[Air-L] Book Announcement: Going Viral

[Karine Nahon]

Hi AoIR-ists,

* I apologize in advance for the self-promoting email*

Our first book 'Going Viral' has just been published by Polity.

The book is an interdisciplinary look (relying heavily on social science) of virality as a process. The book discusses how to identify information that goes viral, what makes something go viral, and the impact virality has on individuals and society.  Virality is a consequence of dialogues and tensions among many forces. The main tension occurs between emergent sharing patterns of users (usually constituted through bottom-up processes) and the control mechanisms exerted on information flows (usually driven by top-down processes, e.g. network gatekeeping and social and network structures). We discuss these tensions in the book.  The book also discusses virality as a mechanism that reproduces social norms, but at the same time a mechanism that challenges institutions and their structure. Viral events may play a role in events that destabilize traditional institutions not only by spreading information, but also by bringing people together who share common concerns or grievances. Since virality spreads quickly and is resistant to control, it may have the power to circumvent the regulatory power of the prevailing social structure.
AoIR has been one of my main intellectual homes, and if you happen to read the book, I would love to hear what you think.
More information about the book can be found here http://eKarine.org/goingviral
Happy holidays everyone,
Karine

----------------------------
Karine Nahon
Author of 'Going Viral<http://www.amazon.com/Going-Viral-Karine-Nahon/dp/0745671292>', Forthcoming: October 2013
http://eKarine.org<http://ekarine.org/>
http://twitter.com/karineb

Associate Professor
The Information School
SoMe (Social Media) Lab (http://SoMeLab.net)
retroV (Virality of Information) research group (http://retroV.org<http://retrov.org/>)
University of Washington