De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Cultures - (De Gruyter Contemporary Social Sciences Handbooks) (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

As Digital Cultures becomes the dominant term used by many across a variety of intellectual fields to describe the social, aesthetic, and political impact of digital media, it is necessary to provide a reference volume that specifies and defines the bounds of scholarly debates and curricular outlines for an otherwise amorphous interdisciplinary space.

This handbook provides a comprehensive reference for the varied methodologies, historical frames, and theoretical perspectives essential for the study of Digital Cultures today. In outlining these foundations, it serves as a practical guide for educators and students into the broad range of perspectives grouped together for the critical, historical, and social scientific study of digital media.

It also looks into the future and outlines an agenda for future research by examining not only the origins of the concept of Digital Culture, but emerging topics and themes still in development, such as the relation between digital technology and climate change, artificial intelligence and knowledge, sensation and aesthetics, and the rise of new infrastructures reinventing not only the built environment, but the boundaries of nations and sovereignty.

About the Author

Grant Bollmer is Associate Research Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland, College Park. He has taught in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and is the author or co-author of five books on the history and theory of digital cultures.

Katherine Guinness is Assistant Professor of Critical Studies in the Department of Art at the University of Maryland, College Park. She was previously Assistant Professor and Director of Art History in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.

Yiğit Soncul is Senior Lecturer in Communications and Media at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. His research spans media theory; visual and material culture; media and the environment. He is co-editor of two special issues and a book on contemporary media cultures.