[Commlist] New book - Media Distortions: Understanding the Power Behind Spam, Noise and Other Deviant Media

NEW OPEN ACCESS BOOK

*Media Distortions: Understanding the Power Behind Spam, Noise and Other 
Deviant Media (Digital Formation Series, Peter Lang)*

_Here's the blurb_:

Media Distortions is about the power behind the production of deviant 
media categories. It shows the politics behind categories we take for 
granted such as spam and noise, and what it means to our broader 
understanding of, and engagement with media. The book synthesizes media 
theory, sound studies, science and technology studies (STS), feminist 
technoscience, and software studies into a new composition to explore 
media power. Media Distortions argues that using sound as a conceptual 
framework is more useful due to its ability to cross boundaries and 
strategically move between multiple spaces—which is essential for 
multi-layered mediated spaces.

Drawing on repositories of legal, technical and archival sources, the 
book amplifies three stories about the construction and negotiation of 
the ‘deviant’ in media. The book starts in the early 20th century with 
Bell Telephone’s production of noise, tuning into the training of their 
telephone operators and their involvement with the Noise Abatement 
Commission in New York City. The next story jumps several decades to the 
early 2000s focusing on web metric standardization in the European Union 
and shows how the digital advertising industry constructed web-cookies 
as legitimate communication while making spam illegal. The final story 
focuses on the recent decade and the way Facebook filters out antisocial 
behaviors to engineer a sociality that produces more value. These 
stories show how deviant categories re-draw boundaries between human and 
non-human, public and private spaces, and importantly, social and 
antisocial.

Check out the book's website - https://media-distortions.net/ - where 
you can find:

1. A link to download the book for FREE.

2. More info about the book.

3. What the wonderful endorsers - scholars who have inspired my work 
since the beginning - had to say about the book, THANK YOU Tiziana 
Terranova, Evelyn Ruppert, Jussi Parikka and Robert W. Ghel!

4. The book's playlist with songs/tracks that will bring the dark 
atmosphere of the book to you, so you can dance in between the sections. 
For the advanced music snobs who think they can create a better playlist 
- this is the time to make a positive use of your reviewer 2 energy and 
send me your playlist interpretation of the book so I can add them to 
the website!

5. I also kept my shattered dreams, I mean USA book tour that had to be 
cancelled due to the Coronavirus but which will be rescheduled for the 
fall, if humanity will survive.

6. More info about Elinor Carmi.
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