Social Media: A Critical Introduction

Christian Fuchs

Dec 2013 · SAGE

About this ebook

Now more than ever, we need to understand social media - the good as well as the bad. We need critical knowledge that helps us to navigate the controversies and contradictions of this complex digital media landscape. Only then can we make informed judgements about what's happening in our media world, and why.

Showing the reader how to ask the right kinds of questions about social media, Christian Fuchs takes us on a journey across social media, delving deep into case studies on Google, Facebook, Twitter, WikiLeaks and Wikipedia. The result lays bare the structures and power relations at the heart of our media landscape.

This book is the essential, critical guide for all students of media studies and sociology. Readers will never look at social media the same way again.

About the author

Christian Fuchs is professor at and the Director of the University of Westminster’s Communication and Media Research Institute. He is also the Director of the Westminster Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Westminster. He is editor of the journal /tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique/ (http://www.triple-c.at) and author of more than 300 publications in the field of the political economy and critical theory of media, communications and the Internet. He is a member of the European Sociological Association's Executive Committee. As well as /Social Media: A Critical Introduction/ (2014), he is the author of /Reading Marx in the Information Age: A Media and Communication Studies Perspective on Capital Volume 1/ (2016), /Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media/ (2015), /Digital Labour and Karl Marx/ (2014), /OccupyMedia! The Occupy Movement and Social Media in Crisis Capitalism/ (2014), /Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies/ (2011), and /Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age /(2008).