Antisocial Media by Siva Vaidhyanathan
One of the signal developments in democratic culture around the world in the past half-decade has been the increasing power of social media to both spread information and shape opinions. After the Arab Spring of 2011, many pointed to the liberating potential of platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Yet five years later, as many Americans reeled in shock from the election of an authoritarian bullshit artist (using philosopher Harry Frank's technical definition of the term), a few perceptive observers began looking at new at the social and political effects of dominant social media platforms, particularly Facebook. And they did not like what they saw.The media studies and IP scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan is one of those sharp observers, and in Anti-Social Media he argues that our descent into dystopia stems in no small part from trends that have developed in the online world. The 2016 election saw a remarkable and dispiriting increase of people hiving themselves off within ideological echo chambers and treating fake news as real. Vaidhyanathan provides a structural explanation of why this happened, and he has located a culprit: social media, and more specifically Facebook. The founders of Facebook may have had (some) good intentions, but he contends that they have created a Frankenstein's monster that they have neither the will nor capacity to rein in. Fake news abounds, and the algorithms that undergird the platform drive people inexorably to news sites that conform to their ideological predilections - which Facebook can figure out with ease. Serious news reporting, already in a parlous state, has suffered even more as people on platforms like Facebook (meaning most people) are bombarded by both snippets of news from multiple sources and ads that look like news. Deliberative democracies require informed citizenries able to distinguish facts and falsehoods. By weakening those skills, social media is eroding the very foundations of our democratic republican culture. Social media-driven false news campaigns and ideological echo chambers are not only visible in the US, either - they are clearly on the rise in Europe and across the developing world too. Vaidhyanathan closes by offering offers a number of smart policy proposals that attack the problem, but they will undoubtedly be hard to enact. But the first order of business when facing a significant new crisis is to recognize its existence and explain what it is. Anti-Social Media promises to be that path-breaking initial step toward understanding how social media is quickly undermining not only centuries of democratic progress, but civil society itself.
Siva Vaidhyanathan's Antisocial Media.. is the best tech-sceptic book of the year, by an academic who writes like a human. Even better, Vaidhyanathan's insights into the destructive power of Facebook are truly global, taking in Modi's India and Duterte's Philippines. * Helen Lewis, Books of the Year 2018, New Statesman *
Vaidhyanathan writes with conviction and a deep sense of history. His research is sharp and diverse. * Jinoy Jose P, The Hindu Business Line *
An excellent critique * John Naughton, The Observer *
What distinguishes Vaidhyanathan's book from others is not only the depth of his research, but the fact that Facebook in placed into a larger social, historical and political context, thus delivering a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the company over the past years. * Felix Simon, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung *
This thoroughly researched and persuasively argued account of social media's noxious effects on the very fabric of society is the first study of its kind: a trenchant analysis of Facebook's unwholesome side effects. It needed saying, and it's supremely well said. * Juanita Coulson, The Lady *
[an] elegant new book * Des Freedman, openDemocracy *
The book is of great value to both students of media-related disciplines and to the general public. Written in a commendably accessible style and largely free of academic jargon, it is likely to appeal to (and benefit) anyone willing to better understand the world in which we are deeply immersed a social-mediatised world. * LSE Review of Books *
Vaidhyanathan writes with conviction and a deep sense of history. His research is sharp and diverse. * Jinoy Jose P, The Hindu Business Line *
An excellent critique * John Naughton, The Observer *
What distinguishes Vaidhyanathan's book from others is not only the depth of his research, but the fact that Facebook in placed into a larger social, historical and political context, thus delivering a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the company over the past years. * Felix Simon, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung *
This thoroughly researched and persuasively argued account of social media's noxious effects on the very fabric of society is the first study of its kind: a trenchant analysis of Facebook's unwholesome side effects. It needed saying, and it's supremely well said. * Juanita Coulson, The Lady *
[an] elegant new book * Des Freedman, openDemocracy *
The book is of great value to both students of media-related disciplines and to the general public. Written in a commendably accessible style and largely free of academic jargon, it is likely to appeal to (and benefit) anyone willing to better understand the world in which we are deeply immersed a social-mediatised world. * LSE Review of Books *
Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and the Director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. He produces a local public-affairs television program, several podcasts, and directs the publication of Virginia Quarterly Review. A former professional journalist, he has published five previous books on technology, law, and society, including The Googlization of Everything. He has also contributed to publications such as The Nation, Slate, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, BookForum, The New York Times Book Review, and The Baffler. He appears frequently on television and radio around the world and has been featured in numerous documentary films and was portrayed in the off-Broadway play, Privacy.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780190841164 |
| ISBN 10 | 0190841168 |
| Title | Antisocial Media |
| Author | Siva Vaidhyanathan |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press Inc |
| Year published | 2018-06-21 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |