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What is ‘Social’ About Social Media?
Lecturer: Sue Mew
The Social Media Revolution
 How do we understand this social phenomenon as sociologists?
 What is ‘social’ about social media? What does it mean to be
‘social?
 What does social media tell us about the structures and power
relations at the heart of the social media landscape?
 What possibilities does social media hold for participatory
culture and participatory democracy?
Lecture Aims and Themes
To develop student critical understanding of:
1. What is ‘social’ about social media?;
2. Social media as the product of a techno-social
system;
3. Sociological theory and approaches to social media;
4. Social media as ‘participatory culture’.
What is ‘Social’ about Social Media?
 Links to question of ‘What does it mean to be ‘social’?:
 Information and Cognition - All media is regarded by some as
‘social’ because they are part of society and because aspects of
society are present in the technology we use. Cognition
regarded as social activity.
 Communication - Some argue that not all media are social, but
only those that support interpersonal communication (cf.
symbolic interaction) - e.g. not ‘social’ if you write a document
alone, but is ‘social’ to write an email or chat on Facebook.
 Community - Some communications result in more than social
relationships - e.g. a ‘community’ of friends, fans, activists.
 Collaboration and co-operative work - A fourth form of sociability
is collaborative or co-operative work - e.g. Wikipedia.
Understanding Social Media
 Fuchs (2014:6) Social Media: A Critical Introduction,
argues:
 “Understanding social media critically means, among
other thing, to engage with different forms of sociality
on the internet in the context of society.”
 Specifically, it means we need to be careful to specify
which meaning of the term”social’ we are employing.
 It also means we need to engage with social theory
as a tool of thought to help us come to grips with key
concepts and ideas when discussing different
aspects of social media
 e.g. ‘sociality’, ‘power’, ‘communication’, ‘democracy’,
‘participation’, the ‘public sphere’
What is ‘Social’ about Social Media?
 Fuchs (2014:6) argues:
 All computing systems, and therefore all web applications, as
well as all forms of media can be considered as social
 Why? Because they store and transmit human knowledge that
originates in social relations within society
 They are objectifications of society and human social relations
 However, not all computing systems and web applications
support direct communication between humans, in which at
least two humans mutually exchange meaningful
communication
 For example, Amazon is primarily a tool of information rather
than communication.
 Contrast with Facebook which has in-built communication
features (walls, mail system, comments) which are clearly tools
of communication.
‘Social Media’ as a Complex Concept
 ‘Social media’ has multi-layered meanings
 For instance, Facebook contains a lot of content (information)
and is a tool for communication and creation of ‘communities’
 BUT, it is only to a minor degree a tool for collaborative work
 However, Fuchs argues (2014:6) is does involve at least three
types of sociality: cognition, communication and community.
 Therefore, important when trying to critically understand what is
‘social’ about social media to engage with the different forms of
sociality on the Internet in the context of society
 In 2013 the most accessed websites were Google, Facebook,
YouTube Windows Live, Blogspot, Twitter, Wikipedia
 These platforms include social networking sites (Facebook,
Linkedin), video sharing sites (YouTube), blogs (Tumbler,
Blogspot), wikis (Wikipedia), and microblogs (Twitter)
Media and Social Theory
 Media are not technologies but techno-social systems
 In otherwards, media based on the duality of structure and
agency
 Sociologist Giddens (1984: 25-26) explains this duality as
follows:
“ According to the notion of the duality of structure, the structural
properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of
the practices they organise … and they both enable and
constrain actions”
 Media are techno-social systems, in which information and
communication technologies enable and constrain human
activities
 This process is dynamic and reflexive and connects
technological structures to human agency
The Dialectic of Structure and Agency
Social Media and Social Theory 1
 Fuchs (2014) produces a model of human activity explaining
social media using sociological theory:
 Durkheim (1982) Rules of Sociological Method
 Structural approach; social facts as fixed and objectified social
structures that condition social behavior
 According to this approach, all media and all software are social
in that they are the products of social processes
 They objectify knowledge that is produced in society and used in
social systems
 Yet, these structures also have a existence of their own,
independent of individual manifestations
 Web technologies therefore, according to this approach, are
‘social facts’.
Social Media and Social Theory 2
 The second understanding of sociality is based on Max Weber:
 Weber - Social action approach; Social activity as reciprocal and
meaningful symbolic interaction
 “Action is ‘social’ insofar as its subjective meaning takes account
of the behaviour of others and is thereby orientated to its
course.” Weber, 1978:4)
 According to this approach, Weber clear to distinquish between
social character of activities and individual activity and actions
 Ferdinand Tonnies - Social co-operation approach; community
as social systems that are based on feelings of togetherness,
mutual dependence, and values
 According to this approach, web platforms that enable the social
networking of people, and bring people together, creating a
sense of mutual togetherness, are social
 Marx - Social co-operation approach - the social as social cooperation that result in collective goods, owned co-operatively
 According to this approach, web platforms that enable the
collaborative production of digital knowledge are social
Social Media and Social Theory 3
 Ferdinand Tonnies (1988) Community and Society
 - Social co-operation approach; community as social systems
that are based on feelings of togetherness, mutual dependence,
and values
 According to this approach, web platforms that enable the social
networking of people, and bring people together, creating a
sense of mutual togetherness, are social
 Tonnies concept of Gemeinschaft [community] is based on
consciousness of belonging together and affirmation of mutual
dependence
 Tonnies distinquishes Gemeinschaft [community] from that of
Gesellscahft [society] - a more abstract, objective, recognition of
unity based on common traits and activities and other external
phenonomena.
Social Media and Social Theory 4
 Marx & Engels (1846) The German Ideology
 Social co-operation approach - the social as social co-operation
that result in collective goods, owned co-operatively
 For Marx and Engels, co-operation is the essence of the social
and the foundation of human existence:
“By social we understand the co-operation of several individuals,
no matter what the conditions, in what manner, to what end. It
follows from this that a certain mode of production, or industrial
stage, is always combined with a certain mode of co-operation,
or social stage, and this mode of co-operation is itself a
‘productive force’. (Marx and Engels, 1846: 50).
 According to this approach, web platforms that enable the
collaborative production of digital knowledge are social
The Ideology of Social Media as Participatory
Culture
 General assumption that Web 2.0 and development of social
media platforms results in a more democratic society (see
O’Reilly, 2005)
 Jenkins (2008:137) argues that increasingly “the web has
become a site of consumer participation”
 Tapscott and Williams (2007) refer to Web 2.00 as having
resulted in “a new economic democracy”
 But these approaches, all questionable when one delves more
closely into the actual participatory character of social media
platforms
 That is, these are dominated by transnational corporations
The Limits of Participatory Social Media Ideology
 Links to political economy of social media platforms
 Asymmetries in terms of visibility and attention evident
 Analysis of top ten most viewed videos on YouTube shows that
transnational media corporations control “YouTube political
attention economy” (see Fuch, 2014:99)
 Same analysis reveals that entertainment and music very
popular on both YouTube and Facebook, whereas politics is a
minority interest
 The top 10 results of a Google search for political news are all
associated with corporate news organisations (Fuch, 2014:101)
 9 out of 10 most followed user profiles are entertainment
orientated - Barack Obama being the exception
 All such results suggest a ‘corporate colonisation’ (cf.
Habermas) of social media
Communication Power and Social Media
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Key social theorist of the Internet is Spanish sociologist, Manuel
Castells
Author of trilogy The Information Age (2004), and Communication
Power (2009)
Castells (2009: 80, 97) argues Internet is shaped by conflict between
global media business networks and “creative audience” that seeks to
establish degree of control and assert right to communicative freedom
Views communication process as a dialectical process in relation to
mass self-communication = rooted in conflict
On the one hand, once in cyberspace, people watch “the powerful”;but
in order to access global communication networks people have to
surrender their privacy and become advertising targets (Castells:
2009:421)
Thus, Web 2.00 business strategies result in”the commodification of
freedom” - the enclosing of the commons of free communications
Thus, struggle for communicative power is central site of conflict (cf.
Habermas, Foucault)