The Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media

Book excerpt: This is the first authoritative reference work to map the multifaceted and vibrant site of citizen media research and practice, incorporating insights from across a wide range of scholarly areas. Citizen media is a fast-evolving terrain that cuts across a variety of disciplines. It explores the physical artefacts, digital content, performative interventions, practices and discursive expressions of affective sociality that ordinary citizens produce as they participate in public life to effect aesthetic or socio-political change. The seventy-seven entries featured in this pioneering resource provide a rigorous overview of extant scholarship, deliver a robust critique of key research themes and anticipate new directions for research on a variety of topics. Cross-references and recommended reading suggestions are included at the end of each entry to allow scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to identify relevant connections across diverse areas of citizen media scholarship and explore further avenues of research. Featuring contributions by leading scholars and supported by an international panel of consultant editors, the Encyclopedia is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers in media studies, social movement studies, performance studies, political science and a variety of other disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. It will also be of interest to non-academics involved in activist movements and those working to effect change in various areas of social life.