AUSTRALIA-WIDE LOW FLAT RATE $9.90

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

Signal Traffic

Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures

Lisa Parks Nicole Starosielski Charles R. Acland Paul Dourish

$60.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

English
University of Illinois Press
14 May 2015
The contributors to Signal Traffic investigate how the material artifacts of media infrastructure--transoceanic cables, mobile telephone towers, Internet data centers, and the like--intersect with everyday life. Essayists confront the multiple and hybrid forms networks take, the different ways networks are imagined and engaged with by publics around the world, their local effects, and what human beings experience when a network fails. Some contributors explore the physical objects and industrial relations that make up an infrastructure. Others venture into the marginalized communities orphaned from the knowledge economies, technological literacies, and epistemological questions linked to infrastructural formation and use. The wide-ranging insights delineate the oft-ignored contrasts between industrialized and developing regions, rich and poor areas, and urban and rural settings, bringing technological differences into focus.

Contributors include Charles R. Acland, Paul Dourish, Sarah Harris, Jennifer Holt and Patrick Vonderau, Shannon Mattern, Toby Miller, Lisa Parks, Christian Sandvig, Nicole Starosielski, Jonathan Sterne, and Helga Tawil-Souri.
Contributions by:   , ,
Edited by:   ,
Imprint:   University of Illinois Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm,  Spine: 23mm
Weight:   513g
ISBN:   9780252080876
ISBN 10:   0252080874
Series:   The Geopolitics of Information
Pages:   304
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Lisa Parks is director of the Center for Information Technology and Society, professor of film and media studies at University of California at Santa Barbara, and winner of a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship. She is the author of Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual. Nicole Starosielski is assistant professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University.

Reviews for Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures

In an age when we are led to believe that information and communication are virtual rather than material, Signal Traffic provides a much-needed corrective, reminding us that behind the pixels and mp3s lie extensive and complex infrastructures that shape how we inhabit the emerging media environment. This book revives the tradition of critical attention to material infrastructure in media and communication studies, and not a moment too soon. --Darin Barney, author of The Network Society The first and only collection of its kind I know. This book is going to be a big deal, both nationally and internationally. --Vicki A. Mayer, author of Below the Line: Producers and Production Studies in the New Television Economy Finally, a definitive collection on infrastructure studies. Moving from compression to geopolitics to platforms, this book crystalizes what's at stake in moving media studies away from focusing on what appears on our screen towards how content travels and, through this movement, is shaped and re-shaped in profound ways. --Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics


  • Winner of <DIV>Best Edited Collection Award, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), 2015-2016.</DIV> 2016

See Also