Hyperlink Report: Fuchs
The chapter of What is Social Media from Christian Fuchs’ book Social Media: A Critical Introduction mainly works on the discussion of what new social media are and some features and criticisms of the terms “web 2.0” and “social media”. In order to explain the meaning of the terms, the author presents some concepts of what it means to be social and talks about the implications of these concepts for understanding social media. Fuchs thinks that social media should be understood in a sociological context. Therefore he introduces Durkheim’s Weber’s, Marx’s and Tonnies’ concepts of sociality and applies them to the explanation of the terms.
Instead of directly addressing the question of what social media is, Fuchs discusses a lot about the meaning of “social”. He thinks that making sense of social media requires a theoretical understanding of what it means to social (50). The three notions of sociality: Durkheim’s social facts, Weber’s social actions/relations, Marx’s and Tonnies’ co-operation help to provide an answer for the question. As Fuchs states, the three notions can be integrated into a model in which cognition provides the necessary prerequisite for communication, which forms the basis for co-operation. Every media, then, can be social in one or more of these senses because it provides information and facilitates the exchange of information. An interesting point is that Fuchs uses the word information and cognition interchangeably here. According to him, media provides information to our knowledge as social facts that shape thinking. Therefore it is fair to say that we construct the identities of ourselves/ self-cognition by the information coming from the society and media as well. This idea reminds me of another social-psychological concept of “the looking glass self”, which expresses the tendency for one to understand oneself in their own understanding of perceptions which others might hold of themselves. This term was coined by Cooley in his work in 1902. Apparently he might not foresee how large impacts that new media would made in a hundred of years. Nowadays the term might need to be changed to “the looking media self” to describe the tendency for people to form cognitions through the information on the media rather than from people who know them.
The Looking Glass Self from Wikipedia
The format Fuchs uses when discussing the term “web 2.0” is that he first give a definition and historical background of it, then he lists some critiques of web 2.0 and social media optimism in the form of bullet points. I personally felt this format, especially the part of critiques, confusing because it seems that he collected a bunch of data there but didn’t analyze it. He neither gave his response to those critiques nor explained why he selected them but not others.
One thing I thought is novel and interesting in Fuchs’ reading is that there’s a recommended readings and exercises session in the end of the chapter. He explains the need to do extensive readings in order to have a clearer sense of what he can limitedly address in this chapter, and also lists questions for readers to think about when comparing other readings with this chapter. The recommended readings include Emile Durkheim’s The Rules of Sociological Method and Max Weber’s Basic Sociological Terms. I felt this really helpful for reviewing some key points and questions he mentions in the chapter and opening the text to a broader conversation.
