{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DLRYPC2?tag=bookfrontier-20","asin":"B08DLRYPC2","authors":["Sangeet Kumar"],"book_id":"9780253056474","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780253056474","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780253056474.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T16%3A15%3A58Z","description":"The global web and its digital ecosystem can be seen as tools of emancipation, communication, and spreading knowledge or as means of control, fueled by capitalism, surveillance, and geopolitics. The Digital Frontier interrogates the world wide web and the digital ecosystem it has spawned to reveal how their conventions, protocols, standards, and algorithmic regulations represent a novel form of global power. Sangeet Kumar shows the operation of this power through the web's \"infrastructures of control\" visible at sites where the universalizing imperatives of the web run up against local values, norms, and cultures. These include how the idea of the \"global common good\" is used as a ruse by digital oligopolies to expand their private enclosures, how seemingly collaborative spaces can simultaneously be exclusionary as they regulate legitimate knowledge, how selfhood is being redefined online along Eurocentric ideals, and how the web's political challenge is felt differentially by sovereign nation states. In analyzing this new modality of cultural power in the global digital ecosystem, The Digital Frontier is an important read for scholars, activists, academics and students inspired by the utopian dream of a truly representative global digital network.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9780253056474","publication_date":"20210525","publisher":"Indiana University Press","slug":"the-digital-frontier","subtitle":"Infrastructures of Control on the Global Web","title":"The Digital Frontier"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"COM060140","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Social Media & Online Life","score":0.7643,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"BUS069020","confidence_band":"medium","label":"International Economics","score":0.7555,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"SOC026040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Social Theory","score":0.7479,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"COM060140","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Social Media & Online Life","score":0.7643,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"BUS069020","confidence_band":"medium","label":"International Economics","score":0.7555,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"SOC026040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Social Theory","score":0.7479,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"COM060140","confidence_band":"high","label":"Social Media & Online Life","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"POL050000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Media & Communication Policy","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"SOC022000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Pop Culture Studies","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Social Media & Online Life","score":0.7643,"slug":"social-media-online-life"},{"label":"International Economics","score":0.7555,"slug":"international-economics"},{"label":"Social Theory","score":0.7479,"slug":"social-theory"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers who enjoy Social Media & Online Life","Good for readers interested in social","Good for readers who enjoy Social Media & Online Life and International Economics."],"related_lists":[{"intro":"Books that explain how social platforms scale, degrade, and fail, from the attention economy and algorithmic amplification to the governance gaps that leave billions exposed when the infrastructure buckles.","slug":"cultural-currents-social-media-outage-and-platform-resilience","title":"Why Platforms Break","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/lists/cultural-currents-social-media-outage-and-platform-resilience"}],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Cory Doctorow"],"book_id":"9780374619329","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780374619329.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T16%3A15%3A58Z","score":13.488,"title":"Enshittification","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780374619329"},{"authors":["Max Fisher","Peter Ganim","Little, Brown & Company"],"book_id":"9780316703307","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780316703307.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T16%3A15%3A58Z","score":13.4681,"title":"The Chaos Machine","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780316703307"},{"authors":["Maris Kreizman"],"book_id":"9780063305823","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780063305823.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T16%3A15%3A58Z","score":10.2946,"title":"I Want to Burn This Place Down","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780063305823"},{"authors":["Meg Jay"],"book_id":"9781538754238","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781538754238.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T16%3A15%3A58Z","score":9.7714,"title":"The Defining Decade","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781538754238"},{"authors":["Michael Steinberger","Jonathan Beville","Simon & Schuster Audio"],"book_id":"9781668012956","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781668012956.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T16%3A15%3A58Z","score":9.1023,"title":"The Philosopher in the Valley","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781668012956"}],"topics":[{"evidence_refs":["keyword:social media"],"label":"Social","score":0.129,"slug":"social"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:culture"],"label":"Culture","score":0.0808,"slug":"culture"}],"what_you_get":["Themes: Social, Culture.","Reading lane: Social Media & Online Life and International Economics.","Publisher: Indiana University Press."]},"llm_signals":null,"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":false,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":0,"goodreads_ratings_count":1,"goodreads_reviews_count":0,"quality_score":0.8045}}