The Rise of Nerd Politics Digital Activism and Political Change [Hardcover]

Lively and wide-ranging,The Rise of Nerd Politicsis a anthropological exploration of the role that freedom technologists play in sparking new processes of political change in the digital age. Drawing on John Postill’s anthropological fieldwork on social media and digital activism in Spain, Indonesia, and Malaysia, the book focuses on a new class of transnational political actors, arguing that freedom technologists have managed to shape the hybrid media worlds in which today’s political change unfolds. Comparing Spain’s ongoing techno-political transformation to that of Tunisia, Iceland, the United States, Malaysia, and Indonesia, Postill argues that in all five countries freedom technologists are playing significant roles in highly uneven ongoing political changes, with ramifications that will increasingly affect the future of politics in the digital age.
 

John Postillis the Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow in the School of Media and Communications at RMIT University, Melbourne.