Changing practices and perceptions of parenthood and family life have long been the subject of intense public, political and academic attention. Recent years have seen growing interest in the role digital media and technologies can play in these shifts, yet this topic has been under-explored from a discourse analytical perspective. In response, this book's investigation of everyday parenting, family practices and digital media offers a new and innovative exploration of the relationship between parenting, family practices, and digitally mediated connection. This investigation is based on extensive digital and interview data from research with nine UK-based single and/or lesbian, gay or bisexual parents who brought children into their lives in non-traditional ways, for example through donor conception, surrogacy or adoption. Through a novel approach that combines constructivist grounded theory with mediated discourse analysis, this book examines connected family lives and practices in a way that transcends the limiting social, biological and legal structures that still dominate concepts of family in contemporary society.

"Light and Photomedia" proposes that, regardless of technological change, the history and future of photomedia are essentially connected to light: it is a fundamental property of photomedia, binding with space and time to form and inform new, explicitly light-based structures and experiences
Jai McKenzie identifies light-space-time structures throughout the history of photomedia, from the early image machines through analogue and digital image machines to the present day. She proposes that they will continue to develop in the future, and takes us to future image machines of the year 2039. With the use of the theories of Paul Virilio, Jean Baudrillard and Vilem Flusser, featuring artists including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Nam June Paik, Yves Klein, Eadweard Muybridge, Martha Rosler, Cindy Sherman and Michael Snow, as well as photographic images, "Light and Photomedia" places the reader in a new history and future which, although mostly overlooked by the canon of photomedia theory, is an essential line of enquiry for contemporary thinking and dialogue in photography.

Language, Gender and Parenthood Online explores the digital interactions of parents on the UK-based internet discussion forum Mumsnet Talk, a space dominated by users sharing a common identification as women, parents and mothers. Using a qualitative approach grounded in feminist poststructuralist theory, Jai Mackenzie uncovers 'common-sense' assumptions about gender and parenthood, explores the construction of gender and parenthood in digital contexts and how discourses of gendered parenthood are negotiated, resisted and subverted. This is key reading for students, scholars and researchers in the field of language and gender, as well as language and digital communication.

"Light and Photomedia" proposes that, regardless of technological change, the history and future of photomedia are essentially connected to light: it is a fundamental property of photomedia, binding with space and time to form and inform new, explicitly light-based structures and experiences
Jai McKenzie identifies light-space-time structures throughout the history of photomedia, from the early image machines through analogue and digital image machines to the present day. She proposes that they will continue to develop in the future, and takes us to future image machines of the year 2039. With the use of the theories of Paul Virilio, Jean Baudrillard and Vilem Flusser, featuring artists including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Nam June Paik, Yves Klein, Eadweard Muybridge, Martha Rosler, Cindy Sherman and Michael Snow, as well as photographic images, "Light and Photomedia" places the reader in a new history and future which, although mostly overlooked by the canon of photomedia theory, is an essential line of enquiry for contemporary thinking and dialogue in photography.

Language, Gender and Parenthood Online explores the digital interactions of parents on the UK-based internet discussion forum Mumsnet Talk, a space dominated by users sharing a common identification as women, parents and mothers. Using a qualitative approach grounded in feminist poststructuralist theory, Jai Mackenzie uncovers 'common-sense' assumptions about gender and parenthood, explores the construction of gender and parenthood in digital contexts and how discourses of gendered parenthood are negotiated, resisted and subverted. This is key reading for students, scholars and researchers in the field of language and gender, as well as language and digital communication.

It's time to lose your old baggage and gain more clarity to who you are. You are a Spiritual being in a machine, and you run the show.