Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

What’s ‘Social’ About Social Media?

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Book cover Designing the Social

Part of the book series: Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education ((CSTE,volume 11))

  • 1343 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter explores what it means to be ‘social’ online. We begin with a discussion of the manner in which our online social experiences, expectations, and engagements are enmeshed with extant socio-cultural resources in various ways. The discussion then moves to consider the various ways of engaging with social media beyond networking and peer interaction, before moving on to consider the importance of research exploring the ways social media is engaged with beyond content production alone. The chapter makes a clear call for a move away from big data research which at best places undue emphasis on content production and at worst wilfully misrepresents online user experiences. Finally, this chapter presents research exploring how young people negotiated the social milieu online and how they engaged with the various social media platforms they used.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    It is worth noting that the Gamergate community claimed that they were hounding, harassing, and abusing feminists and females because of their concerns around ethics in video game journalism. It is also worth noting this claim is ridiculous.

References

  • Abidin, C. (2018). Internet celebrity: Understanding fame online (Society now). Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Abrashi, M. (2018). The fake account for the real self. Scholars Week, 48. https://cedar.wwu.edu/scholwk/2018/Day_one/48

  • Ariel, Y., & Avidar, R. (2015). Information, interactivity, and social media. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 23(1), 19–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baeza-Yates, R., & Saez-Trumper, D. (2015). Wisdom of the crowd or wisdom of a few?: An analysis of users’ content generation. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM conference on hypertext & social media (pp. 69–74). ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barker, V. (2009). Older adolescents’ motivations for social network site use: The influence of gender, group identity, and collective self-esteem. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 12(2), 209–213.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barlow, J. P. (1996). A declaration of the independence of cyberspace. Eff.org, Access 08/2019: www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence

  • Barnes, R. (2015). Understanding the affective investment produced through commenting on Australian alternative journalism website New Matilda. New Media & Society, 17(5), 810–826.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boczkowski, P. J., Matassi, M., & Mitchelstein, E. (2018). How young users deal with multiple platforms: The role of meaning-making in social media repertoires. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 23(5), 245–259.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bolton, R. N., Parasuraman, A., Hoefnagels, A., Migchels, N., Kabadayi, S., Gruber, T., & Solnet, D. (2013). Understanding generation Y and their use of social media: A review and research agenda. Journal of Service Management, 24(3), 245–267.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. B. (2008). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210–230.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brandtzaeg, P. B., & Chaparro-Domínguez, M. Á. (2018). From youthful experimentation to professional identity: Understanding identity transitions in social media. Young, 1–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brandtzaeg, P. B., & Lüders, M. (2018, January–March). Time collapse in social media: Extending the context collapse. Social Media+ Society, 1–10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bright, J., Margetts, H., Hale, S., & Yasseri, T. (2014). The use of social media for research and analysis: A feasibility study. A report of research carried out by the Oxford Internet Institute on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, A. (2018). What is so special about online (as compared to offline) hate speech? Ethnicities, 18(3), 297–326.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chander, A., & Krishnamurthy, V. (2018). The myth of platform neutrality. Georgetown Law Technology Review, 2(2), 400–416.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chess, S., & Maddox, J. (2018). Kim Kardashian is my new BFF: Video games and the looking glass celebrity. Popular Communication, 16(3), 196–210.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cole, K. K. (2015). “It’s like She’s eager to be verbally abused”: Twitter, trolls, and (En)gendering disciplinary rhetoric. Feminist Media Studies, 15(2), 356–358.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cottom, T. M. (2017) Black cyberfeminism: Ways forward for intersectionality and digital sociology. In Daniels, J., Gregory, K. & McMillan Cottom, T. (Eds.). (2016). Digital sociologies. London, Policy Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crawford, K. (2009). Following you: Disciplines of listening in social media. Continuum, 23(4), 525–535.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daniels, J. (2018, December). WEB DuBois for the twenty-first century: On being a scholar-activist in the Digital era. Sociological Forum, 33(4), 1072–1085.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, J. L., & Jurgenson, N. (2014). Context collapse: Theorizing context collusions and collisions. Information, Communication & Society, 17(4), 476–485.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duguay, S. (2017). Dressing up Tinderella: Interrogating authenticity claims on the mobile dating app Tinder. Information, Communication & Society, 20(3), 351–367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dyer, H. T. (2015). All the web’s a stage: The effects of design and modality on youth performances of identity (Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, 19) (pp. 213–242). Technology and Youth: Growing Up in a Digital World.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edelmann, N., Krimmer, R., & Parycek, P. (2017). How online lurking contributes value to E-participation: A conceptual approach to evaluating the role of lurkers in e-participation. In 2017 Fourth International Conference on eDemocracy & eGovernment (ICEDEG) (pp. 86–93). IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Epstein, D. A., Jacobson, B. H., Bales, E., McDonald, D. W., & Munson, S. A. (2015). From “nobody cares” to “way to go!”: A design framework for social sharing in personal informatics. In CSCW 2015, March 14–18 (pp. 1622–1636). Vancouver.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fenton, N. (2016). The internet of me (and my “friends”). In J. Curran, N. Fenton, & D. Freedman (Eds.), Misunderstanding the internet (pp. 145–172). London: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Florini, S. (2014). Tweets, tweeps, and signifyin’ communication and cultural performance on “Black Twitter”. Television & New Media, 15(3), 223–237.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fox, J., & Warber, K. M. (2015). Queer identity management and political self-expression on social networking sites: A co-cultural approach to the spiral of silence: LGBT+ & social networking sites. Journal of Communication, 65(1), 79–100.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. London, England: Anchor Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hargittai, E. (2015). Is bigger always better? Potential biases of big data derived from social network sites. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 659(1), 63–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haythornthwaite, C., & Wellman, B. (2002). The internet in everyday life: An introduction. In B. Wellman & C. Haythornthwaite (Eds.), The internet in everyday life (pp. 3–44). Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jenkins, H. (2008). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. 2006. New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jenkins, H. (2014). Rethinking ‘rethinking convergence/culture’. Cultural Studies, 28(2), 267–297.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kent, M. L. (2010). Directions in social media for professionals and scholars. The Sage Handbook of Public Relations, 2, 643–656.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kerr, G., Mortimer, K., Dickinson, S., & Waller, D. S. (2012). Buy, boycott or blog: Exploring online consumer power to share, discuss and distribute controversial advertising messages. European Journal of Marketing, 46(3/4), 387–405.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim, K. S., Sin, S. C. J., & Tsai, T. I. (2014). Individual differences in social media use for information seeking. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 40(2), 171–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koutropoulos, A., Honeychurch, S., & Singh, L. (2019). Rethinking lurking. eLearn Magazine, 29. Accessed 08/2019: www.eprints.gla.ac.uk/187634/1/187634.pdf

  • Kowert, R., Domahidi, E., & Quandt, T. (2016). Networking and other social aspects of technology use: Past developments, present impact, and future considerations. In D. Faust, K. Faust, & M. N. Potenza (Eds.), Oxford handbook of digital technologies and mental health. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kozinets, R. V. (2010). Netnography: Doing ethnographic research online. London: SAGE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lampe, C., Ellison, N., & Steinfield, C. (2006). A face (book) in the crowd: Social searching vs. social browsing. In Proceedings of CSCW 2006, November 4–8 (pp. 167–170). Banff.

    Google Scholar 

  • Larkin, B. (2008). Signal and noise: Media, infrastructure, and urban culture in Nigeria. Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, A., & Cook, P. S. (2015). The conditions of exposure and immediacy: Internet surveillance and generation Y. Journal of Sociology, 51(3), 674–688.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lil Miss Hot Mess. (2015). Selfies and side-eye: Drag Queens take on Facebook. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 16(2), 144–146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lookadoo, K. L., & Dickinson, T. M. (2015). Who killed @TheLauraPalmer? Twitter as a performance space for twin peaks fan fiction. In A. F. Slade, A. J. Narro, & D. Givens-Carroll (Eds.), Television, social media, and fan culture (pp. 337–352). London: Lexington.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madden, S., Janoske, M., Winkler, R. B., & Edgar, A. N. (2018). Mediated misogynoir: Intersecting race and gender in online harassment. In Mediating misogyny (pp. 71–90). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Mark, G., Wang, Y., Niiya, M., & Reich, S. (2016, May 07–12). Sleep debt in student life: Online attention focus, Facebook, and mood. In Proceedings of 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. San Jose (pp. 5517–5528).

    Google Scholar 

  • Marwick, A. E., & Boyd, D. (2011). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society, 13(1), 114–133.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massanari, A. (2017). # Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures. New Media & Society, 19(3), 329–346.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McInroy, L. B., & Craig, S. L. (2018). Online fandom, identity milestones, and self-identification of sexual/gender minority youth. Journal of LGBT Youth, 15(3), 179–196.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mendelson, A., & Papacharissi, Z. (2011). Look at us: Collective narcissism in college student Facebook photo galleries. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites (pp. 251–273). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, D. (2011). Tales from Facebook. London: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mozur, P. (2018). A genocide incited on Facebook, with posts from Myanmar’s military. New York Times. Accessed 08/2019: www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html

  • Muller, M. (2012, February 11–15). Lurking as personal trait or situational disposition: Lurking and contributing in enterprise social media. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on computer supported cooperative work. Seattle. (pp. 253–256).

    Google Scholar 

  • Niedt, G. (2016). Social media affordances and the capital of queer self-expression: Facebook, Ello, and the nymwars. In Defining identity and the changing scope of culture in the digital age (pp. 99–116). IGI Global.

    Google Scholar 

  • Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. New York: New York University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pempek, T. A., Yermolayeva, Y. A., & Calvert, S. L. (2009). College students’ social networking experiences on Facebook. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30(3), 227–238.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Phua, J., Jin, S. V., & Kim, J. J. (2017). Gratifications of using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat to follow brands: The moderating effect of social comparison, trust, tie strength, and network homophily on brand identification, brand engagement, brand commitment, and membership intention. Telematics and Informatics, 34(1), 412–424.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prasad, P. (2016). Beyond rights as recognition: Black Twitter and posthuman coalitional possibilities. Prose Studies, 38(1), 50–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quinn, Z. (2017). Crash override: How Gamergate (nearly) destroyed my life, and how we can win the fight against online hate. New York: Hachette Book.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rubin, J. D., & McClelland, S. I. (2015). “Even though it’s a small checkbox, it’s a big deal”: Stresses and strains of managing sexual identity(s) on Facebook. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 17(4), 512–526.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sharma, S. (2013). Black Twitter? Racial hashtags, networks and contagion. New Formations, 78, 46–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sujon, Z. (2018). The triumph of social privacy: Understanding the privacy logics of sharing behaviors across social media. International Journal of Communication, 12, 3751–3771.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sundar, S. S. (2004). Theorizing interactivity’s effects. The Information Society, 20(5), 385–389.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Szulc, L. (2018). Profiles, identities, data: Making abundant and anchored selves in a platform society. Communication Theory, 29(3), 257–276.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tagg, C., Seargeant, P., & Brown, A. A. (2017). Afterword: Beyond Facebook. In Taking offence on social media (pp. 113–121). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Tennent, E., & Jackson, S. (2019). “Exciting” and “borderline offensive”: Bloggers, binaries, and celebrity feminism. Feminist Media Studies, 19(2), 225–238.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thornton, D., & Evans, M. (2015). YouTube: A new mediator of Christian worship. In A. E. Nekola & T. Wagner (Eds.), Congregational music-making and community in a mediated age (pp. 141–159). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tierney, T. (2013). The public space of social media: Connected cultures of the network society. New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Topinka, R. J. (2018). Politically incorrect participatory media: Racist nationalism on r/ImGoingToHellForThis. New Media & Society, 20(5), 2050–2069.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Dijck, J. (2009). Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content. Media, culture & society, 31(1), 41–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weller, K. (2016). Trying to understand social media users and usage: The forgotten features of social media platforms. Online Information Review, 40(2), 256–264.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, A., & Gonlin, V. (2017). I got all my sisters with me (on Black Twitter): Second screening of how to get away with murder as a discourse on Black Womanhood. Information, Communication & Society, 20(7), 984–1004.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    Harry T. Dyer

Authors
  1. Harry T. Dyer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Dyer, H.T. (2020). What’s ‘Social’ About Social Media?. In: Designing the Social. Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education, vol 11. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5716-3_4

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation