[Air-L] My new book - Media Distortions - is OUT and OPEN ACCESS

[Carmi, Elinor]

Hi everyone,


In what seems to be the worst time in a century, I'm mildly excited to announce my book is finally out, and it is OPEN ACCESS!

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 me.

If you're interested in an inspection/review copy please write back to (don't 'reply all' although spamming everyone is a duty when it comes to this book 😉 me and I'll connect you with the publisher to get your copy.

I want to thank Liverpool University for making this book open access!

I hope you enjoy and May the Schwartz be with you.
Stay healthy and take care in your social distancing.

Dr. Elinor Carmi,
Postdoc Research Associate - Digital Media & Society,
Department of Communication and Media,
Faculty of the Humanities and Social Sciences,
School of the Arts, Liverpool University, UK.
https://elinorcarmi.com<https://elinorcarmi.com/>
Twitter: @Elinor_Carmi