International politics is witnessing a rapid transformation due to the emerging impact of the internet and digital media. Activists in various countries have been given a new medium to voice their views and opinions, resulting in governments adapting to the digital environment in which we currently live. As the role of social media and online communities continue to grow, empirical research is needed on their specific impact on governmental policies and reform. Handbook of Recent Developments in Internet Activism and Political Participation is an essential reference source that explores the modern role that digital media plays within community engagement and political development. This book discusses real-world case studies in various regions of the world on how the internet is affecting government agendas and promoting the voice of the community. Featuring research on topics such as digital ecosystems, information technology, and foreign policy, this book is ideally designed for researchers, strategists, government officials, policymakers, sociologists, administrators, scholars, educators, and students seeking coverage on the societal impact of social media in modern global politics.

With the ubiquitous nature of modern technologies, they have been inevitably integrated into various facets of society. The connectivity presented by digital platforms has transformed such innovations into tools for political and social agendas. Politics, Protest, and Empowerment in Digital Spaces is a comprehensive reference source for emerging scholarly perspectives on the use of new media technology to engage people in socially- and politically-oriented conversations and examines communication trends in these virtual environments. Highlighting relevant coverage across topics such as online free expression, political campaigning, and online blogging, this book is ideally designed for government officials, researchers, academics, graduate students, and practitioners interested in how new media is revolutionizing political and social communications.

This book investigates the relationship between the self and screen in the digital age, and examines how the notion of the self is re-negotiated and curated online. The chapters examine the production of the self in postmodernity through digital platforms by employing key concepts of ubiquity, the everyday, disembodiment and mortality. It locates self-production through ubiquitous imaging of the self and our environments with and through mobile technologies and in terms of its 'embeddedness' in our everyday lives. In this innovative text, Yasmin Ibrahim explores technology's co-location on our corporeal body, our notions of domesticity and banality, our renewed relationship with the screen and our enterprise with capital as well as the role of desire in the formation of the self. The result is a richly interdisciplinary volume that seeks to examine the formation of the self online, through its renewed negotiations with personalised technologies and with the emergence of social networking sites.

Over the last few years, social media has expanded to become a key platform for news dissemination and circulation, and a key orginator and propogator of 'fake news'.. Nations, governments, organisations and societies are now coming to terms with the unpredictable and debilitating consequences of fake news. The propagation of news containing falsehoods has been linked to an increase in measles cases, surges in youth crimes, the spread of pseudo-science, compromised national security, and more. Some even perceive it as a global threat to democratic systems around the world. In this book, the authors examine factors influencing the spread of fake news, and suggest ways to combat it by exploring the key elements which enable and facilitate this phenomenon.

This book examines the intimate relationship between race and technologies and how digital platforms reabsorb racism as an internal arrangement within its modes of technical and affective architecture. Premising the idea that technologies supplant and mirror the 'logic' of racialization as mimetic instruments of social control and violence, the book interrogates the present arrangement of platform capital, and its modes of re-abstraction of race into its fibres and terrains of re-territorialization of the human spheres of social, economic and political life. If capitalism reframed and consolidated racialization through its re-territorialization and primitive accumulation producing continuities from colonization and imperialism, platformization and digital capital redrafts and redistributes its racial logic in new modes of reassembling social and economic life through data, machine learning, algorithms, software designs and in tandem its automaticity. In learning, refining, and accelerating its enterprise through the mimetic violence of producing difference, racism in the digital age calibrates intimately with power, Western rationality and the ubiquity of technologies within the everyday. If the non-hominization of alterity relied on discoveries of science and its conflations with truth and White supremacy, the sustained production and oppression of the 'inferior other' co-opted automaticity and technologies, reiterating our fascination with and our understanding of human progress as pegged to machines, as entities working in excess of human cognition and comprehension, connecting and responding to its ambient intelligence despite its material absence. The book underpins the configuration of power and White supremacy through its co-enterprise with technologies seeks to provide an alternative and decolonial approach to technology studies particularly new media and digital technological advancements, leveraging on the notion of the digital age as an era of acceleration of difference, experimentation and the production of alterity through overt and covert modes of surveillance, image recognition software, and algorithms which work in complicity with racial capital.

This book investigates the hostile environment and politics of visceral and racial denigration which have characterised responses to refugees and migrants within the UK and Europe in recent years. The European ‘migrant crisis’ from 2015 onwards has been characterised by an extremely intimidating atmosphere which denies the basic humanity of refugees and migrants. Deep rooted in Western Enlightenment trajectory, this racially-driven politics is linked to the Western theories of scientific superiority which went on to become the basis of eugenics and coloniality as part of modernity. Focusing on the ‘migrant crisis’, Brexit, and the impacts of the global pandemic, this book unpicks the waves of crises and neuroses about the ‘Other’ in Europe and the UK. The chapters analyse the rhetoric of camps, refrigerated death lorries, the notion of channel crossings and ‘accidental’ drownings, the formation of relationship with border architecture such as the razor wire, and corporeal resistance in detention centres through hunger strike. In examining such specific sites of rhetorical articulation, policy formation, social imagination, and its incumbent visuality, the chapters deconstruct the intersection of dominant ideologies, power, knowledge paradigms (including the media) as part of the public sphere and their combined re-mediation of the dispossessed humans in the shores and borders of Europe. This important interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to researchers of migration, humanitarianism, geography, global development, sociology and communication studies.

This book offers critical perspectives on the digital 'iconic', exploring how the notion of the iconic is re-appropriated and re-made online, and the consequences for humanity and society. Examining cross-cultural case studies of iconic images in digital spaces, the author offers original and critical analyses, theories and perspectives on the notion of the 'iconic', and on its movement, re-appropriation and meaning making on digital platforms. A carefully curated selection of case studies illustrates topics such as phantom memory; martyrdom; denigration and pornographic recoding; digital games as simulacra; and memes as 'artification'. Situating the notion of the iconic firmly within contemporary cultures, the author takes a thematic approach to investigate the iconic as an unstable and unfinished phenomenon online as it travels through platforms temporally and spatially. The book will be an important resource for academics and students in the areas of media and communications, digital culture, cultural studies, visual communication, visual culture, journalism studies and digital humanities.

This book investigates the hostile environment and politics of visceral and racial denigration which have characterised responses to refugees and migrants within the UK and Europe in recent years. The European 'migrant crisis' from 2015 onwards has been characterised by an extremely intimidating atmosphere which denies the basic humanity of refugees and migrants. Deep rooted in Western Enlightenment trajectory, this racially-driven politics is linked to the Western theories of scientific superiority which went on to become the basis of eugenics and coloniality as part of modernity. Focusing on the 'migrant crisis', Brexit, and the impacts of the global pandemic, this book unpicks the waves of crises and neuroses about the 'Other' in Europe and the UK. The chapters analyse the rhetoric of camps, refrigerated death lorries, the notion of channel crossings and 'accidental' drownings, the formation of relationship with border architecture such as the razor wire, and corporeal resistance in detention centres through hunger strike. In examining such specific sites of rhetorical articulation, policy formation, social imagination, and its incumbent visuality, the chapters deconstruct the intersection of dominant ideologies, power, knowledge paradigms (including the media) as part of the public sphere and their combined re-mediation of the dispossessed humans in the shores and borders of Europe. This important interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to researchers of migration, humanitarianism, geography, global development, sociology and communication studies.

Posthuman Capitalism critically reviews the manifestation of capitalist agenda online by examining the phenomenon of the 'posthuman' in the data economy. The chapters examine our posthuman condition, where we are constantly asked to partake in platforms which perform to capitalist agenda while socializing us into new platforms of living, consuming and interacting online. Labelling these modes of our experiential extractions, transactions and re-making of our mortal lives as posthuman capitalism, the book reviews the human entanglements from sociality, friendship, desire, memory, transgressions of privacy and co-production of value through the data economy. Offering innovative and interdisciplinary conceptualisations and vantage points on our contemporary data society, this book will be a key text for scholars and students in the areas of digital media, communication studies, sociology, philosophy and social psychology.

This book offers critical perspectives on the digital 'iconic', exploring how the notion of the iconic is re-appropriated and re-made online, and the consequences for humanity and society. Examining cross-cultural case studies of iconic images in digital spaces, the author offers original and critical analyses, theories and perspectives on the notion of the 'iconic', and on its movement, re-appropriation and meaning making on digital platforms. A carefully curated selection of case studies illustrates topics such as phantom memory; martyrdom; denigration and pornographic recoding; digital games as simulacra; and memes as 'artification'. Situating the notion of the iconic firmly within contemporary cultures, the author takes a thematic approach to investigate the iconic as an unstable and unfinished phenomenon online as it travels through platforms temporally and spatially. The book will be an important resource for academics and students in the areas of media and communications, digital culture, cultural studies, visual communication, visual culture, journalism studies and digital humanities.

Calais has a long history of transient refugee settlements and is often narrated through the endeavour to 'sanitize' it by both the English and the French in their policy and media discourses. Calais and its Border Politics encapsulates the border politics of Calais as an entry port through the refugee settlements known as the 'Jungle'. By deconstructing how the jungle is a constant threat to the civilisation and sanity of Calais, the book traces the story of the jungle, both its revival and destruction as a recurrent narrative through the context of border politics. The book approaches Calais historically and through the key concept of the camp or the 'jungle' - a metaphor that becomes crucial to the inhuman approach to the settlement and in the justifications to destroy it continuously. The demolition and rebuilding of Calais also emphasises the denigration of humanity in the border sites. The authors offer a comprehensive insight into the making and unmaking of one of Europe's long-standing refugee camps. The book explores the history of refugee camps in Calais and provides an insight into its representation and governance over time. The book provides an interdisciplinary perspective, employing concepts of space making, human form and corporeality, as well as modes of representation of the 'Other' to narrate the story of Calais as a border space through time, up to its recent representations in the media. This book's exploration of the representation and governance of the contentious Calais camps will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars of forced migration, border politics, displacement, refugee crisis, camps and human trauma.

Going beyond the cursory reasons behind why we capture images on the move, Politics of Gaze explores our contemporary practices around visual imaging and brings original conceptualisations about why we constantly capture ourselves and our environments through digital technologies. Our technologically mediated 'everyday visuality' has moral and ethical implications for the ways in which we construct our worlds, understand world events, represent ourselves, commodify our environments and transact these with the wider world. Through these acts we constantly negotiate our sense of aesthetics, our notions of what is private and public, our depictions of the everyday and issues of security and conflict whilst constructing moral codes for a technologically-mediated society. This book argues that we have crafted a 'Glasshouse' society where the forms of gaze are open-ended, promising us empowerment while making us endlessly vulnerable. Politics of Gaze is a vital resource for New Media studies and related fields such as photography, technology studies, visual communications, journalism and sociology.

Media technologies do not simply record or represent trauma but transform trauma into a cultural form that is multifariously commodified in different contexts. In this crucial new text, Ibrahim introduces us to the notion of 'technologies of trauma', in deconstructing the idea of trauma as a cultural form in society. Ibrahim examines the trajectory of witnessing and testimony through modernity, utilizing the technologies of trauma as a conceptual lens. Such a notion acknowledges humanity's reliance on technologies to transmute history, trauma, or memory, transforming technologies from medium and machine into artefacts for circulation and exchange. The transcendence of medium into artefacts as sites of trauma equally highlights the socio-political frames within which testimony is extracted and witnessing is enacted, unleashing trauma as a cultural form and a resonant genre of popular consumption. The development of print, photography, television, and digital platforms as technologies of trauma reiterates the popularization of trauma as a cultural genre, witnessing and testimony as cultural forms reiterating how these are intimately implicated in our emergence as active consuming communities of trauma and in tandem how these remake us as vulnerable subjects through the circulation of trauma within a popular consumption economy.

This book investigates the relationship between the self and screen in the digital age, and examines how the notion of the self is re-negotiated and curated online. The chapters examine the production of the self in postmodernity through digital platforms by employing key concepts of ubiquity, the everyday, disembodiment and mortality. It locates self-production through ubiquitous imaging of the self and our environments with and through mobile technologies and in terms of its 'embeddedness' in our everyday lives. In this innovative text, Yasmin Ibrahim explores technology's co-location on our corporeal body, our notions of domesticity and banality, our renewed relationship with the screen and our enterprise with capital as well as the role of desire in the formation of the self. The result is a richly interdisciplinary volume that seeks to examine the formation of the self online, through its renewed negotiations with personalised technologies and with the emergence of social networking sites.

Calais has a long history of transient refugee settlements and is often narrated through the endeavour to 'sanitize' it by both the English and the French in their policy and media discourses. Calais and its Border Politics encapsulates the border politics of Calais as an entry port through the refugee settlements known as the 'Jungle'. By deconstructing how the jungle is a constant threat to the civilisation and sanity of Calais, the book traces the story of the jungle, both its revival and destruction as a recurrent narrative through the context of border politics. The book approaches Calais historically and through the key concept of the camp or the 'jungle' - a metaphor that becomes crucial to the inhuman approach to the settlement and in the justifications to destroy it continuously. The demolition and rebuilding of Calais also emphasises the denigration of humanity in the border sites. The authors offer a comprehensive insight into the making and unmaking of one of Europe's long-standing refugee camps. The book explores the history of refugee camps in Calais and provides an insight into its representation and governance over time. The book provides an interdisciplinary perspective, employing concepts of space making, human form and corporeality, as well as modes of representation of the 'Other' to narrate the story of Calais as a border space through time, up to its recent representations in the media. This book's exploration of the representation and governance of the contentious Calais camps will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars of forced migration, border politics, displacement, refugee crisis, camps and human trauma.

Going beyond the cursory reasons behind why we capture images on the move, Politics of Gaze explores our contemporary practices around visual imaging and brings original conceptualisations about why we constantly capture ourselves and our environments through digital technologies. Our technologically mediated 'everyday visuality' has moral and ethical implications for the ways in which we construct our worlds, understand world events, represent ourselves, commodify our environments and transact these with the wider world. Through these acts we constantly negotiate our sense of aesthetics, our notions of what is private and public, our depictions of the everyday and issues of security and conflict whilst constructing moral codes for a technologically-mediated society. This book argues that we have crafted a 'Glasshouse' society where the forms of gaze are open-ended, promising us empowerment while making us endlessly vulnerable. Politics of Gaze is a vital resource for New Media studies and related fields such as photography, technology studies, visual communications, journalism and sociology.

Over the last few years, social media has expanded to become a key platform for news dissemination and circulation. Nations, governments, organisations and societies are now coming to terms with the unpredictable and debilitating consequences of fake news. The propagation of fake news has been linked to an increase in measles cases, surges in youth crimes, the spread of pseudo-science, compromised national security, and more. Some even perceive it as a global threat to democratic systems around the world. In this book, the authors examine factors influencing the spread of fake news, and suggest ways to combat it by exploring the key elements which enable and facilitate this phenomenon.

This is one of the I Can Series of books that introduces and illustrates some basic yet important concepts and terms for young Muslim children. These are explained with reference to their everyday life and in the settings with which children are familiar. In simple, easy-to-understand language the series presents Islam as a living reality to be experienced in daily life. It answers many questions about Islam as faith which arise in the young, curious minds.

For ages 3-5 years and the young at heart.

Wearing hijab, which Islam preaches for girls and women, is not some obstruction, preventing them from leading life in a natural way. It is part of an active and happy life--with family and friends, whether at school, home, or out and about in the great wide world.

This is one of the I Can Series of books that introduces and illustrates some basic yet important concepts and terms for young Muslim children. These are explained with reference to their everyday life and in the settings with which children are familiar. In simple, easy-to-understand language the series presents Islam as a living reality to be experienced in daily life. It answers many questions about Islam as faith which arise in the young, curious minds. For ages 3-5 years and the young at heart. I Can Make Du'a Anywhere! teaches us that in our everyday lives, we should always turn to Allah, seeking His help and thanking Him for all the things He gives us. Praying to Him makes our lives more meaningful and satisfying.