This book coins the term “Networked Public” to describe the active social actors in new media ecology. The author argues that, in today’s network society, Networked Public Communication is different than, yet has similarities with, mass communication and interpersonal communication. As such it is the emergent paradigm for research. The book reviews the historical, technological and social context for the rising of Networked Public, analyzes its constituents and characteristics, and discusses the categories and features of social media in China. By analyzing abundant cases from recent years, the book provides answers to the key questions at micro, meso and macro-levels, including how information flows under regulation in the process of Networked Public Communication; what its features and models are; what collective action strategies and“resistance culture”have been developed as a result of Internet regulate; the nature of power games among Networked Public, mass media, political forces and capital, and the links with the development of Chinese civil society.

Networks, whether in the form of Facebook and Twitter or WhatsApp groups, are exerting immense, unchecked power in subverting political discourse and polarizing the public in India.

Over the past decade, scholars, practitioners, and leading diplomats have forcefully argued for the need to move beyond one-way, mass-media-driven campaigns and develop more relational strategies. In the coming years, as the range of public diplomacy actors grows, the issues become more complexly intertwined, and the use of social media proliferates, the focus on relations will intensify along with the demands for more sophisticated strategies. These changes in the international arena call for a connective mindshift: a shift from information control and dominance to skilled relationship management. Leading international scholars and practitioners embark on a forward-looking exploration of creative conceptual frameworks, training methods, and case studies that advance relational, networking, and collaborative strategies in public diplomacy. Light on academic jargon and rich in analysis, this volume argues that while relationships have always been pivotal to the practice of public diplomacy, the relational dynamics are changing. Rather than focus on specific definitions, the contributors focus on the dynamic interplay of influence in the public diplomacy environment. That environment includes state and non-state actors, public and private partners, competitors and collaborators, new and old media, and is conditioned by power, ethics, and cultures. This book is an essential resource to students and practitioners interested on how to build relationships and transform them into more elaborate network structures through public communication. It will challenge you to push the boundaries of what you think are the mechanisms, benefits, and potential issues raised by a relational approach to public diplomacy

In Networked Media, Networked Rhetorics, Damien Pfister explores communicative practices in networked media environments, analyzing, in particular, how the blogosphere has changed the conduct and coverage of public debate. Pfister shows how the late modern imaginary was susceptible to “deliberation traps” related to invention, emotion, and expertise, and how bloggers have played a role in helping contemporary public deliberation evade these traps. Three case studies at the heart of Networked Media, Networked Rhetorics show how new intermediaries, including bloggers, generate publicity, solidarity, and translation in the networked public sphere. Bloggers “flooding the zone” in the wake of Trent Lott’s controversial toast to Strom Thurmond in 2002 demonstrated their ability to invent and circulate novel arguments; the pre-2003 invasion reports from the “Baghdad blogger” illustrated how solidarity is built through affective connections; and the science blog RealClimate continues to serve as a rapid-response site for the translation of expert claims for public audiences. Networked Media, Networked Rhetorics concludes with a bold outline for rhetorical studies after the internet.

This book explores the hypothesis that public space – if conceptualised, imagined, and shaped at the metropolitan scale, through innovative territorial design approaches – offers the possibility to interconnect and integrate various systems in search for synergic responses to emerging societal challenges that impact large, urbanised landscapes. The book offers a multidimensional and multi-geographic framework to discuss the role of public space on contemporary metropolitan territories, as part of MetroPublicNet - Building the foundations of a Metropolitan Public Space Network to support the robust, low-carbon and cohesive city: Projects, lessons, and prospects in Lisbon research project. The reader will find a critical and overarching perspective on the conceptual, methodological, and empirical lenses that unfolded throughout the research process, namely a systematised decoding of the public space projects, policies, and rationales that shaped the recent transformation of Lisbon Metropolitan Area. With a diverse range of authors actively engaged in academic research and professorship, in design practice, and in policy-oriented roles, the book concludes with the outlining of forward-looking guidelines, policy recommendations, and design experimentations. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of architecture, urbanism, landscape architecture and geography.

Networks have been described in terms of metaphors, governance arrangements and structural or institutional arrangements. These different perspectives of networks come out of a variety of disciplines, including political science, public administration, urban affairs, social welfare, public management and organizational/sociological research. This wealth of research, while contributing to a deeper understanding of networks, presents a dilemma which is addressed by this book. That is the question of whether there is a theory of public networks that informs networks in their various forms, and is there a need for a new theory of networks? More importantly, is network research still relevant to practice? Does network theory improve the process of governance? Are different terms and/or approaches actually the same or different? What do these different approaches mean to theory? This book deeply explores and integrates existing network theory and related theories from a number of perspectives, levels and jurisdictions to develop a framework to guide network design, governance and management. The book focuses on the important issue of network performance, looking at networks as bounded and consciously arranged; the actors who participate in them design the relationships among a bounded set of individual organizations to purse common objectives. Finally, the chapters tease out the variety of governance modes or regimes that intersect with network governance. This book offers a comprehensive, integrative, interdisciplinary approach that enables specialists, practitioners and administrators across a wide array of interests and fields to formulate and work on problems using a common language, analytical framework and theoretical basis.

Presents an analysis of social media, discussing how a technology which was once heralded as democratic, has evolved into one which promotes elitism and inequality and provides companies with the means of invading privacy in search of profits.

Climate change and ecological instability have the potential to disrupt human societies and their futures. Cultural, social and ethical life in all societies is directed towards a future that can never be observed, and never be directly acted upon, and yet is always interacting with us. Thinking and acting towards the future involves efforts of imagination that are linked to our sense of being in the world and the ecological pressures we experience. The three key ideas of this book – ecologies, ontologies and mythologies – help us understand the ways people in many different societies attempt to predict and shape their futures. Each chapter places a different emphasis on the linked domains of environmental change, embodied experience, myth and fantasy, politics, technology and intellectual reflection, in relation to imagined futures. The diverse geographic scope of the chapters includes rural Nepal, the islands of the Pacific Ocean, Sweden, coastal Scotland, North America, and remote, rural and urban Australia. This book will appeal to researchers and students in anthropology, sociology, environmental studies, cultural studies, psychology and politics.

The topic of sovereignty is contentious, and one of enduring interest. In a world of ever increasing economic globalisation, the rise of supranational regulation and the interconnected age of information and communication technology, among many other developments, have challenged the once exclusively held Westphalian model of sovereignty. The distinction between the internal aspect of sovereignty as expressed in terms of ultimate authority in a constitution, and the external aspect involving the relationship between sovereign states has been blurred. This has given rise to contemporary debates that explore the theoretical and practical implications of current challenges to established doctrines. Evidently no book could encompass the entirety of the contemporary debates on sovereignty. This is a book of essays focusing on sovereignty by a team of leading writers contributing domestic, European and international perspectives. The essays have been written at a time of very great testing of the institutional frameworks at every level: domestic, European, international or global. The book illuminates the enduring strength of sovereignty as a foundational concept and the continuing widespread appeal of sovereignty as an idea.