What happens when the internet is absorbed into everyday life? How do we make sense of something that is invisible but still so central? A group of digital culture experts address these questions in Metaphors of Internet: Ways of Being in the Age of Ubiquity. Twenty years ago, the internet was imagined as standing apart from humans. Metaphorically it was a frontier to explore, a virtual world to experiment in, an ultra-high-speed information superhighway. Many popular metaphors have fallen out of use, while new ones arise all the time. Today we speak of data lakes, clouds and AI. The essays and artwork in this book evoke the mundane, the visceral, and the transformative potential of the internet by exploring the currently dominant metaphors. Together they tell a story of kaleidoscopic diversity of how we experience the internet, offering a richly textured glimpse of how the internet has both disappeared and at the same time, has fundamentally transformed everyday social customs, work, and life, death, politics, and embodiment.

This book brings a rich and nuanced analysis of selfie culture. It shows how selfies gain their meanings, illustrates different selfie practices, explores how selfies make us feel and why they have the power to make us feel anything, and unpacks how selfie practices and selfie related norms have changed or might change in the future. As humans, we have a long history of being drawn to images, of communicating visually, and being enchanted with (our own) faces. Every day we share hundreds of millions of photos on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Selfies are continually and passionately talked about. People take vast amounts of selfies, and generate more attention than most other social media content. But selfies are persistently attacked as being unworthy of all of this attention: they lack artistic merit; indicate a pathological fascination with one's self; or attribute to dangerously stupid behaviour. This book explores the social, cultural and technological context surrounding selfies and their subsequent meaning.

What happens when the internet is absorbed into everyday life? How do we make sense of something that is invisible but still so central? A group of digital culture experts address these questions in Metaphors of Internet: Ways of Being in the Age of Ubiquity. Twenty years ago, the internet was imagined as standing apart from humans. Metaphorically it was a frontier to explore, a virtual world to experiment in, an ultra-high-speed information superhighway. Many popular metaphors have fallen out of use, while new ones arise all the time. Today we speak of data lakes, clouds and AI. The essays and artwork in this book evoke the mundane, the visceral, and the transformative potential of the internet by exploring the currently dominant metaphors. Together they tell a story of kaleidoscopic diversity of how we experience the internet, offering a richly textured glimpse of how the internet has both disappeared and at the same time, has fundamentally transformed everyday social customs, work, and life, death, politics, and embodiment.

Sex on and with social media is often construed as deviant, risky, or something only teenagers do because they don't know better. Yet, academic scholarship has shown that sex on/with social media can allow people to create and playfully experiment with their identities; build meaningful relationships; accept themselves or build communities. This book brings the multiplicity and richness of sexual practices on, with, and around social media to a curious, intelligent lay reader, and highlights the discrepancy between the media headlines (people fearing it) and what popular Google searches show (people wanting it). The authors describe how social media has changed and shaped sex; address the common misconceptions about socially mediated sex; explain the spaces where social media sex happens, and the practices that count as social media sex. Chapters examine the main misconceptions and anxieties pertaining to socially mediated sex; explore how sexual social media practices are part of our identity; look at it as a communal/ group phenomenon; and analyse social media platforms as the intermediaries and infrastructures shaping and constraining sex. It offers an academically informed, critical but accessible discussion on sex and sexuality on and with social media.

Why is our world the way it is, right now? SocietyNow presents the best academic expertise examining key events, trends and phenomenon of current times. Readable, accessible and digestible commentary on the most complex and defining topics of the 21st Century. Written by leading experts in their fields and published when the issues are a focal point across the globe, titles in the series offer a thoughtful and concise response to the major political and economic events and social and cultural trends of our time. Titles included in this set: The Trump Phenomenon: How the Politics of Populism Won in 2016; Becoming Digital: Toward a Post-Internet Society; Understanding Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union; Selfies: Why We Love (and Hate) Them; Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online; Corbynism: A Critical Approach; The Smart City in a Digital World; Kardashian Kulture: How Celebrities Changed Life in the 21st Century; Reality Television: The TV Phenomenon that Changed the World;