conference summary part 2: the internet as playground and factory
Following PJ Rey’s excellent summary of the Internet as Playground and Factory yesterday, I offer a few additional observations from the conference this past weekend, focusing on Web 2.0 capitalism,...
View ArticleWhere’s the Money in Prosumption: Predictions for 2010
by pj.rey A recent article in the New York Times, “Experts Predict 2010 the Year for Social Media ROI” summarizes a Trendspotting.com report entitled “TrendsSpotting’s 2010 Social Media Influencers –...
View Articlethe iPad favors passive consumers not active prosumers
by nathan jurgenson I’ve written many posts on this blog about the implosion of the spheres of production and consumption indicating the rise of prosumption. This trend has exploded online with the...
View ArticleThe DeMcDonaldization of the Internet
On this blog, I typically discuss the intersection of social theory and the changing nature of the Internet (e.g., using Marx, Bourdieu, Goffman, Bauman, DeBord and so on). In a chapter of the new...
View ArticleSocial Media: Documentation as Stratification
The new norms of exhibitionism and copious self-documentation have been regular talking points on Sociology Lens over the past year. Consider Nathan Jurgenson’s posts, our digital culture of...
View ArticleFacebook Fatigue and Privacy Panic: Has the Golden Age of Social Media Ended?
For years, we have been deluged with stories about the dangers of online social media. But in the last several months, a new kind of story has suddenly swept the mainstream media and the blogosphere...
View ArticleSocial Media Fear-Baiting: The Immortality of Digital Content
The New York Times recently ran a story about how “The Web Means the End of Forgetting.” It describes a digital age in which our careless mass exhibitionism creates digital documents that will live on...
View ArticleSocial Media: Have We Built a Society without Closets?
Today, we are all familiar with with what it means to be closeted. In fact, coming out has become among our most widely recognized cultural narratives. No doubt, large swaths of the American landscape...
View ArticleFacebook Places and the Augmentation of Reality
You probably have heard about Facebook Places, a feature that brings the site up to speed with other location-sharing services like Foursquare and Gowalla that allow users to document where they are,...
View ArticleEngaging Sociologically with Students’ Facebook Usage
It’s the middle of class. Looking out into the classroom, a dim light reflects on students’ faces as they stare or type into the devices in front of them. Walking up and down the aisles, blue-tinted...
View ArticleCollege Students and Social Media: Making Meaning of Everyday Activities in...
When Harrisburg University in Harrisburg, PA attempted a week-long social media “blackout” in September 2010, national news media swarmed the campus. A “smartly dressed correspondent from NPR stalk[ed]...
View ArticleI See the Target: Social Media and the Accountability of Military Technology
An image from Bridle’s Dronestagram In a recent article, Brad Allenby and Carolyn Mattick argue that the ‘rule book’ of international warfare needs to be rewritten to include of the use of new...
View ArticleBanned TED Talk: Nick Hanauer “Rich people don’t create jobs”
Hanauer discusses the perceived wisdom or false premise that tax cuts for the rich creates jobs. Click here to view the embedded video.
View ArticleDigital witnesses: memory Vs experience.
Stonehenge at dawn on summer solstice, 2014 I have recently had the double-privilege of going to Stonehenge to witness the sunrise on summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and then onto...
View ArticleElectioneering, Facebook-style.
By Flohuels (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsWhat do you think was the most-discussed topic on...
View ArticleI Spoke Up: Politics and Social Media in Tory Britain
Photograph from Bristolpost.co.uk The issue of politics and social media is a contentious one. I have had discussions with lifelong friends where they have made it very clear that, in their view,...
View ArticleThe Perpetually Angry Activist: Emotions and Social Change in News Media
Source: https://pixabay.com/en/anger-angry-bad-isolated-dangerous-18615/ News coverage of protests and the activists which engage in them forms into patterns; media tends to highlight the extreme,...
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