Distributed for Athabasca University Press
The Digital Nexus
Identity, Agency, and Political Engagement
The totalizing scope of the combined effects of computerization and the worldwide network are the subject of the essays in The Digital Nexus, a volume that responds to McLuhan’s request for a “special study” of the tsunami-like transformation of the communication landscape. These critical excursions provide analysis of and insight into the way new media technologies change the workings of social engagement for personal expression, social interaction, and political engagement. The contributors investigate the terms and conditions under which our digital society is unfolding and provide compelling arguments for the need to develop an accurate grasp of the architecture of the Web and the challenges that ubiquitous connectivity undoubtedly delivers to both public and private life.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Computational Turn and the Digital Network - Raphael Foshay
Part I: Digital Theory
1 The Internet in Question / Andrew Feenberg
2 Emergent Meaning in the Information Age / Ian Angus
3 Responsible Machines: The Opportunities and Challenges of Artificial Autonomous Agents / David J. Gunkel
4 Open Source Transparency: The Making of an Altered Identity / Daryl Campbell
Part II: Digital Culture
5 Hacktivist (Pre)Occupations: Self-Surveillance, Participation and Public Space / Carolyn Guertin
6 Theoretical and Institutional Contexts of the Dubject, the Doubled and Spaced Self / Mark A. McCutcheon
7 The Network University in Transition / Bob Hanke
8 Spinning the Web: Critical Discourse Analysis and its Online Space / Leslie Lindballe
9 Paramortals, or Dancing with the Interactive Digital Dead / Roman Onufrijchuk
Part III: Digital Politics
10 The Rise of the National Surveillance State in Comparative Perspective / Peter J. Smith
11 Democracy and Identity in the Digital Age / Lorna Stefanick and Karen Wall
12 The Digital Democratic Deficit: Analysis of Digital Voting in a Canadian Party Leadership Race / Josipa G. Petrunic
13 Navigating the Mediapolis: Digital Media and Emerging Practices of Democratic Participation / Maria Bakardjieva
14 The Construction of Collective Action Frames in Facebook Groups / Sharone Daniel
Afterword / Raphael Foshay
Appendix: Do Machines Have Rights? Ethics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence / David Gunkel, Interviewed by Paul Kellogg
List of Contributors