Understanding the New Digital Masses: Mass Subjectivity Under Siege

By Raymond Lee

In a world that has become computerized and digitalized, we need to understand how individuals are impacted by these changes as they interrelate as online masses. Masses are known to be made up of physically and closely interacting participants, but in today's mass society they do not need to meet up at all because the proliferation of actions-at-a-distance allows new forms of behavior which bring people together as signal patterns rather than as visibly conducive agents. The project concerns the social meanings of such behaviors and their outcomes in a world that is increasingly dominated by technological innovations sponsored and promoted by big corporations and governments. It examines this form of domination in terms of phenomena such as swarming, alienation, affect theory, digital capitalism, and digital signals. The book draws on many recent critical works on media effects, affect theory, mass contagion, digital capitalism, neo-feudalism, data control, and hyper-production. The author presents a broad theory of totalitarian control in which mass subjectivity forms the medium for rule by datafication.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1837113734
• ISBN13: 9781837113736
• Release Date: July 2025
• Publisher: Ethics International Press, Inc
• Length: 190 Pages