Networks without a cause : a critique of social media / Geert Lovink.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lovink, Geert.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Online social networks--Sociological aspects.

Online social networks.

Online social networks--Case studies.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

vii, 221 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; Malden, Mass. : Polity, 2011.

Summary:

With the vast majority of Facebook users caught in a frenzy of 'friending,' 'liking,' and 'commenting,' at what point do we pause to grasp the consequences of our info-saturated lives? What compels us to engage so diligently with social networking systems? Networks Without a Cause examines our collective obsession with identity and self-management, coupled with the fragmentation and information overload endemic to contemporary online culture.

With a dearth of theory on the social and cultural ramifications of hugely popular online services, Lovink provides a pathbreaking critical analysis of our over-hyped, networked world with case studies on search engines, online video, blogging, digital radio, media activism, and the Wikileaks saga. This book offers a powerful message to media practitioners and theorists: let us collectively unleash our critical capacities to influence technology design and workspaces, otherwise we will disappear into the cloud. Probing but never pessimistic, Lovink draws from his long history in media research to offer a critique of the political structures and conceptual powers embedded in the technologies that shape our daily lives. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: capturing Web 2.0 before its disappearance

Psychopathology of information overload

Facebook, anonymity, and the crisis of the multiple self

Treatise on comment culture

Disquisition on Internet criticism

Media studies: diagnostics of a failed merger

Blogging after the hype: Germany, France, Iraq

Radio after radio: from pirate to Internet experiments

Online video aesthetics or the art of watching databases

Society of the query: the Googlization of our lives

Organizing networks in culture and politics

Techno-politics at WikiLeaks.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780745649672

074564967X

9780745649689

0745649688

OCLC:

780329779