The Blurred Blogger


Book Description

Tom and his friends track down a mysterious blogger who pushes pranks too far in this seventh novel in Tom Swift Inventors’ Academy—perfect for fans of The Hardy Boys or Alex Rider series. A series of videos called “The Not-so-Swift Academy” are the talk of Tom Swift’s tech-focused school. A mysterious host whose face is blurred shows hidden camera footage of different students being pranked—from a rubber tarantula leaping out of one of the terrariums to water flash freezing. Tom and his classmates are on edge, wondering which unlucky student will be the star of the next episode. They’re on the lookout for hidden cameras and searching for signs of the next prank around every corner and behind every locker door. Tired of the tension, Sam decides to take matters in her own hands. She’s going to bust the blogger by studying the videos for clues. But as Sam pieces the clues together, she unveils the biggest prank of all—someone’s trying to frame her for the videos! Can Tom and his friends unmask the blurred blogger and clear Sam’s name before they become the targets of the prankster’s increasingly nefarious stunts?




The Naked Blogger of Cairo


Book Description

A Times Higher Education Book of the Year Uprisings spread like wildfire across the Arab world from 2010 to 2012, fueled by a desire for popular sovereignty. In Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere, protesters flooded the streets and the media, voicing dissent through slogans, graffiti, puppetry, videos, and satire that called for the overthrow of dictators and the regimes that sustained them. Investigating what drives people to risk everything to express themselves in rebellious art, The Naked Blogger of Cairo uncovers the creative insurgency at the heart of the Arab uprisings. “A deep dive into the cultural politics of the Arab uprisings...Kraidy’s sharp insights and rich descriptions of a new Arab generation’s irrepressible creative urges will amply reward the effort. Reading Kraidy’s accounts of the politically charted cultural gambits of wired Arab youth rekindles some of the seemingly lost spirit of the early days of the Arab uprisings and offers hope for the future.” —Marc Lynch, Washington Post “The Naked Blogger of Cairo is a superb and important work not just for scholars but for anyone who cares about the relationships between art, the body, and revolution.” —Hans Rollman, PopMatters




Celeb 2.0


Book Description

This volume looks at how the new capabilities of Web 2.0 are changing the worlds of celebrity fandom and gossip. With Ashton Kutcher's record-breaking "tweeting" more famous than his films, and Perez Hilton actually getting more attention than Paris, the actress often covered in his blog, the worlds of celebrity celebration and online social networking are pushing the public's crush on the famous and infamous into overdrive. Celeb 2.0: How Social Media Foster Our Fascination with Popular Culture explores this phenomenon. Celeb 2.0 looks at how blogs, video sharing sites, user-news sites, social networks, and message boards are fueling America's already voracious consumption of pop culture. Full of fascinating insights and interviews, the book looks at how celebrities use blogs, Twitter, and other tools, how YouTube and other sites create celebrity, how Web 2.0 shortens the distance between fans and stars, and how the new social media influences news reporting and series television.




Depth Perception


Book Description

Tom and his friends’ service project cleaning up a local lake becomes a deep dive into suspicious behavior in in the eighth novel in Tom Swift Inventors’ Academy—perfect for fans of The Hardy Boys or Alex Rider. Tom and his friends are excited to be spending their spring break out at Lake Carlopa, where they’ll be camping and testing inventions to clean up the shores as part of a service project sponsored by Swift Enterprises. Rock star of the engineering world Jonathan J. Jefferson is even set to make an appearance as part of the event. Tom’s also really looking forward to using the trip as an opportunity to test out his most ambitious creation yet—a two-man submarine! Lake Carlopa is a haven for scuba divers because of its clear waters, and it will be the perfect place for the sub’s maiden voyage. But when a scuba diving team shows up at the campsite and seems to be there for more than just pleasure diving, Tom and his friends wonder what they’re really up to. Are the divers using the exhibition as cover for something more sinister?




Bloggerati, Twitterati


Book Description

As timely as the latest tweet, this book tracks the digital revolution as a paradigm shift that is transforming popular culture in as yet unforeseen ways. Bloggerati, Twitterati: How Blogs and Twitter Are Transforming Popular Culture explores the ongoing digital revolution and examines the way it is changing—and will change—the way people live and communicate. Starting from the proposition that the Internet is now the center of popular culture, the book offers descriptions of blogs and Twitter and the online behavior they foster. It looks at the demographics of users and the impact of the Internet on knowledge, thinking, writing, politics, and journalism. A primary focus is on the way blogs and tweets are opening up communication to the people, free from gatekeepers and sanctioned rhetoric. The other side of the coin is the online hijacking of the news and its potential for spreading misinformation and fomenting polarization, topics that are analyzed even as the situation continues to evolve. Finally, the book gathers predictions from cultural critics about the future of digital popular culture and makes a few predictions of its own.




Navigating Digital Health Landscapes


Book Description

Navigating Digital Health Landscapes explores how users navigate the internet when searching for health information. It is the first book to conceptualise the internet as a landscape and the ways in which people navigate this digital world, including the complex entanglements between on and offline domains. It does so through a range of disciplinary perspectives from expert contributors across STS (science and technology studies), social anthropology, biomedicine, ethics and law, linguistics, social policy and computer scientists working in more technical aspects of tracking and visualising data and information on the internet. The book provides a unique and valuable contribution for those wishing to understand how digital technologies are affecting the design, implementation and use of digital systems to manage health information in different contexts.




Professional Blogging For Dummies


Book Description

Take your hobby to the next level and turn your blog into real income Anyone who blogs knows that it is a fun, creative way for sharing thoughts and opinions. Now imagine making money from that hobby! This practical, how-to guide shows you how you can get serious about using your blog and implement advertising, sponsorship, partnerships, and affiliate marketing options to turn your hobby into extra income, or even a full-time career. Helpful examples and featured articles with topic experts and bloggers who have built successful business demonstrate how to promote your business or build a blog-based business. Discusses finding your niche, adhering to legal considerations, establishing your disclosure and privacy policies, and dealing responsibly with review requests Introduces ideas for advertising and other monetization options and recommends promotional avenues to explore Suggests creative ways to keep your blog fresh, unique, and interesting Provides tips for monitoring and measuring your success Professional Blogging For Dummies opens the door to a world of money-making blogging possibilities!




Analyzing Genres in Political Communication


Book Description

Featuring contributions by leading specialists in the field, the volume is a survey of cutting edge research in genres in political discourse. Since, as is demonstrated, “political genres” reveal many of the problems pertaining to the analysis of communicative genres in general, it is also a state-of-the-art addition to contemporary genre theory. The book offers new methodological, theoretical and empirical insights in both the long-established genres (speeches, interviews, policy documents, etc.), and the modern, rapidly-evolving generic forms, such as online political ads or weblogs. The chapters, which engage in timely issues of genre mediatization, hybridity, multimodality, and the mixing of discursive styles, come from a broad range of perspectives spanning Critical Discourse Studies, pragmatics, cognitive psychology, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and media studies. As such, they constitute essential reading for anyone seeking an interdisciplinary yet coherent research agenda within the vast and complex territory of today’s forms of political communication.




A Virtual Love


Book Description

'A compelling and very entertaining look at the complexities of our hyperreal age, an insightful and witty exploration of the disconnect between image and reality, truth and appearance and whether love and sincere sentiment can overcome the short term thrills of social media.'James MillerFor Jeff Brennan, juggling multiple identities is a way of life.Online he has dozens of different personalities and switches easily between them. Offline, he shows different faces to different people: the caring grandson, the angry eco-protester, the bored IT consultant.So when the beautiful Marie mistakes him for a famous blogger, he thinks nothing of adding this new identity to his repertoire.But as they fall in love and start building a life together, Jeff is gradually forced into more and more desperate measures to maintain his new identity, and the boundaries between his carefully segregated personas begin to fray.In a world where truth is a matter of perspective and identities are interchangeable, Jeff finds himself trapped in his own web of lies. How far will he go to maintain his secrets? And even if he wanted to turn back, would he be able to?




Farm to Fingers


Book Description

This book studies food practices in contemporary India by situating them in their political, economic and socio-cultural contexts. Widespread in scope, it explores the use of food for exercising power, as a marker of difference and as a potent symbol of expression of identity; studies how food practices are intimately connected to the corporeal self and the fashioning of the self; and examines food safety and its nutritional aspects and notions of hygiene and edibility that are culturally specific. The book looks closely at the political and economic institutions that are responsible for the production and distribution of food, and the role of the state and global policies that influence agrarian policies at home. It discusses meat-eating in India; fermented food from North-East India and how it does not fall within the representation of 'Indian' food'; the ideas of health and food safety that inform the making of Bengali sweets; the growing role of fast-food eateries and blog-writing as middle-class identity projects; the nature of colonial discourse on what is an adequate diet for famine victims; who should grow food; and the importance of the concept of food sovereignty.