Abstract
There is a growing body of research exploring the interface of technology and user. Adding to this, Harry T. Dyer through his book Designing the Social: Unpacking Social Media Design and Identity advocates taking a socially grounded view of both media technology (as opposed to assuming it to be apolitical) and users (by acknowledging their sociocultural differences) to map the enmeshing of social media design and individual. Dyer is a digital sociologist and lecturer at the University of East Anglia, who is interested in social media, identity, and digital culture. The book was published in 2020, amid global pandemic, and somehow seems to have escaped the attention of reviewers. Thus, I wish to draw attention toward this work by reviewing it. He alerts us to the repercussions of introducing media technologies in education such as MOOCs (massive open online course). Dyer affirms,
We as educators, stand in the position to dictate which path we choose for our pupils and how we choose to account for technology in education. Neutrality and blindness have pervaded our response to technology to date. It’s time we changed paths. (p. 170)
The study of new media being an important thrust area of journalism and mass communication studies, the book makes a good text for addressing the challenges of using new media technologies uniformly. It helps students develop a critical perspective by presenting conflict between media technologies and society.
Based on the experiences of nine young adults (age group, 17–26 years) collected through 45 interviews conducted over a year, the book surveys relevant literature and theories to advance the current debates pertaining to social media design—an area which forms an important component in the syllabi of journalism and mass communication courses. Methodologically, it raises a voice against “big data research” and urges for also using qualitative methods to understand nuances of media technologies implications from the viewpoint of users—a heterogeneous group located at the intersection of race, class, and gender with plural subjectivities. Divided into seven chapters each consisting of different sections guiding the readers through concepts and ideas, the book is student-friendly; however, the concepts become repetitive in an attempt to connect the ideas within and between chapters.
Chapter 1 lays out the structure of the book providing a basic introduction to the participants. It would have been better if Dyer explained the methodological premises of selecting the participants. Chapter 2 approaches question “what is social media?” from users’ perspective instead of the assumed definitions by researchers. Interestingly, Facebook is shown as rather atypical of social media, as according to participants, people tend to be Facebook friends with only those they have already met, not connecting with remotely known or unknown people. Chapters 3 and 4 shift the focus to “browsing” as a dominant social media engagement which, as Dyer suggests, needs to be incorporated by researchers alongside content production to broaden their horizons. Dyer argues that a user’s sociocultural background informs their engagement with social media. However, the sample size is too small to effectively establish the point.
Chapter 5 highlights how design features of new media technologies can be enabling and disabling at the same time. For instance, word limit of bio in Twitter, the options of viewing personal history, and no-privacy filter on Twitter versus private settings on Facebook make users regulate their opinions differently. As noted by a participant regarding Facebook, “the design of the platform did not allow her to express enough of her identity, and that the afforded design elements were too confining for her to be able to adequately express identity” (p. 113). Such discussions are useful in creating critical awareness among students about social media tools/infrastructure/materials generated for mass consumption. Moving further, in Chapter 6, Dyer posits the way comic book studies focuses on reader’s understanding of media (its design, color, shapes, etc.), sociocultural resources, and experiences in building a narrative; similarly, we can look at how social media design is understood and experienced by users in creating narrative. As an alternative view, comic theory provides a framework to allow for the unpacking of interaction between platform designs and humans creating narratives.
The last chapter seeks to apply this new found perspective for evaluating implications of social media usage in education. Dyer is critical of the technological determinism reflected in Anant Agrawal’s arguments (CEO and founder of EdX) about MOOCs that they are blind toward gender, race, and class and enable a wider reach to students. He argues instead that they perpetuate the existing divide within higher education and fail to cater to the needs of a diverse audience. It is important that teachers in class push students to reflect and problematize the generalized notion of technology as a panacea for all.
The book fulfills its purpose of extending the debate around embeddedness and enmeshing of media technology and users. Comic theory—a novel perspective—is a major strength of this book. It definitely serves as a better organizer of ideas for analyzing the implications of new media technologies and thus deserves the attention of teachers and students of media and journalism. It will enrich students’ existing understanding about new media technologies in the light of design and impact on users. Pedagogically, it provides enough opportunities for reflecting and discussing the interaction of new media technologies and society through personal experiences of social media usage. I suggest that teachers adopt this book for their course instructions as the students will relate to the young participants and bring more to the class, making discussions engaging and fruitful. The book makes a good resource for familiarizing graduate students with existing perspectives on social context of media technologies, as it reviews them and extends the debate by suggesting comic theory. Overall, it makes a useful textbook for graduate-level students of media studies and journalism courses, especially for teaching papers focusing on the impact of media design on society and new media issues. It will also be useful for those interested in understanding the potential challenges of technological determinism for diverse users.
