Social Media: A Critical Introduction

Despite only being around for a little over a decade, social media's success has been overwhelming, and compared to other aspects of the media, it is very understudied. In his book Social Media: A Critical Introduction, Christian Fuchs analyzes the social media platforms Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikileaks, and Wikipedia with regards to Marxist theory and the teachings of the Frankfurt School, and provides an argument for how this new and constantly-evolving field should be studied.

As a frequent user of social media since its invention, there are many aspects of social media that I take for granted. I just use social media as a fun way to pass the time, and before reading this book, I did not think of the implications my use of the various platforms had on society and the culture. In this book, Fuchs tackles some of these serious implications.

For one, Fuchs explains that social media platforms are exploiting their prosumers by "selling" them as commodities to advertisers. He makes the astute observation that the reason Facebook did not include any "dislike" button for a long time (even though it was so widely requested) was because they wanted to prevent prosumers from disliking an advertisement from one of their sponsors. The prosumers also create content on these platforms that draw audiences and encourage them to join the platform and create their own content as well.

Another issue Fuchs discusses is surveillance versus transparency on social media. According to him, surveillance is when the powerful is obscurely watching over those who are not powerful. Facebook watching over its prosumers to distribute their information to advertisers is an example of surveillance. Transparency, on the other hand, is when powerful people are forced to reveal information. Wikileaks has been coming up a lot in the media in the past couple years because of the role it has been playing in American politics. Their leak of Hilary Clinton's emails during the presidential election, for example, is transparency.

Additionally, Fuchs talks about the future of social media as having the potential for being tools of socialist expression. He is especially hopeful of Wikipedia's potential to be socialist, because it is commons-based and advertisement-free, among other characteristics. His pro-communist message becomes especially clear in the end of his book, when he argues that social media should help us create a communist society in which information can be created and shared equally (an argument I believe to be especially salient with the looming threat of Net Neutrality).