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

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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