Digital Leisure Cultures: Critical perspectives

The digital turn in leisure has opened up a vast array of new opportunities to play, learn, participate and be entertained – opportunities that have transformed what we recognise as leisure. This edited collection provides a significant contribution to our changing understanding of digital leisure cultures, reflecting on the socio-historical context within which the digital age emerged, while engaging with new debates about the evolving and controversial role of digital platforms in contemporary leisure cultures.

This book also demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of studying digital leisure cultures. To make sense of how individuals and institutions use digital spaces it is necessary to draw on history, science and technology, philosophy, cultural studies, sociology and geography, as well as sport and leisure studies. This important and timely study discusses both the promise of the digital sphere as a realm of liberation, and the darker side of the internet associated with control, surveillance, exclusion and dehumanisation.

Digital Leisure Cultures: Critical perspectives is fascinating reading for any student or scholar of sociology, sport and leisure studies, geography or media studies.

Sandro Carnicelli is the Programme Leader for Events Management and Tourism Management at the University of the West of Scotland, UK. Sandro has published articles in international journals, including Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, Annals of Leisure Research, Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism, and World Leisure. He is also a member of the ABRATUR (International Academy for the Development of Tourism Research in Brazil), and he is on the Executive Board (Treasurer) of the Leisure Studies Association and on the Advisory Board of the Annals of Leisure Research.

David McGillivray holds a Chair in Event and Digital Cultures in the School of Media, Culture and Society at University of the West of Scotland, UK. His research focuses on two main areas of activity. The first area of interest is the contemporary significance of events and festivals (sporting and cultural) as markers of identity and mechanisms for the achievements of wider economic, social and cultural externalities. The second area relates to the affordances of digital culture, especially related to understandings of digital citizenship, participation and the role of everyday digital media platforms and practices in enabling (or restricting) voices within an increasingly saturated media landscape. He has published extensively on these themes and been involved in research and knowledge exchange activities that take as their focus the affordances of digital culture, including sub-themes of digital citizenship (see digital commonwealth.co.uk), digital participation, digital storytelling and alternative/community media and digital sport media. He is currently Deputy Editor of the Annals of Leisure Research.

Gayle McPherson holds a Chair in Events and Cultural Policy within the School of Media, Culture and Society at the University of the West of Scotland, UK. Her research interests revolve around the interventions of the local and national state in events and festivity of all types and the social and cultural impacts of events on communities. She is involved on the international collaborative research project Leveraging Parasport Events: for sustainable community participation. She has recently completed a digital literacy practice research project around the Commonwealth Games 2014. She is a member of the European Cultural Parliament and teaches at the Institute of Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin. She has published widely in the events, culture and festivals area, including recently as a co-author (2015) Young People, Media Making and Critical Digital Citizenship, and regularly publishes in journals such as Cultural Trends, Managing Leisure, Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events and Leisure Studies.