Social Media - Christian Fuchs

1 Social 111/15/2016 5:48:46 PMSAGE was founded in 1965 by Sara Miller McCune to support the dissemination of usable knowledge by publishing innovative and high-quality research and teaching content. Today, we publish over 900 journals, including those of more than 400 learned societies, more than 800 new books per year, and a growing range of library products including archives, data, case studies, reports, and video. SAGE remains majority-owned by our founder, and after Sara s lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures our continued Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | 211/15/2016 5:48:46 PMSocial MediaA Critical IntroductionSecond editionChristian 311/15/2016 5:48.

2 46 PMSAGE Publications Ltd1 Oliver s Yard 55 City RoadLondon EC1Y 1 SPSAGE Publications Teller RoadThousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt LtdB 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial AreaMathura RoadNew Delhi 110 044 SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd3 Church Street#10-04 Samsung HubSingapore 049483 Editor: Michael AinsleyEditorial assistant: John NightingaleProduction editor: Imogen RoomeCopyeditor: Neil DowdenProofreader:Indexer:Marketing manager: Lucia SweetCover design: Jen CrispTypeset by: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, IndiaPrinted by: Christian Fuchs 2017 First edition published 2014 This second edition published 2017 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

3 Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the of Congress Control Number: 2016949804 British Library Cataloguing in Publication dataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-4739-6682-6 ISBN 978-1-4739-6683-3 (pbk)At SAGE we take sustainability seriously. Most of our products are printed in the UK using FSC papers and boards. When we print overseas we ensure sustainable papers are used as measured by the PREPS grading system. We undertake an annual audit to monitor our 411/15/2016 5:48:47 PM 1 What Is a Critical Introduction to Social Media ?

4 1 What Is Social about Social Media ? 5 What Is Critical Thinking and Why Does it Matter? 8 What Is Critical Theory? 10 Critical Theory Approaches 19I FOUNDATIONS 31 2 What Are Social Media and Big Data? 33 Web and Social Media 34 The Need of Social Theory for Understanding Social Media 37 Explaining Social Media with Durkheim, Weber, Marx and T nnies 44 A Model of Social Media Communication 49 Big Data 52 Conclusion 61 3 Social Media as Participatory Culture 65 The Notions of Participation and Participatory Culture 66 Online Fan Culture and Politics 72 Social Media and Participatory Culture 73 Henry Jenkins and Digital Labour 76 Jenkins s Response to Criticisms 78 Conclusion 81 4 Social Media and Communication Power 85 Social Theory in the Information Age 86 Communication Power in the Network Society 88 Communication Power.

5 Social Media and Mass Self-Communication 90 Communication Power in the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement 98 Conclusion 511/15/2016 5:48:47 PMContentsviII APPLICATIONS 119 5 The Power and Political Economy of Social Media 121 Social Media as Ideology: The Limits of the Participatory Social Media Hypothesis 122 The Cycle of Capital Accumulation 128 Capital Accumulation and Social Media 130 Free Labour and Slave Labour 143 Conclusion 148 6 Google: Good or Evil Search Engine? 153 Introduction 154 Google s Political Economy 155 Googology: Google and Ideology 162 Work at Google 164 Google: God and Satan in One Company 167 Google and the State: Monopoly Power and Tax Avoidance 170 Conclusion 176 7 Facebook: Surveillance in the Age of Edward Snowden 183 Facebook s Financial Power 185 The Notion of Privacy 186 Facebook and Ideology 190 Privacy and the Political Economy of Facebook 194 Edward Snowden and the Surveillance-Industrial Complex 198 Conclusion 206 8 Twitter and Democracy: A New Public Sphere?

6 217 habermas s Concept of the Public Sphere 218 Twitter, Social Media and the Public Sphere 227 Political Communication on Twitter 231 Uncivil Communication on Twitter 240 Twitter s Political Economy 242 @J rgenHabermas #Twitter #PublicSphere 243 Conclusion 246 9 Weibo: Power, Ideology and Social Struggles in Chinese Capitalism 251 China s Capitalism 254 Weibo s Political Economy 268 Weibo and Social Media Ideologies 273 Chinese Social Struggles in the Age of Weibo 276 Conclusion 611/15/2016 5:48:47 PMContentsvii10 Airbnb and Uber: The Political Economy of Online Sharing Platforms Uber: The Pay per Service Sharing Model Airbnb: The Capitalist Sharing Economy s Rent-on-Rent Model The Sharing Economy: A Capitalist Ideology An Alternative Sharing Economy Beyond Capitalism?

7 Conclusion 31211 Wikipedia: A New Democratic Form of Collaborative Work and Production? The Communist Idea Communication and Communism Wikipedia s Political Economy Criticisms of Wikipedia Conclusion 334 III FUTURES 33912 Conclusion: Social Media and its Alternatives Towards a Truly Social Media Social Media Reality: Ideologies and Exploitation Social Media Alternatives Towards a Truly Social Media and a New Society 355 References 711/15/2016 5:48:47 PMKey conceptsInternetSocial mediaWeb mile Durkheim s notion of Social factsMax Weber s notions of Social action and Social relationsFerdinand T nnies s concept of communityKarl Marx s concept of co-operative workBig dataKey questions xWhat does it mean to be Social ?

8 XWhat kinds of Social theories exist? xHow can Social theory help us to understand what is Social about Social Media ? xHow Social is the web? xWhat is big data? How is it related to Social Media ? What are its implications for society and academia? 2 OverviewThis chapter introduces how one can think about Social Media . You will engage with the question: What is Social about Social Media ? One of the first reactions that many people have when hearing the term Social Media is to ask: Aren t all Media Social ? This depends on how one conceives the Social .

9 In order to understand the meanings of this term, we need to go into sociological theory. This chapter presents some concepts of what it can mean to be Social and discusses the implications of these concepts for understanding Social 02_Part 3311/15/2016 6:31:00 PMWhat Are Social Media and Big Data?34 Mainly, sociological theory has asked the question of what it means to be Social . Answering it therefore requires engagement with sociological theory. Specifically, I will introduce Durkheim s, Weber s, Marx s and T nnies s concepts of sociality and apply them to providing an explanation of the Social Media discusses the question of what new Social Media are and provides some basic features and criticisms of the terms web and Social Media .

10 In section , you can read different definitions of Social Media . I point out that we need Social theory to understand what is Social about Social Media . For this task, some sociological theory concepts are intro-duced that allow us to better understand the sociality of Social Media . I introduce the four concepts developed by Social theorists. mile Durkheim (1858 1917) was a French sociolo-gist who developed the concept of Social facts. Max Weber (1864 1920) was a German soci-ologist who worked out a theory of Social action and Social relations. Karl Marx (1818 1883) was a Social theorist who established a critical theory of capitalism.