The Social Media Age

Social media platforms have changed social life so completely in the past 15 years that it seems impossible to capture all that in a comprehensive book, but Zoetanya Sujon has managed it in this impressive text. Theoretically and geopolitically smart, and crammed full with great examples of social media's role in both our politics and everyday intimacies, this is more than a textbook: it's a primer for living in the age of social media. -- Nick Couldry Amidst hope, hype, panic and euphoria around social media, this book clears the way - with evidence, and a compelling writing style. A must-read for students and scholars who wish to make sense of a complex and ever-changing landscape. -- Ranjana Das Zoetanya Sujon gives us something unique with The Social Media Age: a history of the present. It is both a playful and problematic history, one that makes immediate sense from a users' point of view as much as it enables us to step back and reflect. -- Mark Deuze This textbook provides an accessible and incisive overview of how our world has changed in the social media age. Reflecting on milestone events, social movements, and internet trends of the past decade, Sujon deep-dives into case studies to provide illuminating insight on how various social media cultures can be deciphered in the context of useful frameworks, and in light of evolving platform and user cultures. -- Crystal Abidin Social media are full of contrasts. They're at once public and private, commercial and interpersonal, hyperglobal and hyperlocal. Zoetanya's Sujon's The Social Media Age navigates these paradoxes with deft precision, balancing the past and the present, the theoretical and the empirical, and the good and the bad of digital connection. The result is a comprehensive overview that prepares readers for every twist and turn of our inescapably networked lives. -- Ryan M. Milner More than a textbook, The Social Media Age gives us invaluable tools for thinking through the complex, elusive, but omnipresent technologies of social media. It weaves together a wide range of stories about what we do with social media and what social media does with us and positions these narratives within neatly described material and theoretical contexts in ways that both illuminate and complicate. -- Kylie Jarrett The Social Media Age is a compelling introduction to the critical study of social media. Students will find a wealth of engagingly written case studies from #BlackLivesMatter to YouTube influencer culture to digital dating in socially conservative countries. With its global and interdisciplinary perspective, this textbook easily fits in undergraduate curricula in sociology, anthropology, and media and communications across national contexts. -- Jonathan Corpus Ong Zo Sujon has written the most detailed yet theoretical framework for the study of social media. This book will be indispensable to students and researchers alike. The scope is impressive, with a huge range of highly original case studies very usefully discussed. Excitingly, Sujon pushes forward theories of the selfie, showing how this new mainstay of online communication is closely linked to platforms, which facilitate public connection in highly specific ways, and mapping out emerging areas demanding ongoing research. -- Mehita Iqani The Social Media Age perfectly captures the disruptive capacities of social media platforms and user practices. Incorporating historical, political, and technical perspectives Sujon reminds the reader of the need to critically assess the embedded impact of social media in our daily lives. This book should be required reading for all media and communication students. -- Greg Elmer The Social Media Age is a deeply researched, wonderfully wide-ranging and accessible examination of key contemporary and historical approaches towards understanding social media. Spanning from ideology to infrastructure, from privacy to participation and from memes to selfies, Zoetanya Sujon offers a thorough and critical introduction to how social media permeates and impacts many facets of modern social, cultural, political and economic life. The book's clear structure and objectives, together with its discussion questions and diverse selection of in-depth case studies, lend itself perfectly for use in media and communications classrooms or as an indispensable resource book for any student seeking to better understand our complicated relationship with social media. -- Patrick McCurdy