February 2017
Intermediate to advanced
198 pages
6h 13m
English
Content preview from Collective Action 2.0Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
Start your free trial
Chapter 2
What Is Social Media
A Critical View
Abstract
This chapter develops an understanding of the concept of social media, which will serve the discussion of the reciprocal relation between social media and collective action throughout the book. To do so, this chapter will conduct a differentiation of three dimensions of social media—information and communication technology, institutions, and media—and discuss the unique features of social media in each of these contexts. Subsequently, common theoretical pitfalls such as technological determinism, centrism, and utopianism, which have proved to be counterproductive not only in theoretical, but also in practical activist work, will be discussed and critically addressed.
Keywords
Affordance; Capitalism; ...