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.




The Rise of Writing


Book Description

Drawing on real-life interviews, Brandt explores what happens when writing overtakes reading as the basis of people's daily literate experience.




The MoveOn Effect


Book Description

The Internet is facilitating a generational transition among American political advocacy organizations. This book provides a detailed exploration of how ?netroots? advocacy groups - MoveOn.org, DailyKos.com, DemocracyforAmerica.com, and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee - differ from ?legacy? peer organizations. It also explains the partisan character of these technological innovations.




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?




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?




Popular Culture in a Globalised India


Book Description

This book explores India’s rich popular culture and provides illuminating insights into various aspects of the social, cultural, economic and political realities of contemporary globalised India. It is essential reading for courses on Indian popular culture and a useful resource for more general courses in the field of cultural studies, media studies, history, literary studies and communication studies.




The Blur Way


Book Description

This book tells about a young man who is 21 years old. He moves from Russia to the USA and starts to study at the New York University. Parallelly he works in a publishing house and helps the editor in chief communicate with readers of the newspapers "New York For Everybody". In the process of this work he learns what he really needs in life...




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.