What does online community look like in the age of social networking? How do participatory culture platforms reflect both their designers' intentions and the desires of their users? In this incisive and timely work, Adrienne L. Massanari discusses how culture is created and challenged on Reddit.com, the self-proclaimed "front page of the internet." Reddit enables the sharing of original and reposted content from around the web, and provides a platform for like-minded individuals to commune around topics of interest--everything from the joys of drinking beer in a shower (/r/showerbeer) to celebrating the pleasures of tidy penmanship (/r/penmanshipporn). Massanari's ethnographic work provides a detailed examination of the contradictions that shape Reddit's culture and how they reflect its role as an epicenter of geek culture. The book explores the ways in which community on Reddit is formed and solidified through play and humor, and the complex ways in which Redditors come together, which demonstrate a deep capacity for altruism and charitable giving, but can easily lapse into mob action. It also explores the community's troubling gender and racial politics and how some Redditors are carving out their own space on the site to fight back. 

Product Description: With the advent of new media and Web 2.0 technologies, language and discourse have taken on new meaning, and the implications of this evolution on the nature of interpersonal communication must be addressed.

Product Description: TheDirty.com, a heavily trafficked online gossip sheet, was created by an entrepreneur by the name of Nik Richie—whose Iranian parents named him Hooman Karamian.Richie’s appearances on programs like Dr. Phil, Anderson Cooper 360, Nancy Grace, and 20/20 suddenly provided him with notoriety as the Internet’s bad boy, whose site is employed by angry ex-mates (of both sexes) to post sordid and vengeful revelations online...read more

Product Description: A book-length exploration of the role of online chat in supporting the teaching and learning of foreign languages is well overdue. Tudini's new book takes a Conversation Analysis approach, which is new to online Second Language Acquisition...read more

Product Description: In an era of constrained research budgets, online interviewing opens up immense possibilities: a researcher can literally conduct a global study without ever leaving home. But more than a decade after these technologies started to become available, there are still few studies on how to utilize online interviews in research...read more

Product Description: This book provides emerging and experienced scholars the theoretical background and practical tips they need to design and conduct credible online interview research. Author Janet Salmons bridges the theoretical and the practical, with guidance for designing and conducting credible online interview research...read more

Product Description: This book examines the discursive construction of social identity of Arab-American groups on the World Wide Web, showing that ethnic identity can be interpolated in discernable ways through the mediative of internet technology.

Product Description: “When Tadpole was born, I spent a sleepless night on the maternity ward gazing intently into her inky, newborn eyes, grappling to come to terms with the indisputable fact that this was an actual person looking back at me, not just a version of Mr...read more

Contains essays discussing deconstruction by such authors as Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, and Barbara Johnson.

Product Description: The Internet is evolving into an infrastructure where applications can converse with one another in a much different way than the traditional page-serving architectures of the first generation Web. Through examples and clear explanations, Jabber Developer¿s Handbook demonstrates how Jabber, currently the world¿s most important open source messaging protocol, can be used to go beyond interactive chat and file sharing to build flexible, reliable, and powerful distributed software systems...read more

Using transcripts of actual Web site sexual encounters, a groundbreaking guide to virtual sex takes readers on a journey through the cybersex universe and explores the possibilities of changing gender or sexual orientation for online partnerships or particular chat rooms.

Product Description: Susan Rabin has flirted her way around the world, helping thousands of singles meet new people anywhere and everywhere. Now she turns her flirting savvy to cyberspace to help people pair off on-line. In Cyberflirt Rabin shares her picks of the best websites to meet people and counsels readers on how to find chat rooms in which they'll feel comfortable...read more

Explains how to create a digital representation of oneself with which to explore the most popular virtual worlds, and tells how to set up your own world

Lists palace Web sites and describes how to navigate these 3-D chat rooms