Abstract
In the tradition of theorists such as Henry Jenkins, Manuel Castells, and Yochai Benkler, José van Dijck examines connections between society, economy, and technology. Through her study of five successful social media platforms, van Dijck argues that we live in a “culture of connectivity,” in which algorithms that can mine and analyze data in order to influence particular online behaviors are an accepted part of our online lives (p. 4). van Dijck sets out to provide “a critical history of the rise of social media” through an exploration of “technical, social, economic and cultural perspectives” in order to “elucidate how recent changes in our global media landscape have profoundly affected—if not driven—our experience of sociality” (pp. 4–5).
Early on in her text, van Dijck distinguishes between several types of social media and focuses her analysis solely on social networking sites (SNSs) and user-generated content (UGC) sites, eliminating trading and marketing sites and play and game sites from the text’s purview. She argues that SNSs and UGC sites are “the main grounds on which online sociality and creativity have developed” (p. 8). By combining actor–network theory, which is well suited for the study of technology and human interaction, with theories of political economy, which are well suited for the study of “economic infrastructure and legal-political governance as conditions for networks to evolve” (p. 26), van Dijck examines the ecosystem of social media through an analysis of five of its largest microsystems: YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Flickr, and Twitter.
This text provides a historical examination of these social media platforms at the technocultural levels of technology, users and usage, and contents as well as at socioeconomic levels of ownership, governance, and business models. Such examinations illustrate van Dijck’s central claims that “technology shapes sociality as much as sociality shapes technology” and that, as a result of this mutual shaping, social media platforms have moved away from a model of connectedness to a model of connectivity (p. 33). As van Dijck explains, connectedness is a human phenomenon in which humans use technologies to facilitate a connection with other humans whereas connectivity is an automated process in which algorithms are used to “engineer and manipulate connections” (p. 11). Throughout her historical analyses of social media platforms, van Dijck demonstrates that although most platforms began with a focus on connectedness, corporate influences have pushed owners toward a concern with connectivity, which relies on data as a valuable resource. In a further effort to recognize this trend as well as the influence of technology on sociality, van Dijck proposes replacing the term “social media” with that of “connective media,” a phrase that better accounts for the role of “automated technologies that direct human sociality” (p. 13).
Although Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Wikipedia have each experienced various levels of success and clearly deal with varied content, van Dijck exposes a number of similarities between these sites. Her analysis shows that to succeed, a social media platform must do more than simply identify a niche market. The platform must also develop a community based on democratic ideals of sharing while it enables connectivity to drive the platform forward through the use of principles of popularity and affective economics, which Jenkins (2006) has defined as a component of marketing theory that “seeks to understand the emotional underpinnings of consumer decision-making as a driving force behind viewing and purchasing decisions” (p. 62). Here, sharing takes on two meanings: Not only does the term refer to the sharing of personal information between users, it also refers to the sharing of user information with third parties. Platforms that resist the distribution of third-party data are typically unsustainable, which make “frictionless sharing,” the ability for social media platforms to integrate with each other, all the more important.
While van Dijck outlines the historical development of each of the included platforms with attention to technology, users and usage, content, ownership, governance, and business models, she seems to gloss over some of the more critical concerns about social media. She states early on in the text that, although she is concerned about issues of privacy in social media use, she is concerned with the “historical and cultural convolutions underpinning these tensions” rather than with issues of privacy itself (p. 19). Thus, discussions of privacy receive minimal attention in the text. But the absence of any discussion of access, and how the ubiquity of social media excludes those without access, is concerning. Although on the first page of the text, van Dijck states that “in December 2011, 1.2 billion users worldwide—82 percent of the world’s Internet population over age 15—logged on to a social media site,” she never discusses the several billion members of the population who do not have Internet access. Social media platforms are certainly ubiquitous in the lives of many, but since users and usage are one of the lenses through which van Dijck examines each of the five social media platforms, it seems important to consider those without access, both in terms of connectedness and connectivity, and the implications of these barriers to access in terms of politics, economics, and sociality.
One final critique relates to van Dijck’s coverage of users’ role in social media platforms. While she does an excellent job of accounting for the ways in which users have accepted or resisted changes to specific platforms at various times in history, she does not discuss how users actually use and interact with these sites at length. As a result, the darker side of social media is left unexamined, and concerns about cyberbullying, sexual predation, and stalking are left unmentioned. For example, in the full chapter about YouTube, the author does not consider the often-volatile nature of YouTube comments.
Despite these limitations, van Dijck clearly demonstrates the degree to which social media platforms have pervaded the daily lives of those with access, which can be observed easily through the ubiquitous use of terms such as tweeting and the new meaning of everyday terms such as liking and friending. While van Dijck identifies her model of analysis as one that “may offer economists, lawyers, policy makers, and information scientists a lens through which they can see the cultural presumptions and changing norms in which many debates are entrenched” (p. 43), the same reasoning makes this text an important resource for anyone in the field of professional and technical communication as well. This text makes evident the mutual influences of society and technology on each other’s development while providing a useful historical analysis of the development of several giants in the social media landscape. As increasing numbers of our undergraduates find employment as social media experts, this text will help educators in business and technical communication better understand the role of social media in our society. Clearly, social media is not a passing fad; van Dijck’s critical history of the first decade of social media provides an excellent touchstone for looking to the future. Perhaps van Dijck summarizes the ubiquity of social media best when she states that “connective media have almost become synonymous with sociality: you can check out any time you ‘like,’ but you can never leave” (p. 175).