The Internet Is for Cats
How Animal Images Shape Our Digital Lives
Seiten
2022
Rutgers University Press (Verlag)
978-1-9788-2791-2 (ISBN)
Rutgers University Press (Verlag)
978-1-9788-2791-2 (ISBN)
In this important and engaging book, Jessica Maddox provides a social framework for thinking about an outrageously popular cultural phenomenon: pets and animals online. She examines how these images help make digital spaces lighthearted and fun, as well as how these images function as relieving distractions from other aspects of life.
LOL cats. Grumpy Cat. Dog-rating Twitter. Pet Instagram accounts. It’s generally understood the internet is for pictures of cute cats (and dogs, and otters, and pandas). But what motivates people to make and share these images, and how do they relate to other online social practices?
The Internet is for Cats examines how animal images are employed to create a lighter, more playful mood, uniting users within online spaces that can otherwise easily become fractious and toxic. Placing today’s pet videos, photos, and memes within a longer history of mediated animal images, communication scholar Jessica Maddox also considers the factors that make them unique. She explores the roles that animals play within online economies of cuteness and attention, as well as the ways that animal memes and videos respond to common experiences of life under neoliberalism.
Conducting a rich digital ethnography, Maddox combines observations and textual analysis with extensive interviews of the people who create, post and share animal media, including TikTok influencers seeking to make their pets famous, activists tweeting about wildlife conservation, and Redditors upvoting every cute cat photo. The Internet is for Cats will leave you with a new appreciation for the human social practices behind the animal images you encounter online.
LOL cats. Grumpy Cat. Dog-rating Twitter. Pet Instagram accounts. It’s generally understood the internet is for pictures of cute cats (and dogs, and otters, and pandas). But what motivates people to make and share these images, and how do they relate to other online social practices?
The Internet is for Cats examines how animal images are employed to create a lighter, more playful mood, uniting users within online spaces that can otherwise easily become fractious and toxic. Placing today’s pet videos, photos, and memes within a longer history of mediated animal images, communication scholar Jessica Maddox also considers the factors that make them unique. She explores the roles that animals play within online economies of cuteness and attention, as well as the ways that animal memes and videos respond to common experiences of life under neoliberalism.
Conducting a rich digital ethnography, Maddox combines observations and textual analysis with extensive interviews of the people who create, post and share animal media, including TikTok influencers seeking to make their pets famous, activists tweeting about wildlife conservation, and Redditors upvoting every cute cat photo. The Internet is for Cats will leave you with a new appreciation for the human social practices behind the animal images you encounter online.
JESSICA MADDOX is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1 Kittens in Context
2 “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This": Attention as Materiality and Looking Relation
3 Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute
4 “You Can’t Buy Happiness, But You Can Rescue It”: Neoliberal Pets and Animals
5 Feels Good, Man: Collisions, Collusions, and Cloaks in Pet and Animal Social Media
6 Nature is Healing, We are the Virus: Beyond Signifiers
Appendix
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
Erscheinungsdatum | 17.09.2022 |
---|---|
Zusatzinfo | 9 b-w illus. |
Verlagsort | New Brunswick NJ |
Sprache | englisch |
Maße | 140 x 216 mm |
Gewicht | 50 g |
Themenwelt | Mathematik / Informatik ► Informatik |
Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Medienwissenschaft | |
ISBN-10 | 1-9788-2791-1 / 1978827911 |
ISBN-13 | 978-1-9788-2791-2 / 9781978827912 |
Zustand | Neuware |
Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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