Social Theory after the Internet

210 Pages·2017·11.36 MB·English

The internet has fundamentally transformed society in the past 25 years, yet S
existing theories of mass or interpersonal communication do not work well o
in understanding a digital world. Nor has this understanding been helped c
i Ralph Schroeder
by disciplinary specialization and a continual focus on the latest innovations. a
Ralph Schroeder takes a longer-term view, synthesizing perspectives and l

findings from various social science disciplines in four countries: the United T
States, Sweden, India and China. His comparison highlights, among other h
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observations, that smartphones are in many respects more important than
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PC-based internet uses.
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Social
Social Theory after the Internet focuses on everyday uses and effects of
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the internet, including information seeking and big data, and explains
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how the internet has gone beyond traditional media in, for example, t
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enabling Donald Trump and Narendra Modi to come to power. Schroeder
Theory
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puts forward a sophisticated theory of the role of the internet and how
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both technological and social forces shape its significance. He provides a h
sweeping and penetrating study, theoretically ambitious and at the same e
time always empirically grounded. The book will be of great interest to after
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students and scholars of digital media and society, the internet and politics, n
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and the social implications of big data.
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Ralph Schroeder is a Professor at the Oxford Internet Institute. Before e
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coming to Oxford University, he was Professor at Chalmers University in
Gothenburg. His recent books are Rethinking Science, Technology and Social
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Change (2007) and, co-authored with Eric T. Meyer, Knowledge Machines: a
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Digital Transformations of the Sciences and Humanities (2015). h
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and Globalization
Free open access versions available from Cover design:
www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press Liron Gilenberg
Social Theory after the Internet

Social Theory after

the Internet
Media, Technology and Globalization
Ralph Schroeder
First published in 2018 by
UCL Press
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Available to download free: www.ucl.ac.uk/ ucl- press
Text © Ralph Schroeder, 2018
Images © Ralph Schroeder, 2018
Ralph Schroeder has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988 to be identified as author of this work.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library.
This book is published under a Creative Commons 4.0 International license (CC
BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to
adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made
to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of
the work). Attribution should include the following information:
Schroeder, R. 2018. Social Theory after the Internet. London, UCL Press.
https:// doi.org/ 10.14324/ 111.9781787351226
Further details about Creative Commons licenses are available at
http:// creativecommons.org/ licenses/
ISBN: 978–1–78735–124–0 (Hbk.)
ISBN: 978–1–78735–123–3 (Pbk.)
ISBN: 978–1–78735–122–6 (PDF)
ISBN: 978–1–78735–125–7 (epub)
ISBN: 978–1–78735–126–4 (mobi)
ISBN: 978–1–78735–127–1 (html)
DOI: https:// doi.org/ 10.14324/ 111.9781787351226
Acknowledgements

I have taught this topic for many years, and so my first thanks must go to
my students, from whom I have learned so much. I am also grateful to
former colleagues at Chalmers University and current colleagues at the
Oxford Internet Institute (OII) for many great conversations. At the OII,
they include Grant Blank, Eric Meyer, Jonathan Bright and Bill Dutton.
Outside the OII, there are far too many to list, but I want to thank especially
Rasmus Nielsen, Kerk Kee, Tim Groeling, Jack Qiu, Angela Wu, Cornelius
Puschmann, Andreas Jungherr and Sahana Udupa. The usual disclaim-
ers apply. The research for this book was partly undertaken while I was
Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Departments of Communication
and Sociology during the winter term at UCLA in 2016 and an Erskine
Visiting Fellow in the Department of Media and Communication at the
University of Canterbury in February and March of 2017. Several of the
chapters here are based on previous publications and these are indicated
in the relevant places in the text. Finally, the biggest thanks go to my
family, who have taught me how to use a mobile phone and social
media: as they know, I’m still a tyro.
v

Contents

List of figures xi
1. The internet in theory 1
1.1 Theories of media, new and old 1
1.2 Summary of the argument 6
1.3 The autonomy of the media (sub)system 10
1.4 The role of the media in politics, culture and
the economy: separate and different 13
1.5 A limited attention space 15
1.6 Who’s afraid of technological determinism? 18
1.7 Chapter overview 21
2. Media systems, digital media and politics 28
2.1 Theories of digital media and politics 28
2.2 Media systems in Sweden and America 32
2.3 Digital media and politics in Sweden and America 35
2.4 Media systems in China and India 45
2.5 Digital media and politics in China and India 51
3. Digital media and the rise of right- wing populism 60
3.1 Trump’s ascent via Twitter 63
3.2 The Sweden Democrats’ alternative media 67
3.3 Modi’s religious nationalism on Twitter 70
3.4 Containing online nationalists in China 74
3.5 Prospects for mediated politics 78
vii
4. The internet in everyday life I: sociability 82
4.1 Tethered togetherness 83
4.2 The spread of social media 85
4.3 Sociability and social divides 88
4.4 Visual co- presence 91
4.5 Alone or together? 93
4.6 Globalizing sociability 97
5. The internet in everyday life II: seeking information 101
5.1 A new information infrastructure 101
5.2 Seeking information 103
5.3 Search engine uses 104
5.4 Search engines as gatekeepers 108
5.5 Does Google shape what we know? 109
5.6 The Web of information 115
5.7 Is the Web global? 120
5.8 Wikipedia 122
5.9 Information seeking and gatekeeping 124
6. Big data: shaping knowledge, shaping everyday life 126
6.1 Defining big data 127
6.2 Advancing academic knowledge about digital media 131
6.3 The uses and limits of big data in the social sciences 133
6.4 Facebook’s ‘Brave New Worlds’ 139
6.5 Targeting publics, and the uses and limits of big data
in everyday life 142
6.6 Big data and policy in different media systems 146
viii ccoonntteennttSS
7. Futures 149
7.1 Media, globalization, technology 149
7.2 The uses and limits of theory 151
7.3 Technological determinism revisited 153
7.4 Mediated politics 155
7.5 Information needs and an open culture of information 158
7.6 Big data and targeting 158
7.7 Digital versus traditional media 161
7.8 Separate changes and limited impact 164
7.9 What is to be done? 167
Notes 170
References 176
Index 189
contentS ix