A sleepwalker's guide to social media / Tony D. Sampson.
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 t...
Main Author: | |
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Language: | English |
Published: |
Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA :
Polity Press,
2020.
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Subjects: | |
Physical Description: | 207 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
Format: | Book |
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. |
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Call Number: | HM742 .S286 2020 |
Bibliography Note: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
ISBN: | 9781509537402 1509537406 9781509537419 1509537414 |