Implications of Social Media on different aspects of life

PhD chapter:
• the discourse of ‘disruption’ has been very prominent in the digital media and technology sphere, so it could be useful to explore that a little bit by searching for relevant material in online journals (I don’t have a suggestion right now, though); often the ‘disruptive’ aspect was part of a buisness hype around social media and the reality has often been far less disruptive than imagined

• the historical outline of communication technologies could be strengthened by pointing out how a) new technologies have changed society by allowing for new uses, but also b) how people imagined such change to happen in very transformative and disruptive ways (whereas often real life didn’t change as much); you can find a good discussion on this in Lax, S. (2009) Media and Communication Technologies: A Critical Introduction, for example
• the discourse around ‘social media revolutions’ which emerged during the Arab Spring (and before that, during protests in Iran, Ukraine and Moldova) was a very prominent example of the alleged disruptions caused by digital technologies, as well as the critique of that hype; this was part of a larger discourse around ‘liberation technology’ (Larry Diamond, 2010); Evgenyi Morozov was one of those who first celebrated the revolutionary potential of social media and then became very critical, saying that it’s not social media at all that ’cause’ political change; you will find many critiques of the over-enthusiastic account of social media in academic analyses of the Arab Spring; Lina Dencik published a book on social media and protest that is very critical about this, too
• citizen journalism is an area where some disruption of established businesses and practices certainly took place; look for texts by Stuart Allen
• digital culture is another area where change has definitely taken place, with people participating more in the creation of culture; Henry Jenkins is the main author here, maybe also Lawrence Lessig
• the digital economy is the area where most of the discourse around ‘disruption’ takes place and where certainly digital tech has led to interesting changes, although not always as people foresaw; Benkler’s ‘The Wealth of Networks’ (available online) was prominent in highlighting the empowering and participatory aspects of the new decentralised forms of production; but the platform economy (e.g., Srnicek, van Dijck) showed that a different form of disruption happened too, not as participatory and more focused on new business models You must add some citations for (Arne Hintz-Joanna Redden- Lina Dencik) from some of the following references.