Digital Futures C - by John Hartley Hardcover

Book Synopsis

An ambitious rendering of the digital future from a pioneer of media and cultural studies, a wise and witty take on a changing field, and our orientation to it

• Investigates the uses of multimedia by creative and productive citizen-consumers to provide new theories of communication that accommodate social media, participatory action, and user-creativity
• Leads the way for new interdisciplinary engagement with systems thinking, complexity and evolutionary sciences, and the convergence of cultural and economic values
• Analyzes the historical uses of multimedia from print, through broadcasting to the internet
• Combines conceptual innovation with historical erudition to present a high-level synthesis of ideas and detailed analysis of emergent forms and practices
• Features an international focus and global reach to provide a basis for students and researchers seeking broader perspectives

From the Back Cover

In his new work, Digital Futures for Cultural and Media Studies, a pioneer in the field turns his eye to the digital future, and how its transformation will also transform how it is studied.

This thought-provoking analysis sets out to reorient and rethink media and cultural studies, to grapple with the mutual productivity that the digital future will continue to facilitate, while investigating some examples to see which way they are pointing, including popular journalism, the public domain, media citizenship, messaging, and the role of 'creative destruction' in the renewal of complex systems.

The tools may change, Hartley argues, but media and popular culture will always engage with questions of meaning, identity, power, humankind in the context of technology, and global interaction among our dispersed and diverse species.

About the Author

John Hartley is Research Director of the Centre for Creative Industries & Innovation at Queensland University of Technology, Australia, where he was founding dean of the Creative Industries Faculty. Previously he was head of the School of Journalism, Media & Cultural Studies at Cardiff University in Wales. Hartley is author of many books on popular culture, media, journalism and creative industries. His previous books with Wiley-Blackwell include Television Truths (2008), Story Circle: Digital Storytelling Around the World (co-edited with Kelly McWilliam, 2009), and Creative Industries (2005).