Friending Facebook: Social Media and the [Re]construction of Self and Other

Social media permeates our world and continues to impact us as humans, citizens and scholars: from the evolution of virtual communities and its naturalization of online interpersonal exchange to the growth of progressively accessible forms of entertainment; from the proliferation of brave new frontiers for advertising and of marketing to the wellspring of resources for research (data, method and tools). This research cluster will explore this burgeoning area of study from a wide range of disciplinary approaches including literary studies, film studies, media studies and communications.

Our guiding research questions are:

• Do social media practices encourage users to be complicit in their own commodification and surveillance, and/or afford them a space for “free” expression?
• How do social media practices and platforms promote the simultaneous production and consumption of media?
• Is “prosumption” radically different than established patterns of media use? How does this alter a traditional consumerist relationship with media, if at all?
• How are multiple “divides” (generational, economic, regional/national, linguistic, digital, communal, personal, etc.) broadened and/or bridged by social media?
• How might the practices involved in social media lend themselves to the articulation, construction, and performance of identity and narrative?
• What are the implications of social media’s role in directing political action, taste, cultures and cultural practices, for better and for worse?
• Underlying the social, political, economic and cultural questions of social media must be an attention to the form and structure of these media and their associated narratives: what is included and what is excluded; what is explicit and what is implicit; what is made apparent and what is hidden?