Race After the Internet

"Digital media technologies like the Internet create and host the social networks, virtual worlds, online communities, and media texts where it was once thought that we would all be the same, anonymous users with infinite powers. Instead, the essays in Race After the Internet show us that the Internet and other computer-based technologies are complex topographies of power and privilege, made up of walled gardens, new (plat)forms of economic and technological exclusion, and both new and old styles of raceas code, interaction, and image. Investigating how racialization and racism are changing in web 2.0 digital media culture, Race After the Internet contains interdisciplinary essays on the shifting terrain of racial identity and its connections to digitalmedia, including Facebook and MySpace, YouTube and viral video, WiFi infrastructure, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program, genetic ancestry testing, DNA databases in health and law enforcement, and popular online games like World of Warcraft. Ultimately, the collection broadens the definition of the "digital divide" in order to convey a more nuanced understanding of usage, meaning, participation, and production of digital media technology in light of racial inequality. "--

Lisa Nakamura is Associate Professor of Media and Cinema Studies and Director of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet, coeditor, with Beth Kolko and Gilbert Rodman, of Race in Cyberspace , and co-editor, with Peter Chow-White, of Race After the Internet (Routledge, 2011).

Peter A. Chow-White is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His work has appeared in Communication Theory, the International Journal of Communication, Media, Culture & Society, PLoS Medicine, and Science, Technology & Human Values.