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Facebook has fundamentally changed how the world connects. No other company has played a greater role in the history of social networking online. Yet Facebook is no longer simply a social networking site or social media platform. Facebook is Facebook. Taina Bucher shows how Facebook has become an idea of its own: something that cannot be fully described using broader categories. Facebook has become so commonplace that most people have a conception of what it is, yet it increasingly defies categorization. If we want to understand Facebook's power in contemporary society and culture, Bucher argues, we need to start by challenging our widespread conception of what Facebook is. Tracing the development and evolution of Facebook as a social networking site, platform, infrastructure and advertising company, she invites readers to consider Facebook anew. Contrary to the belief that nobody uses Facebook anymore, Facebook has never been more powerful. This timely book is important reading for students and scholars of media and communication, as well as anyone seeking to understand the Facebook phenomenon.
We live in a world in which Google's search algorithms determine how we access information, Facebook's News Feed algorithms shape how we socialize, and Netflix collaborative filtering algorithms choose the media products we consume. As such, we live algorithmic lives. Life, however, is not blindly controlled or determined by algorithms. Nor are we simply victims of an ever-expanding artificial intelligence. Rather than looking at how technologies shape or are shaped by political institutions, this book is concerned with the ways in which informational infrastructure may be considered political in its capacity to shape social and cultural life. It looks specifically at the conditions of algor...
We live in a world in which Google's search algorithms determine how we access information, Facebook's News Feed algorithms shape how we socialize, and Netflix collaborative filtering algorithms choose the media products we consume. As such, we live algorithmic lives. Life, however, is not blindly controlled or determined by algorithms. Nor are we simply victims of an ever-expanding artificial intelligence. Rather than looking at how technologies shape or are shaped by political institutions, this book is concerned with the ways in which informational infrastructure may be considered political in its capacity to shape social and cultural life. It looks specifically at the conditions of algor...
The world is in the midst of a social media paradigm. Once viewed as trivial and peripheral, social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and WeChat have become an important part of the information and communication infrastructure of society. They are bound up with business and politics as well as everyday life, work, and personal relationships. This international Handbook addresses the most significant research themes, methodological approaches and debates in the study of social media. It contains substantial chapters written especially for this book by leading scholars from a range of disciplinary perspectives, covering everything from computational social science to sexual self-expression. Part 1: Histories And Pre-Histories Part 2: Approaches And Methods Part 3: Platforms, Technologies And Business Models Part 4: Cultures And Practices Part 5: Social And Economic Domains
This collection reflects the need for suitable methods to answer emerging questions that result from the ever-changing media environment. As media technologies and infrastructures become inseparably interwoven with social constellations, scholars from varying disciplines increasingly investigate their characteristics, functioning, relevance and impact – facing new methodological challenges as well as opportunities. Innovative Methods in Media and Communication Research engages with the substantial need to rethink established methods to research acute changes in the media environment. The book gathers chapters dedicated to the multifacetedness and liveliness of emerging methods – from lif...
We tell stories about who we are. Through telling these stories, we connect with others and affirm our own sense of self. Spaces, be they online or offline; private or public; physical, augmented or virtual; or of a hybrid nature, present the performative realms upon which our stories unfold. This volume focuses on how digital platforms support, enhance, or confine the networked self. Contributors examine a range of issues relating to storytelling, platforms, and the self, including the live-reporting of events, the curation of information, emerging modalities of journalism, collaboratively formed memories, and the instant historification of the present.
We live in a world of technical systems designed in accordance with technical disciplines and operated by technically trained personnel—a unique social organization that largely determines our way of life. Andrew Feenberg’s theory of social rationality represents both the threats of technocratic modernity and the potential for democratic change.
What are we to make of our digital social lives and the forces that shape it? Should we feel fortunate to experience such networked connectivity? Are we privileged to have access to unimaginable amounts of information? Is it easier to work in a digital global economy? Or is our privacy and freedom under threat from digital surveillance? Our security and welfare being put at risk? Our politics undermined by hidden algorithms and misinformation? Written by a distinguished group of leading scholars from around the world, the Routledge Handbook of Digital Media and Communication provides a comprehensive, unique, and multidisciplinary exploration of this rapidly growing and vibrant field of study...
A proposal to repurpose Web-native techniques for use in social and cultural scholarly research. In Digital Methods, Richard Rogers proposes a methodological outlook for social and cultural scholarly research on the Web that seeks to move Internet research beyond the study of online culture. It is not a toolkit for Internet research, or operating instructions for a software package; it deals with broader questions. How can we study social media to learn something about society rather than about social media use? Rogers proposes repurposing Web-native techniques for research into cultural change and societal conditions. We can learn to reapply such “methods of the medium” as crawling and ...
How global workers, influencers, and activists develop tactics of algorithmic resistance by appropriating and repurposing the same algorithms that control our lives. Algorithms are all around us, permeating more and more aspects of our daily lives. While accounts of platform power tend to come across as bleak and monolithic, Algorithms of Resistance shows how people can resist algorithms across a variety of domains. Drawing from rich ethnographic materials and perspectives from both the Global North and South, authors Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Treré explore how people appropriate and reconfigure algorithms to pursue their objectives in three domains of everyday life: gig work, cultural in...