Humanity and society are in a major crisis and digitalisation mediates this crisis. Digital Humanism explores how Humanism can help us to critically understand how digital technologies shape society and humanity, providing an introduction to Humanism in the digital age. Fuchs introduces the approach of Digital Humanism and outlines foundations of a Radical Digital Humanism, analysing what decolonisation of academia and the study of the digital, media and communication means; what the roles are of robots, automation, and Artificial Intelligence in digital capitalism, and how the communication of death and dying has been mediated by digital technologies, capitalist necropower, and digital capitalism. In order to save humanity and society, we need Radical Digital Humanism now.
Christian Fuchs is one of the world’s foremost expert on how to critically study and theorise the roles of social media, digital media and the Internet in society. His fields of research are critical theory, media sociology, communication theory, digital media and society, political economy of communication. He is the Chair Professor of Media Systems and Media Organisation at Paderborn University’s Department of Media Studies and is the editor of the journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique.