A sleepwalker's guide to social media / Tony D. Sampson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sampson, Tony D., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social media--Political aspects.

Social media.

Social media and society.

Physical Description:

207 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2020.

Summary:

Positing online users as 'sleepwalkers', Tony Sampson offers an original and compelling approach for understanding how social media platforms produce subjectivities. Drawing on a wide range of theorists, including A.N. Whitehead and Gabriel Tarde, he provides tools to track his sleepwalker through the 'dark refrain of social media': a refrain that spreads through viral platform architectures with a staccato-like repetition of shock events, rumours, conspiracy, misinformation, big lies, search engine weaponization, data voids, populist strongmen, immune system failures, and far-right hate speech. Sampson's sleepwalker is not a pre-programmed smartphone junkie, but a conceptual personae intended to dodge capture by data doubles and lookalikes. Sleepwalkers are neither asleep nor wide awake; they are a liminal experimentation in collective mimicry and self-other relationality. Their purpose is to stir up a new kind of community that emerges from the potentialities of revolutionary contagion. At a time in which social media is influencing more people than ever, A Sleepwalker's Guide to Social Media is an important reference for students and scholars of media theory, digital media and social media. -- Provided by publisher.

"A leading scholar's cutting-edge analysis of the power and impact of social media and its users"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Intro: Feeling Facts and Fakes – On the Viral Spectra of Somnambulism – Coda: Christchurch; El Paso: The Virality of Experience Capitalism – Segue: A Dark (Viral) Refrain: Immunity, Community and Contagion – Deeper Entanglements – Outro: Disrupting the Dark Refrain

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Sampson, Tony D., A sleepwalker's guide to social media

ISBN:

9781509537402

1509537406

9781509537419

1509537414

OCLC:

1133664503