Referencing key contemporary debates on issues such as surveillance, identity, the global financial crisis, the digital divide and Internet politics, this book is a critical intervention in discussions on the impact of the proliferation of digital media technologies on politics, the economy and social practices. Divided into three parts, the first highlights the way in which digital media challenges normative conceptions of the public sphere and discusses this in relation to the creation of new forms of knowledge through the digitization of scholarly resources and the impact of digital media on traditional conceptions of identity. The second part focuses on the digital economy, emphasizing the opportunities it affords through the creative industries, as well as the threat posed by the computerization of the financial industry, and the third part focuses on uses of digital media through a number of case studies relating to online reading, the new social movements, surveillance and the developing world.