LibGuides: Social Media: Books &amp; eBooks

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Authenticity As Performativity on Social Media Authenticity is a highly-prized concept on social media, but given the history of the term, has it been adequately scrutinised? This book provides an alternative definition of authentic social media practice and suggests that, rather than being an achievable ideal, authenticity reveals itself as an unrepeatable temporary interval.  Applying a post-structural lens of performativity, Taylor analyses the resurgence of the authentic as a cultural trend and argues that the professionalisation of social media has given rise to a 'neoliberal authentic' that equates productivity with self-actualisation, questioning whether society should present this as a cultural ideal.  Using a new critical framework, Taylor recontextualises authenticity in a variety of social media practices. This includes authentic self-representation, authentic influence and its effect in influencer culture, as well as meme production as an attempt to find authenticity. Part-reader, part-manifesto, the book asks readers to reappraise authenticity and provides a working definition for future practice.
Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing A revealing look at how user behavior is powering deep social divisions online--and how we might yet defeat political tribalism on social media In an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand each other. We use social media as a mirror to decipher our place in society but, as Chris Bail explains, it functions more like a prism that distorts our identities, empowers status-seeking extremists, and renders moderates all but invisible. Breaking the Social Media Prism challenges common myths about echo chambers, foreign misinformation campaigns, and radicalizing algorithms, revealing that the solution to political tribalism lies deep inside ourselves. Drawing on innovative online experiments and in-depth interviews with social media users from across the political spectrum, this book explains why stepping outside of our echo chambers can make us more polarized, not less. Bail takes you inside the minds of online extremists through vivid narratives that trace their lives on the platforms and off--detailing how they dominate public discourse at the expense of the moderate majority. Wherever you stand on the spectrum of user behavior and political opinion, he offers fresh solutions to counter political tribalism from the bottom up and the top down. He introduces new apps and bots to help readers avoid misperceptions and engage in better conversations with the other side. Finally, he explores what the virtual public square might look like if we could hit "reset" and redesign social media from scratch through a first-of-its-kind experiment on a new social media platform built for scientific research. Providing data-driven recommendations for strengthening our social media connections, Breaking the Social Media Prism shows how to combat online polarization without deleting our accounts.
Curation in the Age of Platform Capitalism : The Value of Selection, Narration, and Expertise in New Media Cultures This book employs the figure of curation--the selection, arrangement, and display of objects, concepts, and things--to explore the cultures of platform capitalism. Considering its rise in the global art world as an authorial, meaning-making activity and an organizational-entrepreneurial endeavour, it looks at curation as the interweaving of innovative concepts, elaborate storytelling, and trusted experts leaking out from galleries to hashtags.
LikeWar : The Weaponization of Social Media Named a Best Book of the Year By Amazon and Foreign Affairs Magazine Through the weaponization of social media, the internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, "Twitter wars" produce real‑world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations. War, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battle space that plays out on our smartphones. P. W. Singer and Emerson Brooking tackle the mind‑bending questions that arise when war goes online and the online world goes to war.  Delving into the web's darkest corners, LikeWar outlines a radical new paradigm for understanding and defending against the unprecedented threats of our networked world. 
Also available in print: HM742 .S5745 2018
Opinions Throughout History Social Media Issues This new series from Grey House offers in-depth, single volumes that follow the debate, or path, to a decision on a controversial topic as it evolved throughout history. Each volume offers a wide range of opinion essays and editorials, speeches, and journal articles and expert analysis.
Also available in print: HM1206 .W93 2019
The Psychology of Evolving Technology: How Social Media, Influencer Culture and New Technologies are Altering Society Technological innovations have advanced at an incredible speed since the introduction of the computer that it has altered the fabric of our society.  The possession of computers, smart-devices, along with social media, texting and video games, is now an intimate part of the structure of our culture. This book is a framework to start a conversation on how technology is changing our lifestyles and transforming our world. There is now an entire generation that has been using technology through the most delicate developmental time in their lives. This book presents how to look at the cognitive and psychosocial developmental stages and what are the age-appropriate milestones and factsheet of behaviors at different ages. It provides insight into the strength and vulnerable characteristics at each stage and the prevalence of some negative conditions in our society. You will gain a perspective of the encouraging and challenging aspects of computer learning, smart devices, and how to start and keep the conversation going from infancy to adulthood in order to keep and maintain your virtues and ways to circumvent unfavorable consequences. In short, The Psychology of Evolving Technology looks at how cutting-edge and revolutionary high technologies have disrupted our society through its many luxuries and conveniences and how it has altered the outlook of our values, privileges, and expectations. What You'll Learn Determine what adjustments should be made to regulate new innovations to allow them to succeed  See how development stages in a child now interact with technology Review how social media and influencer culture are changing the way we see ourselves in society Who This Book Is For All readers curious about the effect of technology on individuals, growing children, and the fabric of society
Race and Ethnicity in Digital Culture: Our Changing Traditions, Impressions, and Expressions in a Mediated World In this unprecedented study, leading scholars and emerging voices from around the world consider how race and ethnicity continue to shape our everyday lives, even as digital technology seems to promise a release from our "real" social identities. * Reveals how "memes" and "viral videos" represent, discuss, or negotiate ideas about racial and ethnic identity * Discusses how the human body is racialized in digital image, video, and photography, and how technologies and digital spaces themselves come to be racialized * Examines the interplay of digital narratives with political movements for civil rights and social justice * Explores patterns and practices of racist and xenophobic exclusion in both online and offline spaces
The SAGE Handbook of Social Media 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
Social Media: A Reference Handbook Social media is arguably one of the most powerful technology-enabled innovations since the Internet itself. This single-volume book provides a broad and easily understandable discussion of the evolution of social media; related problems and controversies, especially for youth; key people and organizations; and useful social media data. * Provides readers with a clearly written overview of the impacts of social media worldwide that highlights key people and companies in the development of social media * Presents up-to-date information on the range of problems related to social media and presents potential solutions * Offers a variety of voices from social media experts, supplying perspectives from creators to users
Social Media : Culture and Identity Social Media: Culture and Identity examines the global impact of social media in the formation of various identities and cultures. New media scholars-- both national and international-- have posited thought-provoking analyses of sociocultural issues about human communication that are impacted by the omnipresence of social media. This collection examines issues of gender, class, and race inequities along with social media's connections to women's health, cyberbullying, sexting, and transgender issues both in the United States and in some developing countries.
Social Media and Social Movements : The Transformation of Communication Patterns This book examines the increased utilization of social media in daily life and its impact on social movements. The contributors analyze "social media revolutions" such as the Arab Spring, the 15-M movement in Spain, the Occupy Nigeria movement, and the Occupy Gezi movement in Turkey. The contributors to this collection--academics, researchers, and activists--implement diverse methodological approaches, both descriptive and quantitative, to cut across various disciplines, including communication and media studies, cultural studies, politics, sociology, and education.
Violence and Trolling on Social Media 'Trolls for Trump', virtual rape, fake news - social media discourse, including forms of virtual and real violence, has become a formidable, yet elusive, political force. What characterizes online vitriol? How do we understand the narratives generated, and also address their real-world - even life-and-death - impact? How can hatred, bullying, and dehumanization on social media platforms be addressed and countered in a post-truth world? This book unpicks discourses, metaphors, media dynamics, and framing on social media, to begin to answer these questions. Written for and by cultural and media studies scholars, journalists, political philosophers, digital communication professionals, activists and advocates, this book makes the connections between theoretical approaches from cultural and media studies and practical challenges and experiences 'from the field', providing insight into a rough media landscape.
Visual Citizenship : Communicating Political Opinions and Emotions on Social Media This book explores visual political engagement online - how citizens participate in the dynamism of life in society by expressing their opinions and emotions on various issues of democratic life in image-based social media posts, independently of collective actions. Looking beyond large digital social movements to focus on the everyday, the book provides a well-documented and comprehensive framework of key notions, concrete methods and examples of empirical insights into everyday visual citizenship on social media. It shows how the visual has become ubiquitous in citizens' communication on social media, focusing on how citizens use visual content to express their emotions and opinions on social media platforms when they discuss politics in a large sense. With this book, every reader interested in political communication, visual communication and/or new media is fully equipped to analyse everyday visual citizenship on social media platforms. The Open Access version of this book, available at http: //www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

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Broken Code : Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose its Harmful Secrets THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE * By an award-winning technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal, a behind-the-scenes look at the manipulative tactics Facebook used to grow its business, how it distorted the way we connect online, and the company insiders who found the courage to speak out "Broken Code fillets Facebook's strategic failures to address its part in the spread of disinformation, political fracturing and even genocide. The book is stuffed with eye-popping, sometimes Orwellian statistics and anecdotes that could have come only from the inside." --New York Times Book Review Once the unrivaled titan of social media, Facebook held a singular place in culture and politics. Along with its sister platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, it was a daily destination for billions of users around the world. Inside and outside the company, Facebook extolled its products as bringing people closer together and giving them voice. But in the wake of the 2016 election, even some of the company's own senior executives came to consider those claims pollyannaish and simplistic. As a succession of scandals rocked Facebook, they--and the world--had to ask whether the company could control, or even understood, its own platforms. Facebook employees set to work in pursuit of answers.  They discovered problems that ran far deeper than politics. Facebook was peddling and amplifying anger, looking the other way at human trafficking, enabling drug cartels and authoritarians, allowing VIP users to break the platform's supposedly inviolable rules. They even raised concerns about whether the product was safe for teens. Facebook was distorting behavior in ways no one inside or outside the company understood.  Enduring personal trauma and professional setbacks, employees successfully identified the root causes of Facebook's viral harms and drew up concrete plans to address them. But the costs of fixing the platform--often measured in tenths of a percent of user engagement--were higher than Facebook's leadership was willing to pay. With their work consistently delayed, watered down, or stifled, those who best understood Facebook's damaging effect on users were left with a choice: to keep silent or go against their employer. Broken Code tells the story of these employees and their explosive discoveries. Expanding on "The Facebook Files," his blockbuster, award-winning series for The Wall Street Journal, reporter Jeff Horwitz lays out in sobering detail not just the architecture of Facebook's failures, but what the company knew (and often disregarded) about its societal impact. In 2021, the company would rebrand itself Meta, promoting a techno-utopian wonderland. But as Broken Code shows, the problems spawned around the globe by social media can't be resolved by strapping on a headset.
Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture "From New Yorker staff writer and author of The Longing for Less Kyle Chayka comes a timely history and investigation of a world ruled by algorithms, which determine the shape of culture itself. From coffee shops to rental apartments to social media posts the world round, a sleek and deceptively simple aesthetic has come to predominate. It's in the neon signs and exposed brick of an Internet cafe in Nairobi or the skeletal, modern furniture of an Airbnb in Portland. These designs are easy to identify, but even more crucially, they photograph well. In their simplicity and studied airiness, these images fit seamlessly into the Instagram grid. But this aesthetic is only one small aspect of a broader program of curation that is determined by the algorithm-a network of mathematically determined choices that ramify into the development of city grids and music playlists alike. To have our tastes, behaviors, and emotions governed by computers, does nothing short of call the very notion of free will into question. Over the last decade, Kyle Chayka has studied the homogeneity of this curation of reality. Working as a contributor for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Republic, he has traveled to Berlin, Reykjavik, and Los Angeles tracing the algorithm's lineage. In Filterworld, Chayka lucidly examines how this deeply filtered aesthetic-spanning digital and physical spaces-creates an uncanny blend of work, home, and social life. As the algorithm determines our choices, other important questions arise: What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity-the very nature of being human? What does the notion of choice mean when the available options have been so carefully arranged for us? Filterworld offers a way out. Kyle Chayka shows us how to disconnect from the tyranny of the algorithms that continue to override our sensibilities, and inform even our most intimate, real-world interactions. Most importantly, he shows us how to reclaim our individual freedom.
The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity The challenging and brilliantly-argued new book from the bestselling author ofThe Strange Death of Europe. In his devastating new bookThe Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray examines the twenty-first century's most divisive issues: sexuality, gender, technology and race. He reveals the astonishing new culture wars playing out in our workplaces, universities, schools and homes in the names of social justice, identity politics and intersectionality. We are living through a postmodern era in which the grand narratives of religion and political ideology have collapsed. In their place have emerged a crusading desire to right perceived wrongs and a weaponization of identity, both accelerated by the new forms of social and news media. Narrow sets of interests now dominate the agenda as society becomes more and more tribal--and, as Murray shows, the casualties are mounting. Readers of all political persuasions cannot afford to ignore Murray's masterfully argued and fiercely provocative book, in which he seeks to inject some sense into the discussion around this generation's most complicated issues. He ends with an impassioned call for free speech, shared common values and sanity in an age of mass hysteria.
Principles of Mass Communications This volume introduces students to mass communication, a broad field that encompasses the communication of information to the public through a wide range of mass-media outlets, from print magazines and newspapers to interactive, multimedia-oriented websites and apps. The history of mass communication spans centuries, and changes within that field have often occurred alongside-and at times spurred on-social change, the rise and fall of industries, and shifts in the geopolitical landscape.
The Psychology of the Selfie The Psychology of the Selfie provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of research on the significance of selfies, offering insights into the topic from a psychological perspective and examining important issues such as body image, self-objectification, mental health and psychological benefits. Selfies are a worldwide phenomenon. Although dismissed by critics as a sign of self-absorbed narcissism, they are also a social currency that maintains and reinforces friendships, a feedback loop for self-identity affirmation, a promotional tool for gaining social influence, and a method for preserving memories of life events. In this book, Barrie Gunter expertly explores the psychological underpinnings of the contemporary global phenomenon of "selfies", from the historical roots and meteoric rise due to technical advancements, to the different personality types of selfie-takers, to social relationships, to group and personal identity. Looking at both the psychological nature and impact of selfies, this book reviews different psychological outcomes for selfie-takers, both positive and negative, and the growth in psychological and physical problems that can sometimes arise. Presenting a comprehensive analysis specifically of selfie behaviour, this book is an essential reference for students and researchers in communications and media, journalism, information studies, psychology and sociology, as well as anyone with a general interest in the phenomenon.
Social Media : Principles and Applications Social Media: Principles and Applications examines social media in interpersonal, mass-mediated, educational, organizational, and political settings. Social media technologies take on many different forms, including social network sites like Facebook and Twitter, blogs, wikis, online video and photo-sharing sites (e.g., Pinterest), rating and social bookmarking sites, and video/text chatting sites (e.g., Skype). Beginning with the principles of social media, Sheldon disassembles applications of social media in a variety of settings to understand who is using social media, how they develop meaningful relationships, and how they use social media during major events. Sheldon also delves into the political, educational, commercial, and privacy issues of social media use, making this an excellent resource for communication, psychology, and social media scholars.
The Social Media Revolution : An Economic Encyclopedia of Friending, Following, Texting, and Connecting Social media shapes the ways in which we communicate, think about friends, and hear about news and current events. It also affects how users think of themselves, their communities, and their place in the world. This book examines the tremendous impact of social media on daily life. * Provides an insightful perspective on the past and future that demonstrates how the technologies of communication serve to create the nexus of social interaction * Examines the fundamental need and desire of humanity to communicate, which in turn determines what we think of ourselves, how we see the world, and how we make meaning * Focuses on social media as a powerful tool, not only for communication and entertainment but also for potentially equalizing power and social mobility locally, nationally, and globally * Considers the financial impact of social media as it challenges legacy media for consumers, users, and audiences
Tyrants on Twitter : Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare A look inside the weaponization of social media, and an innovative proposal for protecting Western democracies from information warfare. When Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram were first introduced to the public, their mission was simple: they were designed to help people become more connected to each other. Social media became a thriving digital space by giving its users the freedom to share whatever they wanted with their friends and followers. Unfortunately, these same digital tools are also easy to manipulate. As exemplified by Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, authoritarian states can exploit social media to interfere with democratic governance in open societies. Tyrants on Twitter is the first detailed analysis of how Chinese and Russian agents weaponize Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to subvert the liberal international order. In addition to examining the 2016 U.S. election, David L. Sloss explores Russia's use of foreign influence operations to threaten democracies in Europe, as well as China's use of social media and other digital tools to meddle in Western democracies and buttress autocratic rulers around the world. Sloss calls for cooperation among democratic governments to create a new transnational system for regulating social media to protect Western democracies from information warfare. Drawing on his professional experience as an arms control negotiator, he outlines a novel system of transnational governance that Western democracies can enforce by harmonizing their domestic regulations. And drawing on his academic expertise in constitutional law, he explains why that system--if implemented by legislation in the United States--would be constitutionally defensible, despite likely First Amendment objections. With its critical examination of information warfare and its proposal for practical legislative solutions to fight back, this book is essential reading in a time when disinformation campaigns threaten to undermine democracy.
The Voices of #MeToo : From Grassroots Activism to a Viral Roar The Voices of #MeToo: From Grassroots Activism to a Viral Roar is a timely analysis of how marginalized voices are engaged or silenced in one of the most successful social media projects in recent history. Accessibly written, this book unravels the ideas and practices of activism throughout the #MeToo movement from its inception to its current viral moment. The movement went viral with a tweet from Alyssa Milano after the avalanche of sexual harassment and assault allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. The hashtag, however, got its start from African-American, grassroots activist Tarana Burke a decade earlier. Taking this as her starting place, Gieseler focuses on the marginalized communities that are often ignored once a movement goes mainstream. With chapters on black female activism, the LGBTQ+ community and disability, toxic masculinity, and international responses, The Voices of #MeToo issues a call for all movements to become more inclusive as they seek empowerment and resistance against oppressive and abusive forces. Perhaps in exploring issues of social justice through an intersectional lens, we may all begin to hear and amplify the voices that are often silenced in the louder, viral roar.