The Dark Social: Online Practices of Resistance, Motility and Power

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Toija Cinque (Deakin University, Australia) Alexia Maddox (La Trobe University, Australia)

The Dark Social

Online Practices of Resistance, Motility and Power

Toija Cinque (Deakin University, Australia), Alexia Maddox (La Trobe University, Australia), Robert W. Gehl (York University, Canada)

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English

Routledge
14 April 2025

Communication studies; Cultural studies; Media studies; Ethical & social aspects of computing; Digital lifestyle

This book explores how people interact online through anonymous communication in encrypted, hidden, or otherwise obscured online spaces. Beyond the Dark Web itself, this book examines how the concept of ‘dark social’ broadens the possibilities for examining notions of darkness and sociality in the age of digitality and datafied life. The authors take into account technical, moral, ethical, and pragmatic responses to ourselves and communities seeking to be/belong in/of/ the dark.

Scholarship on the Darknet and Dark Social Spaces tends to focus on the uses of encryption and other privacy-enhancing technologies to engender resistance acts. Such understandings of the dark social are naturally in tension with social and political theories which argue that for politics and ‘acts’ to matter they must appear in the public light. They are also in tension with popular narratives of the ‘dark recesses of the web’ which are disparaged by structural powers who seek to keep their subjects knowable and locatable on the clear web. The binary of dark versus light is challenged in this book. The authors’ provocation is that practices of ‘dark’ resistance, motility and power are enacted by emerging data cultures. This book draws together scholarship, activism, and creativity to push past conceptual binary positions and create new approaches to darknet and dark social studies.

The Dark Social: Online Practices of Resistance, Motility and Power will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of media studies, cultural studies, communication studies, research methods, and sociology. This book was originally published as a special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.

Edited by: Toija Cinque (Deakin University Australia), Alexia Maddox (La Trobe University, Australia), Robert W. Gehl (York University, Canada)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 246mm, Width: 174mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9781032593470
ISBN 10: 1032593474
Pages: 166
Publication Date: 14 April 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Toija Cinque is Associate Professor of Communications (Digital Media) at Deakin University, Australia. Alexia Maddox is Senior Lecturer in Pedagogy and Education Futures, School of Education at La Trobe University, Australia. Robert W. Gehl is the Ontario Research Chair of Digital Governance for Social Justice at York University in Canada.