Web.Studies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age

This exciting and engaging book explores the ways in which people, organizations, and companies are using the Internet to project their interests and concerns into the world. Beginning with an introduction to cyberculture studies and ways to studying the Web, Web.Studies moves on to consider everyday web life, Web art and culture, Web business, and global Web politics and protest. Topics covered range from fan Web sites, web identities, and Web design trends, to global capitalism and Web allure, cybercrime and the politics of hacking and propaganda warfare via the Web. Throughout the book are suggestions for ways in which students can use the Web to further their own research. While there has been an explosion of books on the Internet, this is the first to offer students and general readers a comprehensive and coherent introduction to the new Web-based media culture.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0340760494
• ISBN13: 9780340760499
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Hodder Education Publishers
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.9" x 5.9"

Customer Reviews

Excellent, varied, up-to-date and very readable

This is an excellent book about the Web and Web culture. It's much more readable than other books in this area and it covers an impressive range of topics. Would be very useful on courses in this area, I would expect, but I read it as a 'lay' reader and found it both educational and enjoyable!

'Real' web studies. Hooray!

David Gauntlett has compiled an excellent and wide ranging book of/about World Wide Web studies.His introduction is energetic, ambitious and cheeky. His enthusiasm is refreshing and contagious, and his points about the lack of web-specific publications, and about the dearth of interesting media studies, are accurate.I'm not sure that he's right about web studies as the antidote, but this book might just shame you (me) into building a website, particulary if you are writing about/ teaching/ studying the web. The book is divided into Four Parts. 'Web Studies'; 'Web Life, Arts and Culture'; 'Web Business', 'Global Web Communities, Politics and Protest'.There are several chapters in each, which were selected from 140 proposals. The structure works well, with issues from web design to commercial futures to web crime to web democracy all getting careful analysis. It is a splendid resource for teaching undergraduate courses; and deserves to be much quoted in postgraduate work and research.Not only does the book concentrate on the Web rather than the vaguer or larger categories of the virtual, the cyber or the Internet, the different chapters raise theoretical issues by presenting specific case studies.The web and Indian Diaspora; BBC goes Online, artists on the web. I especially liked 'The Teacher Review Debate' which stimulates thinking about power relations on and off the web. No ungrounded abstract generalities here, no cyberhype, no virtual thinking. What a relief! At last! Hooray! Gripping reading.At the end of each chapter is a list of useful websites, so be prepared for an hour or seven of web surfing along with your favourite chapters. The writing styles vary with the authors, and all are polished and approachable.If you are a media studies or cultural studies academic, if you are a media studies or cultural studies student, or if you use the web; you'll find plenty to interest you in this book. Passion, fun, fascinating theory and cocking a snook all in the one tome. I liked it a lot, really (and/not virtually).