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Understanding the Power Behind Spam, Noise, and Other Deviant Media

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Understanding the Power Behind Spam, Noise, and Other Deviant Media Media Distortions is about the power behind the production of deviant media catego- ries. It shows the politics behind categories we take for granted such as spam and Media Distortions noise, and what it means to our broader understanding of, and engagement with media. The book synthesizes media theory, sound studies, science and technology studies (STS), feminist technoscience, and software studies into a new composition to explore media power. Media Distortions argues that using sound as a conceptual Media framework is more useful due to its ability to cross boundaries and strategically move between multiple spaces—which is essential for multi-layered mediated spaces. Drawing on repositories of legal, technical and archival sources, the book amplifi es three stories about the construction and negotiation of the ‘deviant’ in media. The Distortions book starts in the early 20th century with Bell Telephone’s production of noise, tuning into the training of their telephone operators and their involvement with the Noise Understanding the Power Behind Abatement Commission in New York City. The next story jumps several decades to the early 2000s focusing on web metric standardization in the European Union and Spam, Noise, and Other Deviant Media shows how the digital advertising industry constructed web-cookies as legitimate com- munication while making spam illegal. The fi nal story focuses on the recent decade and the way Facebook fi lters out antisocial behaviors to engineer a sociality that Elinor Carmi produces more value. These stories show how deviant categories re-draw boundaries between human and non-human, public and private spaces, and importantly, social and antisocial. Dr. @Elinor_Carmi is a feminist, researcher, journalist and digital rights advocate, who has been working on deviant media, internet standards, sound studies, and in- ternet governance for the past decade. Elinor is a Postdoc Research Associate at the Communication and Media Department at Liverpool University in the United Kingdom, working on the project “Me and My Big Data: Understanding Citizens Data Literacies”. Before academia, Elinor worked in the EDM industry, edited music television channels and was a radio broadcaster. In 2013, she published her fi rst book TranceMission. 121 Elinor Carmi WWW.PETERLANG.COM Cover Image: ©iStock.com/solarseven Media Distortions is about the power behind the production of deviant media catego- ries. It shows the politics behind categories we take for granted such as spam and Media Distortions noise, and what it means to our broader understanding of, and engagement with media. The book synthesizes media theory, sound studies, science and technology studies (STS), feminist technoscience, and software studies into a new composition to explore media power. Media Distortions argues that using sound as a conceptual Media framework is more useful due to its ability to cross boundaries and strategically move between multiple spaces—which is essential for multi-layered mediated spaces. Drawing on repositories of legal, technical and archival sources, the book amplifi es three stories about the construction and negotiation of the ‘deviant’ in media. The Distortions book starts in the early 20th century with Bell Telephone’s production of noise, tuning into the training of their telephone operators and their involvement with the Noise Understanding the Power Behind Abatement Commission in New York City. The next story jumps several decades to the early 2000s focusing on web metric standardization in the European Union and Spam, Noise, and Other Deviant Media shows how the digital advertising industry constructed web-cookies as legitimate com- munication while making spam illegal. The fi nal story focuses on the recent decade and the way Facebook fi lters out antisocial behaviors to engineer a sociality that Elinor Carmi produces more value. These stories show how deviant categories re-draw boundaries between human and non-human, public and private spaces, and importantly, social and antisocial. Dr. @Elinor_Carmi is a feminist, researcher, journalist and digital rights advocate, who has been working on deviant media, internet standards, sound studies, and in- ternet governance for the past decade. Elinor is a Postdoc Research Associate at the Communication and Media Department at Liverpool University in the United Kingdom, working on the project “Me and My Big Data: Understanding Citizens Data Literacies”. Before academia, Elinor worked in the EDM industry, edited music television channels and was a radio broadcaster. In 2013, she published her fi rst book TranceMission. 121 Elinor Carmi WWW.PETERLANG.COM Cover Image: ©iStock.com/solarseven ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Media Distortions “Media Distortions provides an original, insightful and engaging counter-account of spam and noise as deviant media which have been paradoxically constituted as such to bring about a series of crucial transformations in our technologies and cultures of communication. Drawing on specific historical case studies and extending right into our present, by reverse engineering of the history of spam, Elinor Carmi brings a fresh perspective to bear on a media phenomenon which has received little critical attention.” —Tiziana Terranova, University of Naples, author of Network Culture: Politics For the Information Age (2004) “Elinor Carmi offers a lucid and detailed examination of the taken-for-granted ‘deviant’ categories and processes of spam and noise. Significantly, through the focus on seven strategies of practitioners, the book convincingly demonstrates how common sense perceptions of these two categories are produced by power relations that make up both online and offline spaces of the everyday.” —Evelyn Ruppert, Goldsmiths, University of London, author of Being Digital Citizens (2015) “‘Distort and deviate’ is the best summary for the mode of power Elinor Carmi’s exciting book analyses. The book’s rhythmic approach to noise and spam demonstrates how those seemingly unwanted aspects are at the centre of how contemporary territories and subjectivities are being formed and trained, measured and counted. Media Distortions is essential reading to understand contemporary network culture through a new pair ears, and many many new ideas.” —Jussi Parikka, Winchester School of Art, author of Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses (Peter Lang, 2016) “In Media Distortions, Elinor Carmi offers an innovative approach to digital media. By drawing on sound studies, Media Distortions puts forward a novel conceptual framework of ‘processed listening,’ which enables us to rethink noises, digital disturbances, spam, and deviant media in our lives. For Carmi, the sound of noise is not a nuisance, but an invitation to reveal hidden power relations that deeply shape who we are and how we think.” —Robert W. Gehl, University of Utah, author of Weaving the Dark Web: Legitimacy on Freenet, Tor, and I2P (2018) Media Distortions is about the power behind the production of deviant media catego- ries. It shows the politics behind categories we take for granted such as spam and Media Distortions noise, and what it means to our broader understanding of, and engagement with media. The book synthesizes media theory, sound studies, science and technology studies (STS), feminist technoscience, and software studies into a new composition to explore media power. Media Distortions argues that using sound as a conceptual Media framework is more useful due to its ability to cross boundaries and strategically move between multiple spaces—which is essential for multi-layered mediated spaces. Drawing on repositories of legal, technical and archival sources, the book amplifi es Media Distortions three stories about the construction and negotiation of the ‘deviant’ in media. The Distortions book starts in the early 20th century with Bell Telephone’s production of noise, tuning into the training of their telephone operators and their involvement with the Noise Understanding the Power Behind Abatement Commission in New York City. The next story jumps several decades to the early 2000s focusing on web metric standardization in the European Union and Spam, Noise, and Other Deviant Media shows how the digital advertising industry constructed web-cookies as legitimate com- munication while making spam illegal. The fi nal story focuses on the recent decade and the way Facebook fi lters out antisocial behaviors to engineer a sociality that Elinor Carmi produces more value. These stories show how deviant categories re-draw boundaries between human and non-human, public and private spaces, and importantly, social and antisocial. Dr. @Elinor_Carmi is a feminist, researcher, journalist and digital rights advocate, who has been working on deviant media, internet standards, sound studies, and in- ternet governance for the past decade. Elinor is a Postdoc Research Associate at the Communication and Media Department at Liverpool University in the United Kingdom, working on the project “Me and My Big Data: Understanding Citizens Data Literacies”. Before academia, Elinor worked in the EDM industry, edited music television channels and was a radio broadcaster. In 2013, she published her fi rst book TranceMission. 121 Elinor Carmi WWW.PETERLANG.COM Cover Image: ©iStock.com/solarseven Steve Jones General Editor Vol. 121 The Digital Formations series is part of the Peter Lang Media and Communication list. Every volume is peer reviewed and meets the highest quality standards for content and production. PETER
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