In this ground-breaking study M.I. Franklin explores the form and substance of everyday life online from a critical postcolonial perspective. With Internet access and social media uses accelerating in the Global South, in-depth studies of just how non-western communities, at home and living abroad, actually use the Internet and web-based media are still relatively few. This book's pioneering use of virtual ethnography and mixed method research in this study of a longstanding 'media diaspora' incorporates online participant-observation with offline fieldwork to explore how postcolonial diasporas from the south Pacific have been using the Internet since the early ways of the web. Through a critical reconsideration of the work of Michel de Certeau in light of postcolonial and feminist theories, the book provides insights into the practice of everyday life in a global and digital age by non-western participants online and offline. Critical of techno- and media-centric analyses of cyberspatial practices and power hierarchies, Franklin argues that a closer look at the content and communicative styles of these contemporary Pacific traversals suggest other Internet futures. These are visions of social media that can be more hospitable, culturally inclusive and economically equitable than those promulgated by both powerful commercial interests and state actors looking to take charge of the Internet 'after Web 2.0'. The book will be of interest to students of international politics, media and communications, cultural studies, science and technology studies, anthropology and sociology interested in how successive waves of new media interact with shifting power relations at the intersection of politics, culture, and society.

Planning, undertaking and completing a research project - from dissertations to presentations - can be a daunting undertaking for any student, involving a number of easily taken mis-steps for those without adequate guidance. The objective of any research project is to gather data, analyse it based on your research question and present your findings and conclusions. For students, having the right approach to these steps can mean the difference between an easily handled process resulting in a well argued and presented project, or panicked flailing, misdirection and confusion. For those fearful of not getting enough research done, doing it the wrong way, putting it together incorrectly, or unsure of what the end result will be, then Understanding Research is an invaluable guide to getting it right and putting fears to bed. Successfully completing a research project is a major milestone in most university degrees, and it should be daunting - although not unassailable. This book provides students with the guidance necessary to start, undertake and present their research project in social science or the humanities. This text addresses: Where do I start? How do I begin my research and pull it together into a research question? - takes the student through the process of project design, starting research and gaining confidence in their choices Am I Researching the right things? Is it taking me in the direction I want to go? What direction is it taking me in? - explores the decision making process at all points of a research project and the implications of these decisions in the longer term Am I researching in the right way - should I be conducting interviews, reading articles or collecting statistical data? - outlines the practical and philosophical conundrums around specific techniques for gathering and analysing data Focussed explicitly on the needs and experiences of students and including a wealth of practical tips, this work is an essential resource for all students embarking on a research project. Understanding Research includes: 90 illustrations 2 tables 21 text boxes Glossary Further Reading guides for each chapter

In this ground-breaking study M.I. Franklin explores the form and substance of everyday life online from a critical postcolonial perspective. With Internet access and social media uses accelerating in the Global South, in-depth studies of just how non-western communities, at home and living abroad, actually use the Internet and web-based media are still relatively few. This book's pioneering use of virtual ethnography and mixed method research in this study of a longstanding 'media diaspora' incorporates online participant-observation with offline fieldwork to explore how postcolonial diasporas from the south Pacific have been using the Internet since the early ways of the web. Through a critical reconsideration of the work of Michel de Certeau in light of postcolonial and feminist theories, the book provides insights into the practice of everyday life in a global and digital age by non-western participants online and offline.

Critical of techno- and media-centric analyses of cyberspatial practices and power hierarchies, Franklin argues that a closer look at the content and communicative styles of these contemporary Pacific traversals suggest other Internet futures. These are visions of social media that can be more hospitable, culturally inclusive and economically equitable than those promulgated by both powerful commercial interests and state actors looking to take charge of the Internet 'after Web 2.0'.

The book will be of interest to students of international politics, media and communications, cultural studies, science and technology studies, anthropology and sociology interested in how successive waves of new media interact with shifting power relations at the intersection of politics, culture, and society.

First published in hardback in 2005.

This book explores a provocative area of inquiry for critical theory and research into world politics and popular culture: music. Not just because political science barely engages with anything musical, but also because it is clear that many opportunities for critical scholarship and reflection on global politics and economics are present in the spaces and relationships created by organized sound. It is easy to focus on the textual elements of music, but there is more at stake than just the words. Critical reflection on the intersections between music and politics also need to take into account the visceral and non-verbal elements such as counterpoint and harmony, polyphony and dissonance, noise, rhymes, rhythms, performance and the visual/aural dimensions to music-making.

Planning, undertaking and completing a research project - from dissertations to presentations - can be a daunting undertaking for any student, involving a number of easily taken mis-steps for those without adequate guidance. The objective of any research project is to gather data, analyse it based on your research question and present your findings and conclusions. For students, having the right approach to these steps can mean the difference between an easily handled process resulting in a well argued and presented project, or panicked flailing, misdirection and confusion. For those fearful of not getting enough research done, doing it the wrong way, putting it together incorrectly, or unsure of what the end result will be, then Understanding Research is an invaluable guide to getting it right and putting fears to bed. Successfully completing a research project is a major milestone in most university degrees, and it should be daunting - although not unassailable. This book provides students with the guidance necessary to start, undertake and present their research project in social science or the humanities. This text addresses: Where do I start? How do I begin my research and pull it together into a research question? - takes the student through the process of project design, starting research and gaining confidence in their choices Am I Researching the right things? Is it taking me in the direction I want to go? What direction is it taking me in? - explores the decision making process at all points of a research project and the implications of these decisions in the longer term Am I researching in the right way - should I be conducting interviews, reading articles or collecting statistical data? - outlines the practical and philosophical conundrums around specific techniques for gathering and analysing data Focussed explicitly on the needs and experiences of students and including a wealth of practical tips, this work is an essential resource for all students embarking on a research project. Understanding Research includes: 90 illustrations 2 tables 21 text boxes Glossary Further Reading guides for each chapter

This book explores a provocative area of inquiry for critical theory and research into world politics and popular culture: music. Not just because political science barely engages with anything musical, but also because it is clear that many opportunities for critical scholarship and reflection on global politics and economics are present in the spaces and relationships created by organized sound. It is easy to focus on the textual elements of music, but there is more at stake than just the words. Critical reflection on the intersections between music and politics also need to take into account the visceral and non-verbal elements such as counterpoint and harmony, polyphony and dissonance, noise, rhymes, rhythms, performance and the visual/aural dimensions to music-making.

Postcolonialism and Political Theory explores the intersection between the political and the postcolonial through an engagement with, critique of, and challenge to some of the prevalent, restrictive tenets and frameworks of Western political and social thought. It is a response to the call by postcolonial studies, as well as to the urgent need within world politics, to turn towards a multiplicity_largely excluded from globally dominant discourses of community, subjectivity, power and prosperity_constituted by otherness, radical alterity, or subordination to the newly reconsolidated West. The book offers a diverse range of essays that re-examine and open the boundaries of political and cultural modernity's historical domain; that look at how the racialized and gendered and cultured subject visualizes the social from elsewhere; that critique the limits of postcolonial theory and its claim to celebrate diversity; and that complicate the notion of postcolonial politics within settler societies that continue to practice exile of the indigenous. Postcolonialism and Political Theory is an ideal book for graduate and advanced undergraduate level study and for those working both disciplinarily and interdisciplinarily, both inside and outside academia.

Postcolonialism and Political Theory explores the intersection between the political and the postcolonial through an engagement with, critique of, and challenge to some of the prevalent, restrictive tenets and frameworks of Western political and social thought. It is a response to the call by postcolonial studies, as well as to the urgent need within world politics, to turn towards a multiplicity-largely excluded from globally dominant discourses of community, subjectivity, power and prosperity-constituted by otherness, radical alterity, or subordination to the newly reconsolidated West. The book offers a diverse range of essays that re-examine and open the boundaries of political and cultural modernity's historical domain; that look at how the racialized and gendered and cultured subject visualizes the social from elsewhere; that critique the limits of postcolonial theory and its claim to celebrate diversity; and that complicate the notion of postcolonial politics within settler societies that continue to practice exile of the indigenous. Postcolonialism and Political Theory is an ideal book for graduate and advanced undergraduate level study and for those working both disciplinarily and interdisciplinarily, both inside and outside academia.

Digital Dilemmas is a groundbreaking ethnographic, mixed method approach to understanding dynamics of power and resistance as they are played out around the future of the internet. M. I. Franklin looks at the way that publics, governments, and multilateral institutions are being redefined and reinvented in digital settings that are ubiquitous and yet controlled by a relative few. Franklin does this through three original and wide-ranging case studies that get at the way that computer-mediated power relations play out "on the ground" through a mixture of overlapping online and offline activity, at personal, community, and transnational levels. Case studies include online activities around homelessness and street papers in the U.S. and around the world, digital and human rights activism carried out though the United Nations, and the ongoing battle between proprietary and free and open source software proponents. The result is a thought-provoking and seminal work on the way that the new paradigms of power and resistance forged online reshape localized and traditional power structures offline.