[Air-L] Book Announcement: CAMGIRLS: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks

[Terri Senft]

Hi Friends,

So, we're all about to head to Copenhagen and I just realized I never
announced my book on AIR-L. This is a problem, as I expect people to
be buying me beer to celebrate.

The title is CAMGIRLS: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social
Networks (Peter Lang Publishers.)  If you are teaching or researching
in the areas of social networks, visual communications, online ethics,
sexuality and/or gender, this may be a book for you. There are a
couple of ways to get hold of it:


--You can order it from Amazon for about 2/3 the publisher's list
price at http://tinyurl.com/3r5pkl

--You can get it at the AoIR conference (Lang usually has a table there; yes?)

--If you think you'd like to write a review or adopt it for a class,
drop me a line and I will GIVE you a copy, for free, even!

A description of the book is below, as are links to some downloadable chapters.

See you in Copenhagen!!

Terri Senft

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DESCRIPTION

It's 10 a.m. on any given day, and the windows of the Web are wide
open.  On YouTube,  a group of twelve-year-old girls have filmed
themselves imitating Destiny's Child. At Stickam.com, an academic is
puzzling out his next day's lecture on a live video stream. On
LiveJournal,  bloggers are reading random strangers' diary entries.
And on Facebook, parents are posting updates on their children's lives
for the world to see.

This self-documentation craze isn't new.  Since the 1990s it has been
the stock in trade of camgirls: women with web cams who have chosen to
broadcast their lives to anyone with an interest in watching.
Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks
examines the lives of some of the earliest camgirls, beta-testers for
technologies and conditions that are now a natural part of our media
landscape … and women who cultivated a measure of fame in the process.

To their fans, camgirls are honest, refreshing, and even
revolutionary. To their detractors, they are annoying, narcissistic,
and often obscene. The first camgirls were the pioneers of today's era
of 'microcelebrity': a time in which everyone has the potential to be
famous—to fifteen people.

 Camgirls is the result of four years of ethnographic research with
more than fifty camgirls and hundreds of viewers.  Drawing from
writers as diverse as Douglas Holt (on branding) to P. David Marshall
(on celebrity) to Donna Haraway (on cyborgs) to Barry Wellman (on
networked individualism) to Gayatri Spivak (on strategic essentialism)
to David Angelides (on teen sexuality), it offers a fresh historical
and contemporary analysis that speaks to the fields of internet,
media, film, cultural,  and women's studies.

Camgirls is an exploration of the construction and presentation of the
self in the online era --- of how we establish and maintain ourselves
as people and as personae when we live our lives online. It asks why
women are encouraged to express themselves through confession,
celebrity and sexual display, yet punished with censure and backlash
when their representation becomes 'too much' to handle.  The book is
written in lively, engaging, reader-friendly prose and is suitable for
both undergraduate and postgraduate audiences.


LIST OF CHAPTERS

--Introduction: The Personal as Political in the Age of the Global Brand
(download at www.terrisenft.net/camgirls/chapters/intro.pdf)

--Chapter 1: Keeping it Real on the Web: Authenticity, Celebrity, Branding
(download at www.terrisenft.net/camgirls/chapters/ch1.pdf)

--Chapter 2: I'd Rather be a Camgirl than a Cyborg: The Future of
Feminism on the Web

--Chapter 3: Being and Acting Online: From Telepresence to Tele-ethicality

 --Chapter 4: The Public, the Private and the Pornographic
(download at www.terrisenft.net/camgirls/chapters/ch4.pdf)

--Chapter 5: I am a Network: From 'Friends' to Friends

-- Conclusion: Moving from 'Sisters' to Sisters


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Theresa M. Senft is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the
University of East London, U.K.  Her books include History of the
Internet, 1843-Present (co-author), and a special issue of Women &
Performance devoted to sexuality and cyberspace (co-editor). Terri has
published in The New York Times, appeared on U.S. National Public
Radio, and been featured in the documentary Webcam Girls. She brings
the perspective of a former camgirl to the book as well,  having
lived with a web camera in her house for a year as a part of her
research.



--
Dr. Theresa M. Senft
Senior Lecturer, Media Studies
School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies
University of East London
Docklands Campus
4-6 University Way
London E162RD

www.terrisenft.net
www.livejournal.com/users/tsenft