Writing an introduction to digital media means opening up a vast field with uncertain boundaries. Digital media have the ability to integrate with all systems of information and knowledge production and to interact with almost every human activity. Their pervasive influence has made them an object of interest for large sectors of the social sciences, economics, psychology, and historical sciences. This book aims to provide a starting point for understanding their social and political significance beyond their role for human communication. To do so, we have done our best to condense into a confined space a vast and complex series of angles and perspectives. Therefore we chose to follow a path that touches upon what we consider to be the core points that it is necessary to cover in order to begin a journey that can lead well beyond the somewhat limited boundaries of this work. The expansion of the digital economy asks for a sustained critical approach to technology, which in turn has led to a significant expansion of research in the field of digital media studies. New degrees, university departments, and journals dedicated to digital cultures and digital technologies are emerging all over the world. The tools they provide to critically interpret the evolution of digital media from a social, political, and economic standpoint have given the social sciences a leading role within this bubbling field. In this book we draw on an emergent and increasingly rich set of empirical and theoretical studies on the role and development of digital media in contemporary information societies. Indeed, the book is informed by international research on digital cultures, political economy of communication, sociology and anthropology of the media, feminist technology studies, and theories on the relationship between technology and society. Furthermore, in many areas we refer to classic social theory and highlight its significance to the study of today's digital media.

Until a few years ago, digital technologies were often presented as good in themselves, harbingers of democracy as well as social and economic development. Digital technologies were said to be bearers of democracy, justice, equality, and economic abundance, allowing individuals to overcome the rigidity of bureaucratic and industrial societies, and providing new possibilities for them to participate in and actively shape the public and productive life. Vincent Mosco described this as the “digital sublime,” a myth according to which technologies transcend their social and material reality to become something to blindly believe in. In his words, it was necessary to go beyond this “mythical” vision and thoroughly analyze the cultural, political, and material characteristics of digital media (2004). Recent social and political evolutions have somewhat torn this myth apart. The emergence of ubiquitous surveillance, new forms of worker exploitation, and emerging media monopolies have fostered the rise of a wave of books discussing the “dark sides” of digital media (Morozov 2011). Digital media are often described as a threat to the social order that can potentially undermine the delicate balances that underpin complex societies. With this book we aim at providing some conceptual tools that move beyond these two poles. To be sure, digital media, like every technological innovation that reaches a mass diffusion, have a transformative power. But they can also be used in conservative ways, to preserve existing social and economic arrangements. After all, digital media services are highly privatized, and a handful of giant global conglomerates like Google or Microsoft are in control of most wealth and power. Large corporations like Facebook collect and monetize the information produced by their users, and often collaborate with states and other political agencies to enable pervasive social control. Others, such as Uber or Amazon, create new forms of employment and have the power to influence national and local politics. In order to study the social, economic, and political significance of the digital environment, we need to deal with this complexity. Finally, the diffusion and ubiquity of digital media in our daily lives tend to make them imperceptible, as if we lose sight of their presence and role. In the book we move beyond common sense interpretations of digital media, which tend to portray them in a historical vacuum, according to individual everyday experiences, or the consumer's standpoint, or through ideological lenses.

In fact, the relationship between digital media and social change is a dynamic one. In order to describe its many facets, we describe our contemporary world as an information society: a form of social and economic organization based on practices of information production, manipulation, and distribution. This represents a profound overall change to contemporary societies; to understand it, it is necessary to study the centrality of digital technologies in all spheres of social, political, and economic life. Our choice is reflected in the overall organization of the book. The chapters composing the first part of the book provide the general frameworks for our analysis. In Chapter 1 we lay the ground for an analysis of the techno‐social features of digital media. The chapter analyzes the significance of the cycles of evolution of new media, contrasting digital technologies to traditional media such as print or television. In addition, it presents some of the main technological characteristics of digital media and the infrastructures that underpin them. This analysis is supported by an overview of major theories about the relationship between technology and society. In Chapter 2 we introduce the history of information technologies and computer networks, as well as the main theoretical approaches to the emergence of a society based on the production and exchange of information. This chapter is thus developed in the context of forms of globalization of production, organizational practices, and socio‐economic arrangements which since the mid‐twentieth century have been intertwining with and made possible by technological evolution. The rise of the information society, we argue, is an ongoing process built upon promises and anxieties about the increasingly broad reach of information technologies in all areas of life.

The first two chapters represent the foundations for the following sections of the book. In the second part, we move into the significance of digital media within the social, political, and economic transformations that characterize contemporary information societies. Sociality and the construction of individual identities are transformed by relations mediated by digital technologies. This aspect of contemporary information societies, which we deal with in Chapter 3, is perhaps the most difficult to describe. Each individual belongs to a plurality of relational systems, communities, or publics organized around common interests or passions. Social media are at the heart of this, as they code and structure social relations, allow for a flexible construction of identity, and are the platforms on which new audiences can be organized. In these spaces the boundary between public and private becomes unstable, an important phenomenon for sociality and identity but also for social research and marketing. In Chapter 4 we face the technological and social innovations that allow individuals to use digital media to actively participate in innovation and cultural production. This inclusion has long been a promise of information societies. Widespread digital media and services that facilitate user production have enabled the emergence of new forms of collaboration, from software design, to media content production, to knowledge generation. This is increasingly affecting the production of both services and material goods. Yet the consequences of these phenomena are multifaceted. While digital media have the potential to socialize the ability to produce wealth, corporations are finding new ways of extracting value from social cooperation.

Political power and organizations are affected by these changes through a transformation of the public sphere that we analyze in Chapter 5. The inclusion of new publics means that contemporary politics are influenced by forms of journalism open to user contributions; social media are used by institutions and movements as part of today's political debates and clashes. This has boosted a reshaping of the public sphere. But the democratization rhetoric that has surrounded these changes should not stop us from assessing the problems and questions that arise from the political significance of digital media. With new technologies, new forms of surveillance, censorship, and social control emerge. This may strengthen rather than weaken existing powers. Finally, in Chapter 6 we analyze the political economy of digital media by presenting the economic models that support corporations in contemporary capitalist societies. The battle for economic power involves workers' rights and welfare systems, as well as the balance of economic and financial globalization. Work and consumption are not spared from these changes, as they have changed extensively with the emergence of new forms of digital labor, new classes of service workers, and practices that cross the boundaries between production and consumption. Persistent inequalities characterize this landscape at both the local and global level, and are linked to broader issues of uneven economic and social development. Across the book, chapters are supplemented by boxes that expand on specific topics or problems, such as intellectual property rights, gender and technology, the startup economy, and filter bubbles.

In sum, in what follows we focus on many of the social and political dimensions of digital media: their effects on information societies, the changes they have facilitated or caused, as well as the role of certain social groups, with their interests and values, in shaping today's digital technologies. We have attempted to approach this from a global perspective, as we discuss the emergence of new areas of digital media diffusion and innovation, particularly in Asia, as well as in emerging countries of the Global South. Our standpoint, however, is fundamentally Western. In addition, we strive to highlight the role of local cultures within the magma of digital communications. The lenses that we use to analyze digital media are also focused on how social factors, such as gender, race, or class, influence or are shaped by the use of technology and the distribution of power around it. In short, we try to deal critically with the visions and promises surrounding computers and networks in the information society, and to place them within the broader transformations of the economy, modes of production and consumption, politics, and social relations. To study digital media one must be able to account for the broader landscape in which they develop, and thus for the decisive role played by governments, corporations, and citizens. In turn, it would be impossible to understand the societies we live in without a deep knowledge of the social, political, and economic significance of digital technologies. We hope that this book will help build the cultural and political skills that are necessary to understand these complex relations and fully take part in the future evolution of our information societies.

We wish to thank our colleagues in Italy and Canada for the advice, suggestions, and criticisms that have helped us shape this book. Finally, thank you to the students on our courses in Digital Media Studies at the University of Milan and Critical Analysis of Media at the University of Toronto Mississauga, who have experienced firsthand the evolution of this book.