Healthy Users: The Governance of Well-Being on Social MediaWe are often told that social media well-being is simply the result of individual users making healthy digital choices. All it takes is a little self-discipline. In this book, Niall Docherty looks closely at this belief and exposes the complex relations of power expressed through its articulation and enactment. Docherty creatively and empirically shows how the discourses, designs, and habits of online well-being push user conduct in certain directions, at the expense of others. This is a contingent mode of governance that combines logics of neoliberalism, practices of psychologized person-making, and persuasive capitalist interfaces. By highlighting the damaging effects of this current arrangement, Healthy Users charts a path that will change how we understand and study social media well-being in the future. |
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Healthy Users: The Governance of Well-Being on Social Media Niall Docherty No preview available - 2025 |
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argue attention attention economy behavioral blog Bruno Latour Cambridge capitalist chapter choice architects cial Collège de France Communication Computing concept Counter-conduct Critical Critique Culture Determinants of Health economic engagement environment Ethics examine example explored Facebook Facebook users Feed feelings forms function Global North governance healthy social media healthy users History human ideal idioms of distress imagined impact individual Instagram interactions interview Journal Karppi Latour lives Mark Zuckerberg Media & Society Mental Health Meta Michel Foucault modes neoliberal neuroliberal Nikolas Rose normative nudge Opinion in Psychology participants particular Persuasive Technology political posts practices present produce psycho-computational psychological Psychology 45 June question relations relationships response responsibilization scripting scrolling self-care social capital Social Determinants social media companies social media platforms social media well-being social network sociotechnical Studies Technology tion University Press user interfaces user well-being well-being on social York