All My Friends Live in My Computer: Trauma, Tactical Media, and Meaning

Samira Rajabi

Published by Rutgers University Press 2021

All My Friends Live in My Computer

Trauma, Tactical Media, and Meaning

Samira Rajabi

https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978818996

Overview
Contents

About this book

All My Friends Live in my Computer combines personal stories, media studies, and interdisciplinary theories to examine case studies from three unique parts of society. From illness narratives among breast cancer patients to political upheaval among Iranian-Americans, this book examines what people do when they go online after they have suffered a trauma. It offers in-depth academic analysis alongside deeply personal stories and case studies to take the reader on a journey through rapidly changing digital/social worlds. When people are traumatized, their worlds stop making sense, and All My Friends Live in My Computer explores how everyday people use social media to try and make a new world for themselves and others who are suffering. Through its attention to personal stories and application of media theory to new contexts, this book highlights how, when given the tools, people will make meaning in creative, novel, and healing ways.

Author / Editor information

SAMIRA RAJABI is the Director of Technology Influenced Pedagogy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has published in the Canadian Journal of Disability, as well as in the book Social Media in Iran. She is a contributor to Cure Magazine since 2015 and an active member of patient support communities online.

Reviews

"An emotionally intense, imaginative journey into the way our online lives mediate the experience and definition of the suffering subject. This book should appeal to a general audience as well as to specialists in media and communication and health communication who are intensely interested in how the new online world has shaped the most fundamental of human emotions and experiences."

— Andrea L. Press, co-author of Media-Ready Feminism and Everyday Sexism: How U.S. Audiences Create Meaning Across Plat

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Prologue Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Part I Trauma and Media Theory
1 Introduction: Seeing through Suffering: Digital Mediation and the Suffering Subject Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
2 There Are Many Ways to Suffer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
3 Putting It Out There: Tactics of Meaning Making in Digital Media Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	32
Part II Meaning Making Online
4 The Battle We Didn’t Choose: Angelo Merendino and Mediations of Grief, Disease, and the Trauma of Bearing Witness Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
5 Nothing Can Stop You: CrossFit, Trauma, and the Digital Remaking of Ability Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	72
6 Bullied by the Nation: The Symbolic Trauma of Iranians Living in the United States Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	90
7 Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	124
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	151

Language: English
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 174
Illustrations
- Other: 19 color images
Keywords: media studies; media; stories; personal stories; interdisciplinary theories; breast cancer patients; breast cancer; cancer; political upheaval; Iranian-Americans; social media; media theory; digital media; digital; CroosFit; Iranians; U.S.; United States; United States of America; online; computer; internet

eBook

Published: May 14, 2021
ISBN: 9781978818996