[ecrea] New book: Digital Publics

Digital Publics: Cultural Political Economy, Financialisation and 
Creative Organisational Politics (Routledge 2014)

By

John Michael Roberts, Sociology and Communications, Brunel University



Today we often hear academics, commentators, pundits, and politicians 
telling us that new media has transformed activism, providing an array 
of networks for ordinary people to become creatively involved in a 
multitude of social and political practices.



But what exactly is the ideology lurking behind these positive claims 
made about digital publics?



By recourse to various critical thinkers, including Marx, Bakhtin, 
Deleuze and Guattari, and Gramsci, Digital Publics systematically 
unpacks this ideology.



The book explains how a number of influential social theorists and 
management gurus have consistently argued that we now live in new 
informational times based in global digital systems and new financial 
networks, which create new subjectivities and power relations in 
societies. Digital Publics traces the historical roots of this thinking, 
demonstrates its flaws and offers up an alternative Marxist-inspired 
theory of the public sphere, cultural political economy and 
financialisation.



Digital Publics will appeal to scholars and students of cultural and 
media studies, critical management studies, political science and sociology.



Contents

1. Introduction: Digital publics and cultural political economy

2. From Post-Industrial Societies to Informational Societies

3. Complex, Networked Digital Publics

4. Industrial Capitalism versus Industrial Capital

5. Financialisation and Digital Publics: Beyond discourse and 
performativity

6. Financialisation, Neoliberal State Projects and the Public Sphere

7. Creative Organisational Publics

8. Conclusion: Contradictions of cultural political economy



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