A Sleepwalker's Guide to Social MediaPositing 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. |
Contents
Feeling Facts and Fakes | |
On the Viral Spectra of Somnambulism | |
Coda Christchurch El Paso | |
Segue A Dark Viral Refrain | |
Deeper Entanglements | |
Notes | |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic affective approach argues attention become begin behaviour body brain Caillois calls Cambridge campaign capitalism Certainly chapter cognitive collective concept concerning consciousness considered consumer contagion critical culture dark developed discussion distinction Duke University emerges emotional encounter entanglement event evidence example experienced Facebook fact fake false feeling felt figure follows force further future grasped hand hate human Ibid immunity immunological important indistinction individual intensity interaction judgements kind lines logical lure machine mass matter mimesis mimicry mind mode nature nonconscious objects organism perception platform political position potential Press problem produced proposition provides reality refrain relation representational seems sense shared shock event similar similarly simply sleep sleepwalker social media somnambulist space speculative spread Tarde theory Trump understand University user experience viral Whitehead