Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation

Author:	Marantz, Andrew
Binding:	Hardcover
List Price:	$37.00
Our Price:	$4.40 CAD
Sale Price:	0.90 CAD
Qty Avail:	1000+

Additional Info
Overview

ISBN:	9780525522263
Publisher:	Viking Books
Language:	English
Page Count:	380
Publication Date:	10/8/2019
Size:	9.50" l x 6.50" w x 1.50"
Series:	N/A

Category	Subject
Political Science	Political Ideologies
Political Science	Political Process
Social Science	Media Studies

"Trenchant and intelligent." --The New York Times

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

From a rising star at The New Yorker, a deeply immersive chronicle of how the optimistic entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley set out to create a free and democratic internet--and how the cynical propagandists of the alt-right exploited that freedom to propel the extreme into the mainstream.

For several years, Andrew Marantz, a New Yorker staff writer, has been embedded in two worlds. The first is the world of social-media entrepreneurs, who, acting out of naïvete and reckless ambition, upended all traditional means of receiving and transmitting information. The second is the world of the people he calls "the gate crashers"--the conspiracists, white supremacists, and nihilist trolls who have become experts at using social media to advance their corrosive agenda. Antisocial ranges broadly--from the first mass-printed books to the trending hashtags of the present; from secret gatherings of neo-Fascists to the White House press briefing room--and traces how the unthinkable becomes thinkable, and then how it becomes reality. Combining the keen narrative detail of Bill Buford's Among the Thugs and the sweep of George Packer's The Unwinding, Antisocial reveals how the boundaries between technology, media, and politics have been erased, resulting in a deeply broken informational landscape--the landscape in which we all now live. Marantz shows how alienated young people are led down the rabbit hole of online radicalization, and how fringe ideas spread--from anonymous corners of social media to cable TV to the President's Twitter feed. Marantz also sits with the creators of social media as they start to reckon with the forces they've unleashed. Will they be able to solve the communication crisis they helped bring about, or are their interventions too little too late?

NOTE: Blowouts are sold as is. Any pre-existing retail labels will not be removed and there may be some additional shelf wear showing on the product. Product with excessive damage will not be shipped. Titles are in fair to like-new, sellable condition. Book Depot does not accept damage claims against Blowouts.