Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Book Project: Memes in Digital Culture (2013)



I considered to read the following three books: Memes in Digital CulturePirate Policies, and Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking). Brief information about these books can be found below. In the end, I chose to read Memes in Digital Culture (2013) written by Limor Shifman. I did not find any scholarly reviews, but I found several reviews on well-noted websites about the book: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/memes-digital-culture and http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/51542. I compared all three books with the websites provided by the LIS 201 class page and found that none of the books had much information on them. Google Books, Library Thing, ProQuest and ProMuse hardly provided any information that gave me a good sense if any of the books are quality work. In order to make my overall decision, I read all of the summaries and made my choice based on my interests. Reading about Internet policies with Burkart or Internet privacy with Rudder did not sound as fascinating as reading about internet memes. I think I will be very satisfied with my final book decision and am excited to read about memes, a relevant topic in today's society.

*Memes in Digital Culture 
by Limor Shifman (2013)
216 pages
Overall Idea: Shifman examines the popular memes of pop culture and argues why they should be taken seriously by defining the word meme, studying the popular genres and why they have gone viral, and studying why memes could act as "agents of globalization."

Pirate Politics 
by Patrick Burkart (2014)
240 pages
Overall Idea: Burkhart writes about how the police took down a European file-sharing engine and the protests that came along with it. He also discusses the cyberlibertarian movement and Internet laws in both Europe and the United States.

Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking) 
by Christian Rudder (2014)
304 pages
Overall Idea: Rudder examines how social media and networking has affected our privacy as individuals over time.

2 comments:

  1. Hey! I think that your meme book sounds interesting! Memes are such a random, weird part of the internet that I think any book that tries to make sense of them would be a good read. I am excited to learn more about your book and maybe even the history of how memes became such a cultural part of the internet today.

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  2. Looks like a great choice Mei Li! The subject sounds intriguing and the book seems like it will be something that is both informative and an interesting read!

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