technosociology | our tools, ourselves

Time 2020-10-27 22:05:36

Web Name: technosociology | our tools, ourselves

WebSite: http://technosociology.org

ID:96500

Keywords:

our,technosociology,ourselves,

Description:

Dear Friends,My book, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest, is officially out today, as of May 16th! It is published by Yale University Press, and it weaves stories with conceptual work. It is both a quasi-historical account of some 21st century mass protests, but also engages theories social movements, public sphere and technology. I tried to write it with as much narrative structure as possible to make it readable to broadest audiences.  Some news: there will be a free creative commons copy of my book. It will be available as a free PDF download in addition to being sold as a bound book. This is with the hopes that anyone who wants to read it can do so without worrying about the cost. However, this also means that I need to ask that a few people who can afford to do so to please consider purchasing a copy. This is not just so that Yale University Press can do this for more authors, but also because if it is not sold (at least a little bit!) in the initial few weeks, bookstores will not stock it and online algorithms will show it to fewer people. No sales will mean less visibility, and less incentive for publishers to allow other authors creative commons copies. Another request I have is that, if you do read it  (and especially if you liked it, heh!), please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads. This is not an attempt to inflate its reviews but a request to help me fight back the inevitable attempts to suppress books like mine that talk about about repressive governments and censorship and other hot-button topics. (If you follow me on Twitter, you can see that I constantly do engage with negative criticisms and welcome feedback, good or bad). Given my topics, my book is likely to be targeted by a deliberate campaign to suppress its visibility because the trolls who game algorithms know that books that are negatively rated are shown to fewer people, and also that even when people know that some reviews are just shills, the initial impression means something. If you search for a book on Google, all you see is the number of stars with no context whether a good deal of those are one-star reviews that are purposefully malicious, and are not by readers of the book. This has happened to other books like this, and I ve already started seeing a few signs targeting my book. A flood of actual reviews not only fights that off and averages out the one star ratings of trolls, it signals that it s not worth the effort to try to torpedo it this way. (On a side note! What a world!)I negotiated the creative commons copy with my (wonderful!) publisher Yale University Press because I really wanted to do what I could to share my insights as broadly as I could about social movements and the networked public sphere. If I make a penny more from this book because it sells well by some miracle, I will donate every extra penny to groups supporting refugees, and if I ever meet you in person and you purchased a copy of the book in support, please let me know and I ll buy the coffee or beer.

TAGS:our technosociology ourselves 

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