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The Internet Is for Cats
How Animal Images Shape Our Digital Lives
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2023
About this book
LOL cats. Grumpy Cat. Dog-rating Twitter. Pet Instagram accounts. It’s generally understood the internet is for pictures of cute cats (and dogs, and otters, and pandas). But what motivates people to make and share these images, and how do they relate to other online social practices?
The Internet is for Cats examines how animal images are employed to create a lighter, more playful mood, uniting users within online spaces that can otherwise easily become fractious and toxic. Placing today’s pet videos, photos, and memes within a longer history of mediated animal images, communication scholar Jessica Maddox also considers the factors that make them unique. She explores the roles that animals play within online economies of cuteness and attention, as well as the ways that animal memes and videos respond to common experiences of life under neoliberalism.
Conducting a rich digital ethnography, Maddox combines observations and textual analysis with extensive interviews of the people who create, post and share animal media, including TikTok influencers seeking to make their pets famous, activists tweeting about wildlife conservation, and Redditors upvoting every cute cat photo. The Internet is for Cats will leave you with a new appreciation for the human social practices behind the animal images you encounter online.
The Internet is for Cats examines how animal images are employed to create a lighter, more playful mood, uniting users within online spaces that can otherwise easily become fractious and toxic. Placing today’s pet videos, photos, and memes within a longer history of mediated animal images, communication scholar Jessica Maddox also considers the factors that make them unique. She explores the roles that animals play within online economies of cuteness and attention, as well as the ways that animal memes and videos respond to common experiences of life under neoliberalism.
Conducting a rich digital ethnography, Maddox combines observations and textual analysis with extensive interviews of the people who create, post and share animal media, including TikTok influencers seeking to make their pets famous, activists tweeting about wildlife conservation, and Redditors upvoting every cute cat photo. The Internet is for Cats will leave you with a new appreciation for the human social practices behind the animal images you encounter online.
Author / Editor information
JESSICA MADDOX is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
Reviews
"By exploring the ambivalent overlaps between attention, cuteness, toxicity, and neoliberalism - among other key themes - in animal imagery sharing practices, The Internet is for Cats is essential reading for understanding how and why the fun of animal memes is serious cultural business."
— Whitney Phillips, author of You Are Here: A Field Guide for Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy Theories, and Our"The Internet is for Cats skillfully demonstrates that the visual cultures of animals and pets in social media are not only cute and entertaining—they can also mask the Internet’s hateful and toxic content. Maddox’s project is an important reminder that even the most seemingly frivolous aspects of culture must be carefully examined."
— Melissa A. Click, associate professor of communication studies at Gonzaga University"[The Internet is for Cats]'s major claim is convincing: there is more to cat (and other animal) pics than meets the eye."— Gregory Hays, New York Review of Books
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Introduction
1 -
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1 Kittens in Context
28 -
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2 “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This” Attention as Materiality and Looking Relation
51 -
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3 Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute
80 -
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4 “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It” Neoliberal Pets and Animals
105 -
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5 Feels Good, Man: Collisions, Collusions, and Cloaks in Pet and Animal Social Media
134 -
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6 Nature Is Healing, We Are the Virus: Beyond Signifiers
161 -
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Appendix
167 -
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Acknowledgments
171 -
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Notes
173 -
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Bibliography
207 -
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Index
235 -
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About the Author
245
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
January 18, 2023
eBook ISBN:
9781978827943
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781978827943
Keywords for this book
Social Media; Youtube; Viral videos; virality; animals; memes; animal memes; internet memes; internet culture; the internet; the world wide web; animal images; cat videos; pet imagery; animal imagery; cats; animal shelter near me; kittens; dogs; puppies; kitten videos; puppy videos; pet youtubers; internet studies; the internet and people; computers; Instagram; Facebook; Instagram memes; meme pages; instagram meme pages; twitter memes; Doomscrolling; Tiktok; Neoliberalism; 2010s culture
Audience(s) for this book
For a non-specialist adult audience
