Affective Politics of Digital Media

Propaganda by Other Means

Elizabeth Davis editor Megan Boler editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:3rd Sep '20

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Affective Politics of Digital Media cover

This interdisciplinary, international collection examines how sophisticated digital practices and technologies exploit and capitalize on emotions, with particular focus on how social media are used to exacerbate social conflicts surrounding racism, misogyny, and nationalism.

Radically expanding the study of media and political communications, this book bridges humanities and social sciences to explore affective information economies, and how emotions are being weaponized within mediatized political landscapes. The chapters cover a wide range of topics: how clickbait, "fake news," and right-wing actors deploy and weaponize emotion; new theoretical directions for understanding affect, algorithms, and public spheres; and how the wedding of big data and behavioral science enables new frontiers of propaganda, as seen in the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal. The collection includes original interviews with luminary media scholars and journalists.

The book features contributions from established and emerging scholars of communications, media studies, affect theory, journalism, policy studies, gender studies, and critical race studies to address questions of concern to scholars, journalists, and students in these fields and beyond.

"This is an invaluable guidebook to the affective landscape of our political moment, packed with contributions from original and groundbreaking thinkers. It counters the pace and tone of online propaganda with a crucial critical intervention, contributing to our understanding of the fate of understanding itself—and the consequences for political life."

Mark Andrejevic, Professor of Communications & Media Studies, Monash University

"This collection presents the state of the art for investigating affective politics. Importantly, it outlines the risks posed to our democratic institutions if we don’t ensure the technical and legal fixes required to delimit social media firms capitalizing on emotional appeals and cognitive biases."

Philip N. Howard, Director, Oxford Internet Institute and Professor, Oxford University, author of Lie Machines (2020)


"This is an invaluable guidebook to the affective landscape of our political moment, packed with contributions from original and groundbreaking thinkers. It counters the pace and tone of online propaganda with a crucial critical intervention, contributing to our understanding of the fate of understanding itself—and the consequences for political life."

Mark Andrejevic, Professor of Communications & Media Studies, Monash University

"This collection presents the state of the art for investigating affective politics. Importantly, it outlines the risks posed to our democratic institutions if we don’t ensure the technical and legal fixes required to delimit social media firms capitalizing on emotional appeals and cognitive biases."

Philip N. Howard, Director, Oxford Internet Institute and Professor, Oxford University, author of Lie Machines (2020)

"Affective Politics of Digital Media is a body of work that demonstrates just how central affective dynamics are to the political realities generated in an increasingly mediatized world...any chapter of this book stands as a useful entry point for scholars interested in the affective politics of digital media, with each offering a unique perspective and potential avenue for further exploration. It is therefore an important collection for anybody working in the fields of technology, media, journalism, political communications, and policy, and for those seeking to become attuned to the affective dynamics of digital media more broadly."

Rachel Billington, New Media and Society 24(6)

ISBN: 9780367510640

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 453g

366 pages