Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Social media penetrate our lives: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and many other platforms define daily habits of communication and creative production. This book studies the rise of social media, providing both a historical and a critical analysis of the emergence of major platforms in the context of a rapidly changing ecosystem of connective media. Author José van Dijck offers an analytical prism that can be used to view techno-cultural as well as socio-economic aspects of this transformation as well as to examine shared ideological principles between major social media platforms. This fascinating study will appeal to all readers interested in social media.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Engineering Sociality in a Culture of Connectivity
• 1.1 Introduction
• 1.2 From Networked Communication to Platformed Sociality
• 1.3 Making the Web Social: Coding Human Connections
• 1.4 Making Sociality Saleable: Connectivity as a Resource
• 1.5 The Ecosystem of Connective Media in a Culture of Connectivity
• Chapter 2 Disassembling Platforms, Reassembling Sociality
• 2.1 Introduction
• 2.2 Combining Two Approaches
• 2.3 Platforms as Techno-cultural Constructs
• 2.4 Platforms as Socio-economic Structures
• 2.5 Connecting Platforms, Reassembling Sociality
• Chapter 3 Facebook and the Imperative of Sharing
• 3.1 Introduction
• 3.2 Coding Facebook: The Devil is in the Default
• 3.3 Branding Facebook: What You Share Is What You Get
• 3.4 Shared norms in the Ecosystem of Connective Media
• Chapter 4 Twitter and the Paradox of Following and Trending
• 4.1 Introduction
• 4.2 Asking the Existential Question: What is Twitter?
• 4.3 Asking the Strategic Question: What Does Twitter Want?
• 4.4 Asking the Ecological Question: What Will Twitter Be?
• Chapter 5 Flickr between Communities and Commerce
• 5.1 Introduction
• 5.2 Flickr Between Connedtedness and Connectivity
• 5.3 Flickr Between Commons and Commerce
• 5.4 Flickr Between Participatory and Connective Culture
• Chapter 6 YouTube: The Intimate Connection between Television and Video-sharing
• 6.1 Introduction 179-215
• 6.2 Out of the Box: Video-sharing Challenges Television
• 6.3 Boxed In: Channeling Television into the Connective Flow
• 6.4 YouTube as A Gateway to Connective Culture
• Chapter 7 Wikipedia and the Principle of Neutrality
• 7.1 Introduction
• 7.2 The Techno-cultural Construction of Consensus
• 7.3 A Consensual Apparatus between Democracy and Bureaucracy
• 7.4 A Nonmarket Space in the Ecosystem?
• Chapter 8 The Ecosystem of Connective Media: Locked In, Fenced Off, Opt Out?
• 8.1 Introduction
• 8.2 Locked In: The Algorithmic Basis of Sociality
• 8.3 Fenced Off: Vertical Integration and Interoperability
• 8.4 Opt Out? Connectivity as Ideology
• Bibliography
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Dijck (comparative media studies, Univ. of Amsterdam, Netherlands) provides a critical overview of the emergence of social media. The coevolution of media with the public that uses them is described in an enlightening way. From the late 1990s onward, web tools sparked the direction of both old and new online communication tactics, like microblogging, video sharing, chatting, and videoconferencing. How sociality is engineered in a culture of connectivity is the initial focus. Next, the author tries to help readers understand "the coevolution of social media platforms and sociality in the context of a rising culture of connectivity." User agency becomes an important category in evaluating new connective technologies, as questions are raised as to whether social media platforms stimulate active participation and civic engagement, or if collectivity has become a synonym for automated connectivity. Users are described as being channeled from social networking to e-commerce, from YouTube to the Google Music to Google Wallet, from watching a clip to purchasing it: "A user is thus lured and ‘locked' into the algorithmic flow programmed by Google." Ultimately, however, user agency is seen being promoted by the development of a global system with global networking. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. C. Wankel St. John's University, New York