What does it mean to be media literate in today's world? How are we transformed by the many media infrastructures around us? We are immersed in a world mediated by information and communication technologies (ICTs). From hardware like smartphones, smartwatches, and home assistants to software like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, our lives have become a complex, interconnected network of relations. Scholarship on media literacy has tended to focus on developing the skills to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media messages without considering or weighing the impact of the technol.

Scholars from communication and media studies join those from science and technology studies to examine media technologies as complex, sociomaterial phenomena. In recent years, scholarship around media technologies has finally shed the assumption that these technologies are separate from and powerfully determining of social life, looking at them instead as produced by and embedded in distinct social, cultural, and political practices. Communication and media scholars have increasingly taken theoretical perspectives originating in science and technology studies (STS), while some STS scholars interested in information technologies have linked their research to media studies inquiries into the symbolic dimensions of these tools. In this volume, scholars from both fields come together to advance this view of media technologies as complex sociomaterial phenomena. The contributors first address the relationship between materiality and mediation, considering such topics as the lived realities of network infrastructure. The contributors then highlight media technologies as always in motion, held together through the minute, unobserved work of many, including efforts to keep these technologies alive. Contributors Pablo J. Boczkowski, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Finn Brunton, Gabriella Coleman, Gregory J. Downey, Kirsten A. Foot, Tarleton Gillespie, Steven J. Jackson, Christopher M. Kelty, Leah A. Lievrouw, Sonia Livingstone, Ignacio Siles, Jonathan Sterne, Lucy Suchman, Fred Turner

Media and Information Literacy: An Integrated Approach for the 21st Century provides a novel rationale for the integration of media and information literacy and gives direction to contemporary media and information literacy education. The book takes a synthetic approach to these two areas, presenting critical histories of both. The book explores the influence of political forces and educational practice on media literacy and the contemporary media environment, focusing on computing and mobile technology as a platform for existing and non-computational media. The final section considers a new rationale for the adjustment of content and activities into a combined project, building on a range of skills from contemporary media, reconsidering the mission of media literacy, and advocating that media and information literacy be expanded out of the classroom and positioned as a 'public pedagogy'. - Proposes a new route direction for media and information literacy - Combines critical histories of media literacy and information literacy - Integrates an account of technological development as a key driver to educational activities while retaining core progressive intents - International in scope with recognition of international agencies, such as UNESCO and the UN

Challenging the popular myth of a present-day 'information revolution', Media Technology and Society is essential reading for anyone interested in the social impact of technological change. Winston argues that the development of new media forms, from the telegraph and the telephone to computers, satellite and virtual reality, is the product of a constant play-off between social necessity and suppression: the unwritten law by which new technologies are introduced into society only insofar as their disruptive potential is limited.

New Media Technology provides a clear and conceptual mapping of this rapidly changing field. Readers will enjoy its comprehensive scope, the level of appropriate detail, and real world examples. Its focus on enduring yet timely issues gives the book a usefulness not found elsewhere. Previously published under the title, New Media and the Information Superhighway, the book examines current trends and advances in media technology, for instance, the impact of the World Wide Web. It addition, this text also explores laboratory experimental technologies, such as omni-directional imaging, and theoretical implications of new media. Special attention is also paid towards marketing issues, a topic currently overlooked in other texts of this nature. New material includes updated information on global positioning, satellite mapping as well as the latest legal ramifications affecting the industry, specifically the Telecommunications Act of 1996. New Media specialists, journalists, and advertising and public relations employees. Part of the Allyn & Bacon Series in Mass Communication.

Top media studies scholars discuss the evolution of media

This Handbook explores the largely unchartered territory of media, technology, and organization studies, and interrogates their foundational relations, their forms, and their consequences. The chapters consider how specific mediating technological objects such as the Clock or the Smartphone help us to create organizational form.

Much of the discussion about new technologies and social equality has focused on the oversimplified notion of a "digital divide." Technology and Social Inclusion moves beyond the limited view of haves and have-nots to analyze the different forms of access to information and communication technologies. Drawing on theory from political science, economics, sociology, psychology, communications, education, and linguistics, the book examines the ways in which differing access to technology contributes to social and economic stratification or inclusion. The book takes a global perspective, presenting case studies from developed and developing countries, including Brazil, China, Egypt, India, and the United States. A central premise is that, in today's society, the ability to access, adapt, and create knowledge using information and communication technologies is critical to social inclusion. This focus on social inclusion shifts the discussion of the "digital divide" from gaps to be overcome by providing equipment to social development challenges to be addressed through the effective integration of technology into communities, institutions, and societies. What is most important is not so much the physical availability of computers and the Internet but rather people's ability to make use of those technologies to engage in meaningful social practices.

The internet has fundamentally transformed society in the past 25 years, yet existing theories of mass or interpersonal communication do not work well in understanding a digital world. Nor has this understanding been helped by disciplinary specialization and a continual focus on the latest innovations. Ralph Schroeder takes a longer-term view, synthesizing perspectives and findings from various social science disciplines in four countries: the United States, Sweden, India and China. His comparison highlights, among other observations, that smartphones are in many respects more important than PC-based internet uses. Social Theory after the Internet focuses on everyday uses and effects of the internet, including information seeking and big data, and explains how the internet has gone beyond traditional media in, for example, enabling Donald Trump and Narendra Modi to come to power. Schroeder puts forward a sophisticated theory of the role of the internet, and how both technological and social forces shape its significance. He provides a sweeping and penetrating study, theoretically ambitious and at the same time always empirically grounded.The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media and society, the internet and politics, and the social implications of big data.

Provides comprehensive articles on significant issues, methods, and theories currently combining the studies of technology and literacy.