Histories of Social Media reveals deeper, more dependable truths about social behavior - the social before the media - and it's intended to give you the questions that will help you better identify what companies and governments can hope to accomplish with it. My goals is not to tell you what tomorrow's killer new app will be, but to prompt a very different conversation about conversation.

The Internet has changed the past. Social media, Wikipedia, mobile networks, and the viral and visual nature of the Web have inundated the public sphere with historical information and misinformation, changing what we know about our history and History as a discipline. This is the first book to chronicle how and why it matters. Why does History matter at all? What role do history and the past play in our democracy? Our economy? Our understanding of ourselves? How do questions of history intersect with today’s most pressing debates about technology; the role of the media; journalism; tribalism; education; identity politics; the future of government, civilization, and the planet? At the start of a new decade, in the midst of growing political division around the world, this information is critical to an engaged citizenry. As we collectively grapple with the effects of technology and its capacity to destabilize our societies, scholars, educators and the general public should be aware of how the Web and social media shape what we know about ourselves - and crucially, about our past.

Chronicles social media over two millennia, from papyrus letters that Cicero used to exchange news across the Empire to today, reminding us how modern behavior echoes that of prior centuries and encouraging debate and discussion about how we'll communicate in the future.

Exploring questions of both exploitation and empowerment, Understanding Social Media provides a critical conceptual toolbox for navigating the evolution and practices of social media. Taking an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach, it explores the key themes and concepts, going beyond specific platforms to show you how to place social media more critically within the changing media landscape. Updated throughout, the Second Edition of this bestselling text includes new and expanded discussions of: Qualitative and quantitative approaches to researching social media Datafication and algorithmic cultures Surveillance, privacy and intimacy The rise of apps and platforms, and how they shape our experiences Sharing economies and social media publics The increasing importance of visual economies AR, VR and social media play Death and digital legacy Tying theory to the real world with a range of contemporary case studies throughout, it is essential reading for students and researchers of social media, digital media, digital culture, and the creative and cultural industries.

"Foreword by Sam Feist, CNN Political Director"--Cover.

This book examines everyday stories of personal experience that are published online in contemporary forms of social media. Taking examples from discussion boards, blogs, social network sites, microblogging sites, wikis, collaborative and participatory storytelling projects, Ruth Page explores how new and existing narrative genres are being (re)shaped in different online contexts. The book shows how the characteristics of social media, which emphasize recency, interpersonal connection and mobile distribution, amplify or reverse different aspects of canonical storytelling. The new storytelling patterns which emerge provide a fresh perspective on some of the key concepts in narrative research: structure, evaluation and the location of speaker and audience in time and space. The online stories are profoundly social in nature, and perform important identity work for their tellers as they interact with their audiences - identities which range from celebrities in Twitter, cancer survivors in the blogosphere to creative writers convening storytelling projects or local histories. Stories and Social Media brings together the stories told in well-known sites like Facebook and lesser-known community archives, providing a landmark survey and critique of personal storytelling as it is being reworked online at the start of the 21st century.