A short, thought-provoking book about what happens to our online identities after we die.

These days, so much of our lives takes place online—but what about our afterlives? Thanks to the digital trails that we leave behind, our identities can now be reconstructed after our death. In fact, AI technology is already enabling us to “interact” with the departed. Sooner than we think, the dead will outnumber the living on Facebook. In this thought-provoking book, Carl Öhman explores the increasingly urgent question of what we should do with all this data and whether our digital afterlives are really our own—and if not, who should have the right to decide what happens to our data.

The stakes could hardly be higher. In the next thirty years alone, about two billion people will die. Those of us who remain will inherit the digital remains of an entire generation of humanity—the first digital citizens. Whoever ends up controlling these archives will also effectively control future access to our collective digital past, and this power will have vast political consequences. The fate of our digital remains should be of concern to everyone—past, present, and future. Rising to these challenges, Öhman explains, will require a collective reshaping of our economic and technical systems to reflect more than just the monetary value of digital remains.

As we stand before a period of deep civilizational change, The Afterlife of Data will be an essential guide to understanding why and how we as a human race must gain control of our collective digital past—before it is too late.

Hashtag Activism Interrogated and Embodied analyzes the ways that hashtags repurpose and reclaim societal narratives, considering how these digital interactions carry over into external spaces and are embodied by both participants and spectators alike. A diverse set of contributors from a range of disciplines utilize a variety of methodologies to interrogate the lifespan and trajectories of specific hashtag campaigns, study rhetorical strategies engaged by online communities, and analyze how hashtags are employed for particular purposes.
 
The chapters capture twenty-first-century digital activism unfolding in different social and geopolitical climates. Delving into hashtag activism in various forms  (tweets, memes, and personal narratives) and spaces (Twitter, Facebook, and in-person protests), these chapters reveal how participants question and construct online and offline identities and imagined and actualized communities. They also showcase the complicated ways hashtag activism intersects with consumer, popular, and celebrity cultures.
 
Hashtag Activism Interrogated and Embodied calls for broader inclusion in what is considered hashtag activism, such as digital fandom, how hashtags are co-opted for nefarious purposes, the effects of anti-activism, and the role of journalism and the media. It will appeal to a range of disciplines including rhetoric and composition, internet studies, communication studies, media studies, feminist studies, affect studies, cultural studies, technical communication, and sociology.
 
Contributors: Robert Barry, André Brock, Elizabeth Buchanan, Rosemary Clark-Parsons, Gabriel I. Green, Neha Gupta, Jeffrey J. Hall, Kyesha Jennings, Morgan K. Johnson, Salma Kalim, Megan McIntyre, Sean Milligan, Avishek Ray, Sarah Riddick, Stephanie Vie, Erin B. Waggoner, Holly M. Wells, William I. Wolff

From fan-generated content on TikTok to music videos, the contemporary media landscape is becoming ever more vast, spectacular, and intense. In The Media Swirl Carol Vernallis examines short-form audiovisual media—Beyoncé’s Lemonade, brief sequences from Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, TikTok challenges, YouTube mashups, commercials, and many other examples—to offer ways of understanding digital media. She analyzes music videos by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Janelle Monáe, Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, and others to outline how sound and image enhance each other and shape a viewer’s mood. Responding to today’s political-media landscape through discussions of Fox News and Presidential inaugurations, Vernallis shows how a media literacy that exceeds newscasts and campaign advertising is central to engaging with the democratic commons. Forays into industry studies, neuroscience, and ethics also inform her readings. By creating our own content and knowing what corporations, the wealthy, and the government do through media, Vernallis contends, we can create a more just world.