The first collection to address the collective transformation happening in response to the rise of social media
With the rise of web 2.0 and social media platforms taking over vast tracts of territory on the internet, the media landscape has shifted drastically in the past 20 years, transforming previously stable relationships between media creators and consumers. The Social Media Reader is the first collection to address the collective transformation with pieces on social media, peer production, copyright politics, and other aspects of contemporary internet culture from all the major thinkers in the field.
Culling a broad range and incorporating different styles of scholarship from foundational pieces and published articles to unpublished pieces, journalistic accounts, personal narratives from blogs, and whitepapers, The Social Media Reader promises to be an essential text, with contributions from Lawrence Lessig, Henry Jenkins, Clay Shirky, Tim O'Reilly, Chris Anderson, Yochai Benkler, danah boyd, and Fred von Loehmann, to name a few. It covers a wide-ranging topical terrain, much like the internet itself, with particular emphasis on collaboration and sharing, the politics of social media and social networking, Free Culture and copyright politics, and labor and ownership. Theorizing new models of collaboration, identity, commerce, copyright, ownership, and labor, these essays outline possibilities for cultural democracy that arise when the formerly passive audience becomes active cultural creators, while warning of the dystopian potential of new forms of surveillance and control.

Celebrates the fluid media landscape and its possibilities

About the Author
Michael Mandiberg is an artist and Associate Professor of Media Culture at the College of Staten Island/CUNY. He is the co-author of Digital Foundations: an Intro to Media Design and Collaborative Futures.

Reviews
"The Social Media Reader [is] groundbreaking in both form and content: evidence of the transformative power and potential of social media." * Studies in American Culture *
"The book already casts a broad net and brings in many treasures exploring issues around social media in so many fields. It makes for an excellent, vital read and makes a necessary to push into more thoughtful explorations on the topic." * Hyperallergic.com *
"Collective intelligence, shareable goods, collaborative learning, demand media: all are explained by this wonderful book, and all are embodied by it. Many of the biggest names in digital and new media studies are here in a tome ready for the classroom that collects both canonical and original work. An outstanding addition to any media scholar or enthusiasts personal library." -- Jonathan Gray,author of Show Sold Separately



Book Information
ISBN 9780814764060
Author Michael Mandiberg
Format Paperback
Page Count 299
Imprint New York University Press
Publisher New York University Press
Weight(grams) 408g