Archive for January 2018

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[ecrea] new books: Open TV and Antisocial Media from the Postmillennial Pop Series

Mon Jan 08 22:10:10 GMT 2018




Two new publications from the Postmillennial Pop <https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/postmillennial-pop> series published by New York University Press are now available:

**

*Open TV***

*Innovation beyond Hollywood and the Rise of Web Television***

/Aymar Jean Christian///

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/open-tv

   "Christian’s account of networked television is thrilling, current, and deep.  He narrates a period when the story is up for grabs and even the 'postnetwork' era as we know it is on its way to becoming something else through the creativity and vitality of people old TV has left behind.  Using stories full of driven energy yet equally steeped in a scholar’s recognition of the nature of the industry, this is one of the most remarkable books in television studies in quite some time."--Lisa Henderson, author of /Love and Money: Queers, Class, and Cultural Production /

   “Aymar Jean Christian shows us the need to reinvent television, a medium, he says, that has never fully represented the United States. Deeply engaged in the most pressing debates about the future of televisual and web culture, and written in sparkling prose, this book is chock full of inspiring stories of those working to make ‘open TV,’ this time, online, for all Americans.”--Stuart Cunningham, author of /Hidden Innovation: Industry, Policy and the Creative Sector///

How the internet transformed television

   Before HBO’s hit show Insecure, Issa Rae’s comedy about being a nerdy black woman debuted as a YouTube web series /The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl/, her response to the absence of diverse black characters on the small screen. /Broad City/, a feminist sitcom now on Comedy Central, originated as a web series on YouTube, developed directly out of funny women Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson’s real-life friendship. These unconventional stories took advantage of the freedom afforded outside the traditional television system: online.

/Open TV/ shows how we have left “the network era” far behind and entered the networked era, with the web opening up new possibilities for independent producers, entrepreneurs, and media audiences. Based on interviews with writers, producers, show-runners, and network executives, visits to festivals and award shows, and the experience of producing his own series, Aymar Jean Christian argues that the web brought innovation to television by opening up series development to new producers, fans, and sponsors that had previously been excluded. Online access to distribution provides creative freedom for indie producers, allows for more diverse storytelling from marginalized communities, and introduces new ways of releasing and awarding shows.

/Open TV/is essential reading for anyone interested in the changing environment of television and how the internet can inspire alternatives to what’s on TV tonight.

*Aymar Jean Christian*is an assistant professor at Northwestern University and Peabody Fellow. His work on television has been published in numerous journals, including /The International Journal of Communication, Cinema Journal, /and /Continuum/. He leads /Open TV/ (beta), a platform for independent artists, whose partners have included the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and City of Chicago.

New York University Press | Postmillennial Pop | January 2018| 320pp | 9781479815975 | PB | £23.99*

20% discount with this code: CSL18ASOTV **

**

*Antisocial Media***

*Anxious Labor in the Digital Economy***

/Greg Goldberg///

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/antisocial-media

   “/Antisocial Media/ offers a bold analysis of anxieties about recent transformations in labor—facilitated by the so-called sharing or gig economy—as epistemic problems. Rooted in queer theory’s critiques of normativity, Goldberg’s polemical book has the potential to change the conversations about work in American studies, labor studies, and digital media studies by asking us to question the value of social relations themselves.”--Lucas Hilderbrand, author of /Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright/

   “Smart, perverse, disorienting—/Antisocial Media/ resists a desire for 'the social' in pursuit of more surprising, and radical, connections. As a serious theorist and playful sociologist, Goldberg challenges readers to question the normative demand to work, and recognize the anxious affect structuring contemporary critiques of digitally-mediated shifts in labor and leisure. Rarely has queer thought risked being so irresponsible, and so insistently pleasurable.”--/Jackie Orr,author of Panic Diaries: A Geneaology of Panic Disorder/

   The debate surrounding the transformation of work at the hands of digital technology and the anxieties brought forth by automation, the sharing economy, and the exploitation of leisure

   We have been told that digital technology is now threatening the workplace as we know it, that advances in computing and robotics will soon make human labor obsolete, that the sharing economy, exemplified by Uber and Airbnb, will degrade the few jobs that remain, and that the boundaries between work and play are collapsing as Facebook and Instagram infiltrate our free time.

   In this timely critique, Greg Goldberg examines the fear that work is being eviscerated by digital technology. He argues that it is not actually the degradation or disappearance of work that is so troubling, but rather the underlying notion that society itself is under attack, and more specifically the bonds of responsibility on which social relations depend. Rather than rushing to the defense of the social, however, Goldberg instead imagines the appeal of refusing the hard work of being a responsible and productive member of society.

*Greg Goldberg is*Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Wesleyan University, and Affiliated Fellow at Yale University’s Information Society Project. His work has appeared in /New Media & Society, WSQ, ephemera/, and on the /Huffington Post/, and in the edited collections /The Affective Turn/ and /Rethinking the Innovation Economy/.

New York University Press | Postmillennial Pop | January 2018| 224pp | 9781479821907 | PB | £21.99*

20% discount with this code: CSL18ASOTV**

*Price subject to change.

  **Offer excludes the USA, South America and Australia.


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