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Boasting trillion-dollar companies, the digital economy profits from our emotions, our relationships with each other, and the ways we interact with the world.
In this timely book, Tim Jordan deftly explores the workings of the digital economy. He discusses the hype and significance surrounding its activities and practices in order to outline important concepts, theory, and policy questions. Through a variety of in-depth case studies, he examines the areas of search, social media, service providers, free economic activity, and digital gaming. Companies discussed include Google, Baidu, Uber, Bitcoin, Wikipedia, Fortnight, and World of Warcraft. Jordan argues that the digital economy is not concerned primarily with selling products, but relies instead on creating communities that can be read by software and algorithms. Profit is then extracted through targeted advertising, subscriptions, misleading 'purchases', and service relations.
The Digital Economy is an important reference for students and scholars getting to grips with this enormous contemporary phenomenon.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: The Meaning of the Digital Economy
2 Search
3 Social Media
4 Taxis, Hotels and Blockchains
5 Free Online Economies
6 Online Games
7 Profit, Labour, Production and Consumption
8 Defining the Digital Economy
9 Policy
10 Conclusion
References
Index
About the author
Tim Jordan is Professor of Digital Cultures at the University of Sussex
Summary
Boasting trillion-dollar companies, the digital economy profits from our emotions, our relationships with each other, and the ways we interact with the world.
In this timely book, Tim Jordan deftly explores the workings of the digital economy. He discusses the hype and significance surrounding its activities and practices in order to outline important concepts, theory, and policy questions. Through a variety of in-depth case studies, he examines the areas of search, social media, service providers, free economic activity, and digital gaming. Companies discussed include Google, Baidu, Uber, Bitcoin, Wikipedia, Fortnight, and World of Warcraft. Jordan argues that the digital economy is not concerned primarily with selling products, but relies instead on creating communities that can be read by software and algorithms. Profit is then extracted through targeted advertising, subscriptions, misleading 'purchases', and service relations.
The Digital Economy is an important reference for students and scholars getting to grips with this enormous contemporary phenomenon.
Report
'A lively excursion across the varied terrains of the "digital economy", in which the author argues that it's not platform technologies that drive our digital searching, working, socialising and gaming, but our deep embeddedness in shared social practices, habits and collective communities.'
Mark Banks, University of Leicester
'Writing in a personal and lively style, Tim Jordan intelligently explores the digital economic practices that constitute search, social media, online gaming and more. Tracing the perspectives, tactics and activities of users, advertisers and platforms, he separates the hype from the reality.'
Thomas Poell, University of Amsterdam
