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Emphasizing the perspective of ordinary users, this book compares the uses of the internet in three centers of the global economy and world politics: China, Europe, and the United States. It examines the internet as the current centerpiece of communication systems encompassing interpersonal communication, mass communication, and social networking.
The internet is unique as a medium in that it hosts both "old" media and "new" media. As such, it also integrates the prototypes of one-to-one (interpersonal) and one-to-many (broadcast) along with many-to-many (social media) and many-to-one (surveillance) communication. This book considers how all these media and communicative practices are embedded in social structures, cultural traditions, and historical legacies of place. Comparing conditions in China, Europe, and the United States, the chapters provide an overview of the distinctive regulatory regimes framing the internet and its local uses, the place of the internet in everyday life in each setting, and how the internet serves as a resource for political, economic, and cultural actions and interactions.
Linking comparative analysis of media and social systems with ethnographic studies of internet usage on the ground, this book will be of particular interest to students and scholars working in global media, intercultural communication, and internet studies.
List of contents
1 From media systems to communication systems 2 The comminicative state of states 3 The internet and other media of communication 4 Being social 5 How to do things with media 6 What media still do to people 7 Communication systems as scientific and normative agendas 8 Methodological appendix
About the author
Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Professor, Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Publications include A Theory of Communication and Justice (Routledge, 2021), and Media Convergence: The Three Degrees of Network, Mass, and Interpersonal Communication, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2022).
Rasmus Helles, Associate Professor, Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His work has appeared in New Media & Society, Surveillance & Society, the International Journal of Communication, and the European Journal of Communication.
Summary
Emphasizing the perspective of ordinary users, this book compares the uses of the internet in three centers of the global economy and world politics: China, Europe, and the United States. It examines the internet as the current centerpiece of communication systems.
