Browse Reviews
Digital Media Ethics by Charles Ess
By Meghan Dougherty, Ph.D.
September 22, 2010
Polity Press's "Digital Media and Society Series" aims to explore how new technologies are fundamentally changing the ways we communicate. Digital Media Ethics by Charles Ess does just that. Ess's fairly unique approach is to apply a particular ethical construct to bound discussion of concepts around certain sticky examples described in each chapter. Each chapter includes a chapter overview, a case study, discussion questions, and prompts for writing and reflection exercises. Ess's first five…
Kids and Credibility by Andrew J. Flanagin & Miriam J. Metzger
By Rik Crutzen, Ph.D.
December 1, 2010
The MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, published by the MIT Press, present findings from current research on how young people learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life. How well, for example, do children navigate the ocean of information that is available online? The enormous variety of Web-based resources represents both opportunities and challenges for Internet-savvy kids. Kids and Credibility by Andrew Flanagin and Miriam Metzger reports on the first…
Piracy by Adrian Johns
By Kim Ballard, Ph.D.
May 5, 2011
The contemporary discourse surrounding the issues of copyright law, file-sharing, and intellectual property might lead you to believe that piracy is a relatively recent endeavor, one which was ushered in by the digital age, the Internet and Web, the proliferation of digital devices, and the ease with which digital files can be copied, distributed, and shared among users. However, Adrian Johns’ book Piracy (published by The University of Chicago Press) reveals that piracy, as currently defined,…
Wired Shut by Tarleton Gillespie
By Jacquelyn Marie Erdman
May 6, 2012
Wired Shut paints a picture on how the role of copyright law has drastically changed in regards to technology and therefore how it has started to greatly affect online culture. After an introduction to the topic, the book briefly summarizes copyright law and the changes it has undertook through the last few centuries, up to the development and implementation of DRM.
I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did by Lori Andrews
By Meg Leta Ambrose
February 21, 2013
Lori Andrews' book "I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy" (2012) fits nicely on the bookshelf between Daniel Solove’s "The Future of Reputation" and Viktor Mayer-Schonberger’s "Delete." While the title and the proposed constitution focus on social networking sites, Andrews discusses the dangers that can arise from intentionally sharing information online as well as the minute data collection that occurs behind the scenes, which exist in most areas…
We Are Anonymous by Parmy Olson
By Jenn Burleson Mackay
February 27, 2013
Parmy Olson’s fascinating book "We Are Anonymous" will prompt readers to concoct impossible-to-remember passwords and to disguise their online identities as it takes them on an excursion through the muddy cyber land of hackers. In their attempts to take on governments and ridicule the gullible, they take few prisoners. Members of the loosely organized collective Anonymous have been “credited” with a plethora of cyber attacks, including one on Paypal that cost the company millions of dollars.