Understanding the New Digital Masses : Mass Subjectivity under Siege.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lee, Raymond.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Digital ethnology.

Digital media.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (190 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Bradford : Ethics International Press Limited, 2025.

Summary:

In a world that has become computerized and digitalized, we need to understand how individuals are impacted by these changes as they interrelate as online masses. Masses are known to be made up of physically and closely interacting participants, but in today's mass society they do not need to meet up at all because the proliferation of actions-at-a-distance allows new forms of behavior which bring people together as signal patterns rather than as visibly conducive agents. The project concerns the social meanings of such behaviors and their outcomes in a world that is increasingly dominated by technological innovations sponsored and promoted by big corporations and governments. It examines this form of domination in terms of phenomena such as swarming, alienation, affect theory, digital capitalism, and digital signals. The book draws on many recent critical works on media effects, affect theory, mass contagion, digital capitalism, neo-feudalism, data control, and hyper-production. The author presents a broad theory of totalitarian control in which mass subjectivity forms the medium for rule by datafication.

Contents:

Understanding the New Digital Masses: Mass Subjectivity Under Siege

by Raymond L. M. Lee

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Do Digital Masses Really Exist?

The Masses Online

Methodological Collectivism

Masses as Swarms

Chapter 3 From Signs to Signals

Postmodern Signs

Signal Power

The New Alienation

Chapter 4 Affect Theory and Mass Contagion

The Affective Turn

The Idea of Entanglement

Re-individualization and Control

Chapter 5 Capitalism, Consumption, Colonialism

Digital Capitalism

Consumption of Contagions

Data Capture and Otherness

Smart Colonialism

Chapter 6 The New Implosions

Allure of Algorithms

Feudalism Redux

Vectors of Vulnerability

Chapter 7 Surviving the New Mass Age

Machinic Masses

Politics of Experimentation

New Synthetic Realities

Resistance and Beyond Generated by AI.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

Other Format:

Print version: Lee, Raymond Understanding the New Digital Masses

ISBN:

9781837113743

OCLC:

1551396739