Cultures of Participation

Hajo Greif is Assistant Professor at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Klagenfurt (Austria).Larissa Hjorth is an artist, digital ethnographer and Senior Lecturer at the School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne (Australia).Amparo Lasén is Associate Professor at the School of Sociology and Political Science, University Complutense of Madrid (Spain).Claire Lobet-Maris is Senior Professor of Sociology at the Computer Science Faculty at the University of Namur (Belgium).

• Contents: Hajo Greif/Larissa Hjorth/Amparo Lasén/Claire Lobet-Maris: Introduction – Leopoldina Fortunati: Online Participation and the New Media – Hajo Greif/Matthias Werner: From Information to Broadband Society, Whence and Whither? – Giuseppina Pellegrino: Participatory Frameworks: Re-tracing Participation in the Theoretical Node Technology/Society – Kate Crawford: Listening, not Lurking: The Neglected Form of Participation – Naomi S. Baron: Attitudes towards Mobile Phones: A Cross-Cultural Comparison – Jane Vincent: Emotions and the Mobile Phone – Larissa Hjorth/Ingrid Richardson: Playing the Waiting Game: Complicating Notions of (Tele)presence and Gendered Distraction in Casual Mobile Gaming – Chung Tai Cheng: Imagined Performativity: The Great Virtue of Cyberspace in Contemporary Chinese Workers’ Social Lives – Amparo Lasén/Iñaki Martínez de Albeniz: ‘An Original Protest, at Least.’ Mediality and Participation – Boxu Yang/Yuan Le/Shanshan An: The Less Expected: An Exploration of the Social and Political Activities on the Internet in China – Brian Simpson: The Facebook Family: Information and Communication Technology Redrafting the Rules of Participation in Family Life – Lieve Gies: The Frenzy of Digital Photography: A Biopolitical Assessment – Romina Cachia/Alexandra Haché: Hyperlinked Avatars: Negotiating Identities and Social Relations within Social Networking Sites – Lilia Raycheva: Tracing the Policy Challenges of the Digital Dividend.

«An idea with a history, participation is now the watchword for the digital age. This timely book offers a set of genuinely original and conceptually powerful perspectives on the deep cultural and political dynamics of this much-discussed yet elusive phenomenon. Cosmopolitan in disposition, and adventurous in their thinking, the assembled authors offer us an indispensable critical account of participation, its lures and problems, as well as how to assess its rich possibilities. ‘Cultures of Participation’ is required reading for anyone keen to come to grips with this cardinal concept of contemporary technology and society.» (Gerard Goggin, Professor of Digital Communication, University of New South Wales, Sydney)«The Internet is no longer a simple world of email and one-way web. This multinational, multicultural book provides meaty fare, showing how people actively use the diversifying Internet.» (Barry Wellman, S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto)