Books About Online Culture?

April 20, 2007 8:25 AM

Book filter: I am looking for recommendations for recent books written about online culture for a Sociology course I am teaching this summer. The book doesn't need to be sociological.
posted by Quartermass to Education (14 answers total)

Code 2.0 and everything else by Lawrence Lessig was my first thought.
posted by McGuillicuddy at 8:45 AM on April 20, 2007

Not recent, but very cool, a novel call Prozac Highway. Featuring a listserv based on a real-life and important listserv then called Madness. See also Sylvia Caras's history (not a book but on line).
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 8:55 AM on April 20, 2007

I'd suggest also checking (asking) here.
posted by cashman at 9:00 AM on April 20, 2007

Check out & around Danah Boyd's site and blog. Maybe try e-mailing her.
posted by Good Brain at 9:08 AM on April 20, 2007

Oldie but a goodie-- The Virtual Community. Scroll down, it is actually online at Rheingold's site.


Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub by Lori Kendall is good.

Constance Steinkeuhler's dissertation was on a MMORPG community of sorts-- found here.

Lemme look around some more.
posted by oflinkey at 9:51 AM on April 20, 2007

Somebody was writing a thesis about MetaFilter. No idea who that was, or what became of it.
posted by Alt F4 at 10:59 AM on April 20, 2007

Yup, see this thread.
posted by smorange at 11:25 AM on April 20, 2007

The Virtual Community by Rheingold is definitely a classic, as is Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, by Sherry Turkle, 1995. Other recommendations:
Life Online: Researching Real Experience in Virtual Space, by Annete Markham, 1998
Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community, by Nancy Baym, 1999
Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet, by Lisa Nakamura, 2002
Society Online: The Internet in Context, edited by Philip N. Howard & Steve Jones, 2004

Also, the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies has an extensive set of book reviews here. There are a LOT of books out there, depending on exactly how you want to define "online culture."
posted by DiscourseMarker at 11:29 AM on April 20, 2007

Some of the responses to this AskMe question I asked a few years ago might be helpful. Also some of the books mentioned in the question itself, although I was too lazy to link to them.
posted by staggernation at 11:35 AM on April 20, 2007

oh, and perhaps my novel.
posted by staggernation at 11:37 AM on April 20, 2007

Haha... To those referencing the thesis and corresponding MeTa post: check out who wrote the thesis, then check out who is asking this question.
posted by amro at 11:51 AM on April 20, 2007

You might already know this from your MA research, but one of the original "trolls" from the late lamented Bianca's, {ff} (aka freeform, aka Richard Miller) wrote a thesis on the implementation of what was pretty much the first web-based chatroom. You can read his thesis here. While it leans towards technical issues, the underlying and very-much emergent, unanticipated social needs drove their implementation, and, like I said, it being one of the first if not the first web-chat it might be of interest. Also, sometimes the very first stabs at such topics achieve the greatest clarity of expression of the issues.

Similarly, the article by Escobar in Current Anthropology 1994 "Welcome to Cyberia" achieves a certain crude clarity about the issues that would later arise. JSTOR
posted by Rumple at 4:06 PM on April 20, 2007

My Tiny Life, Julian Dibbell - if eight years ago counts as recent.
posted by paduasoy at 3:59 PM on April 24, 2007

And a better link - author's site.
posted by paduasoy at 4:00 PM on April 24, 2007