Summary
This chapter of Understanding Social Media offers a succinct history of the Internet(s) and the World Wide Web as relates to the dotcom crash and the rise of user-centered models of online business and social media. After introducing these topics, the authors ask whether social media is a an emancipatory/empowering technology (or, better, system) or a controlling/exploitative one. It offers arguments made on both sides of the debate and concludes that freedom and control are not absolutes, but rather opposing ends of a spectrum. Sometimes social media is liberating; sometimes it is controlling; but "most often social media is both controlling and empowering at the same time, in an uneasy relationship where a certain amount of exploitation is negotiated as the price for a certain amount of empowerment" (Hinton and Hjorth 30).
This chapter of Understanding Social Media offers a succinct history of the Internet(s) and the World Wide Web as relates to the dotcom crash and the rise of user-centered models of online business and social media. After introducing these topics, the authors ask whether social media is a an emancipatory/empowering technology (or, better, system) or a controlling/exploitative one. It offers arguments made on both sides of the debate and concludes that freedom and control are not absolutes, but rather opposing ends of a spectrum. Sometimes social media is liberating; sometimes it is controlling; but "most often social media is both controlling and empowering at the same time, in an uneasy relationship where a certain amount of exploitation is negotiated as the price for a certain amount of empowerment" (Hinton and Hjorth 30).
Response
I found this chapter extremely fascinating. A couple of my favorite thoughts:
I found this chapter extremely fascinating. A couple of my favorite thoughts:
- The idea that "always on" mobile media makes the internet an "embedded part of mundane social life" (19) is a key thing to understand in my opinion. I'd compare this thought with my comments on Lefsetz' notion that social media doesn't affect people's everyday lives.
- I was fascinated with the paradox of control and freedom raised in the chapter. This is something I've thought about before. Are users controllers or controlled? As a literary person, it's fascinating to critically look at how various media can be essentially advertising platforms (e.g., blockbuster films, social media, etc.). But I appreciate the authors' conclusion, that sometimes social media is liberating, sometimes controlling. One of my favorite passages was describing Androjevic's argument that "commercial interests are 'colonising' narratives of personal self-presentation and sociality" (25).
Questions
- The article talks about the definition of freedom in a post-9/11 world as incorporating the notion of control (26). Is this true, and if so, is it a good thing?
- Is it possible that in the future the Internet may become more destabilizing to prevailing power structures (Web 3.0?) or will it always be a platform of control?