elliott’s examination of the reordering of everyday life highlights the centrality of AI to everything we do – from receiving Amazon recommendations to requesting Uber, and from getting information from virtual personal assistants to talking with chatbots. The rise of intelligent machines transforms the global economy and threatens jobs, but equally there are other major challenges to contemporary societies – although these challenges are unfolding in complex and uneven ways across the globe. The Culture of AI explores technological innovations from industrial robots to softbots, and from self-driving cars to military drones – and along the way provides detailed treatments of: The history of AI and the advent of the digital universe; automated technology, jobs and employment; the self and private life in times of accelerating machine intelligence; AI and new forms of social interaction; automated vehicles and new warfare; and, the future of AI. Written by one of the world’s foremost social theorists, The Culture of AI is a major contribution to the field and a provocative reflection on one of the most urgent issues of our time. It will be essential reading to those working in a wide variety of disciplines including sociology, science and technology studies, politics, and cultural studies.

Consisting of critical analyses, theoretical provocations and practical reflections by leading scholars/practitioners from the fields of performance studies, live art and creative technology, these essays examine the rise of intimate performance works and question the socio-historical contexts provoking those aesthetic and affective developments.