Facebook Society

Facebook has fundamentally changed how the world connects. No other company has played a greater role in the history of social networking online. Yet Facebook is no longer simply a social networking site or social media platform. Facebook is Facebook. Taina Bucher shows how Facebook has become an idea of its own: something that cannot be fully described using broader categories. Facebook has become so commonplace that most people have a conception of what it is, yet it increasingly defies categorization. If we want to understand Facebook's power in contemporary society and culture, Bucher argues, we need to start by challenging our widespread conception of what Facebook is. Tracing the development and evolution of Facebook as a social networking site, platform, infrastructure and advertising company, she invites readers to consider Facebook anew. Contrary to the belief that nobody uses Facebook anymore, Facebook has never been more powerful. This timely book is important reading for students and scholars of media and communication, as well as anyone seeking to understand the Facebook phenomenon.

Subject Line: Discover your sociological imagination! Teaser: Request your free review copy today of Imagining Society today Discover your sociological imagination! Imagining Society illuminates the connections between your life and larger social structures. Imagining Society by award-wining scholar Catherine J. Corrigall-Brown is an innovative, versatile new book that uses the theories, ideas, and research in sociology to help students make sense of the world around them.

Set in apartheid South Africa, Agaat portrays the unique, forty-year relationship between Milla, a sixty-seven-year-old white woman, and her black maidservant turned caretaker, Agaat. In 1950s South Africa, life for white farmers was full of promise - young and newly married, Milla raised a son and created her own farm out of a swathe of Cape mountainside with Agaat by her side. By the 1990s, Milla's family has fallen apart, the country she knew is on the brink of huge change, and all she has left are memories and her proud, contrary, yet affectionate guardian. With haunting, lyrical prose, Marlene van Niekerk creates a story about love and loyalty.

»Digital Culture & Society« is a refereed, international journal, fostering discussion about the ways in which digital technologies, platforms and applications reconfigure daily lives and practices. It offers a forum for critical analysis and inquiries into digital media theory and provides a publication environment for interdisciplinary research approaches, contemporary theory developments and methodological innovation. This special issue discusses theoretical and artistic investigations on citizen engagement, digital citizenship and grassroots information politics. The articles reflect on the role of the digital citizen from the perspectives of (digital) sociology, science, technology and society (STS), (digital) media studies, cultural studies, political sciences, and philosophy.

American society is often characterized as a “guilt culture,” as opposed to non-Western “shame cultures.” But is this distinction still valid today? Through examples like shaming penalties in criminal law, “fat shaming,” and cyberbullying on the social media, The Rise of the Shame Society: America’s Change from a Guilt Culture into a Shame Culture shows how shame is increasingly invading our lives, leading to feelings of humiliation and depression. Marcel Van Herpen identifies three causes of this phenomenon: new childrearing methods, the advent of the social media, and a transformation of Western individualism. He weighs the arguments for and against a shame society and concludes that a guilt-centered approach remains preferable. Although shame increasingly permeates everyday life, the author argues that its rise is not a fatality. He emphasizes that shame is a dynamic phenomenon and that one can observe trends which lead to an increase of shame, as well as to its decrease. Examples of the latter are a growing sensitivity to the pain caused by anti-Black racism, the decrease of anti-LGBTQIA+ prejudices, and efforts to end the stigmatization of people with disabilities. Along with exploring its increase, The Rise of the Shame Society demonstrates that there are ways to overcome shame.

Uncivil acts and messages too often color our experience with others. Communication in a Civil Society offers an alternative way to teach and learn about communication. Every chapter focuses on communication based on respect, restraint, and ethical choices.

Social media technology is having a dramatic impact on social and political dynamics around the world. The contributors to this book document and illustrate this "techtonic" shift on violent conflict and democratic processes. They present vivid examples and case studies from countries in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America as well as Northern Ireland. Each author maps an array of peacebuilding solutions to social media threats, including coordinated action by civil society, governments and tech companies to protect human minds, relationships and institutions. Solutions presented include inoculating society with a new digital literacy agenda, designing technology for positive social impacts, and regulating technology to prohibit the worst behaviours. A must-read both for political scientists and policymakers trying to understand the impact of social media, and media studies scholars looking for a global perspective.

An exploration of social media–imposed pressure on new mothers: How the supposed safe havens of online mommy groups have become rife with aggression and groupthink. Many mothers today turn to social media for parenting advice, joining online mothers’ groups on Facebook and elsewhere. But the communities they find in these supposed safe havens can be rife with aggression, peer pressure, and groupthink—insisting that only certain practices are “best,” “healthiest,” “safest” (and mandatory). In this book, Jessica Clements and Kari Nixon debunk the myth of “optimal motherhood”—the idea that there is only one right answer to parenting dilemmas, and that optimal mothers must pursue perfection. In fact, Clements and Nixon write, parenting choices are not binaries, and the scientific findings touted by mommy groups are neither clear-cut nor prescriptive. Clements and Nixon trace contemporary ideas of optimal motherhood to the nineteenth-century “Cult of True Womanhood,” which viewed women in terms of purity and dignity. Both mothers themselves, they joined a variety of Facebook mothers’ groups to explore what goes on in online mommy wars. They examine debates within these groups over CDC recommendations about alcohol during pregnancy, birth plans that don’t go according to plan, breastfeeding vs. formula, co-sleeping and “crying it out,” and “tweaking” pregnancy test kits to discern pregnancy as early as possible. Clements and Nixon argue for an empowered motherhood, freed from the impossible standards of the optimal.