Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media sets out to chart the territory of citizen media, a new, fast evolving disciplinary terrain.

Citizen media is understood in the context of this project as the physical artefacts, digital content, performative interventions, practices and discursive formations of affective sociality that ordinary citizens produce as they participate in public life to effect aesthetic or socio-political change. Pursuing an inclusive agenda, this understanding of citizen media encompasses such diverse forms of political and aesthetic intervention in public life as graffiti and other forms of street art, street performance, community theatre, rap and hip hop, community radio, citizen journalism, citizen photography, blogging, tweeting, documentary film making, hacktivism, fansubbing, and scanlation. As such it allows engagement with participatory cultures across the entire spectrum of a population, irrespective of their level of access to digital media.

In light of the rapidly evolving and ever more challenging configuration of this area of research and practice, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media will:

map the theoretical and methodological circuitry that underpins the study of citizen media practices across various sets of disciplinary boundaries – whether such practices act as sites of investment of aesthetic/playful affectivity or political/engaged affinity; involve the deployment of one or more forms of semiotic resources; are empowered or constrained by digital technologies;
cover the core conceptual framework at the heart of this emerging domain of study, flagging up the similarities and differences in the way key terms are used across (inter)disciplinary areas and different scholarly traditions;
deliver a survey of key citizen media practices and their visibility in social life, as well as the main technological platforms enabling the ubiquity and spread of citizen media outputs;
draw on the expertise of approximately prestigious contributors to deliver a comprehensive, authoritative survey of this new domain; provide researchers in any one field with concise and systematic accounts of the ‘state of the art’ in this network of cognate fields; and galvanize debate and discussion on key issues across disciplines;
create a practical and unique resource in one accessible volume that can be adopted for a variety of university courses; help the field of citizen media gain ground in higher education settings; is not submerged in and confused with many other reference works on different aspects of media studies that are already available on the market.