Debates for the Digital Age

By evaluating the Internet's impact on key cultural issues of the day, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the seismic technological and cultural shifts the Internet has created in contemporary society. Books about Internet culture usually focus on the people, places, sites, and memes that constitute the "cutting-edge" at the time the book is written. That approach, alas, renders such volumes quickly obsolete. This provocative work, on the other hand, focuses on overarching themes that will remain relevant for the long term. The insights it shares will highlight the tremendous impact of the Internet on modern civilization-and individual lives-well after specific players and sites have fallen out of favor. Content is presented in two volumes. The first emphasizes the positive impact of Internet culture-for example, 24-hour access to information, music, books, merchandise, employment opportunities, and even romance. The second discusses the Internet's darker consequences, such as a demand for instant news that often pushes journalists to prioritize being first over being right, online scams, and invasions of privacy that can affect anyone who banks, shops, pays bills, or posts online. Readers of the set will clearly understand how the Internet has revolutionized communications and redefined human interaction, coming away with a unique appreciation of the realities of today's digital world-for better and for worse.

Danielle Sarver Coombs, PhD, is associate director and associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kent State University.
Simon Collister is senior lecturer in the School of Media at London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London.

Volume 2. The Bad and the Ugly
Introducing the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Our Online World
Simon Collister
PART I ACCESSIBILITY
1. Searching for the Schoolhouse Gate in Cyberspace
Mark Goodman
2. Internet Filters in Schools: More than Simply Annoying to Students
Candace Perkins Bowen
3. Bring the Hate: Problematic Internet Use from Fans Toward Athletes
Jimmy Sanderson
4. Uploading Ideology: Reading Egyptian Social Capital Using Facebook Lenses
Alamira Samah Farag Abd-Elfattah Saleh and Nermeen N. Alazrak
PART II DEMOCRATIZATION
5. Are All Sources Really Equal? Credibility and the News, or the Shift from the Age of Deference to the Age of Reference
Jan Leach
6. The Boundaries of Digital Dissent: Assessing the War on Hacktivism
Jason L. Jarvis
7. "Hands Up, Don't Shoot": Social Media As a Site of Government (Dis)Trust
Sarah Turner McGowen
8. Trial by Social Media: How Misleading Media and Ideological Protests Led to Disastrous Results in The State of Florida v. George Zimmerman
Joshua Daniel Phillips
9. The Digital Migration of Anti-Immigration Rhetoric: Anxiety, Addressivity, and Networked Public Culture
Maggie Franz
PART III COMMUNITY AND GLOBALIZATION
10. Participation Fetishism in the Digital Age
Brent Kice
11. "Lose a Stone or Two Before You Start Dating": Power and the Construction of Bodies in Online Dating
Shana Kopaczewski
12. Digital Deception: Online Dating, Identity Development, and Misrepresentation
Justin Lagore
13. For Love or Money: Exploring Personal Matrimony Ads, Sugar Web Sites, and Catfishing through Social Exchange Theory
Carol A. Savery and Rekha Sharma
14. "Vomitorium of Venom": Framing Culpable Youth, Bewildered Adults, and the Death of Amanda Todd
Michelle Stack
15. Finding Fascism in the Comments Section: Online Responses to Viral Videos of the Transportation Security Administration
George F. McHendry Jr.
Index
About the Editors and Contributors