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Abstract
This article explores and critiques the use of social media as a primary source in the writing of twenty-first-century history. Since the introduction of so-called social media in the early 2000s, social scientists, journalists, and users have hailed this media form as a revolutionary departure from the ‘old media’ that dominated the twentieth century. Part of the narrative of ‘new media’ is it provides greater amounts of user agency, removes structural impediments for social dialog, and promotes an egalitarian exchange within the global sphere. This article suggests that this account is a product of the narrative structure of classical liberalism, through which social media as an object of knowledge and effectivity is produced. It concludes that the use of social media as a primary source for social histories of popular protest will require substantive theoretical scrutiny by scholars writing about these processes of the twenty-first century.
Notes
1. Quoted from Lim, “Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses,” 231.
2. Curran, “Media and the Making”; Pickering and Keightley, “Echoes and Reverberations”; Hampton and Conboy, “Journalism History—A Debate”; and Maurantonio, “Archiving the Visual.”
3. White, Metahistory; White, Tropics of Discourse; White, Content of the Form; and Kellner, Language and Historical Representation.
4. Mussell, “Review,” 105.
5. Hegel, Philosophy of History; Marx, Grundrisse; Henretta, “Social History”; Zunz, “Synthesis of Social Change”; Wiener, “Radical Historians”; and Pihlainen, “Oppositional History.”
6. Humphreys et al., “Historicizing New Media,” 415.
7. Sigler, “Teaching Twitter,” 37.
8. Gitelman, Always Already New.
9. Peters, “John Locke.”
10. Tilly, Identities, 61, quoted in Krinsky and Crossley, “Social Movements,” 2; and Halverson, Ruston, and Trethewey, “Mediated Martyrs,” 313.
11. White, Metahistory; White, Tropics of Discourse; and White, Content of the Form.
12. Williams, Marxism and Literature; boyd, “Social Networked Sites as Networked Publics”; Coté and Pybus, “Learning to Immaterial Labor 2.0”; Hearn, “Structuring feeling”; and Arvidsson, Brands.
13. Kramer, “Literature, Criticism.”
14. Williams, Television, 9–31.
15. Lim, “Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses.”
16. Curran, “Media and the Making,” 135.
17. Kaplan and Haenlein, “Users of the World, Unite!”; and Glickman, Buying Power.
18. Li and Bernoff, Groundswell.
19. Surowiecki, Wisdom of Crowds; Howe, Crowdsourcing; and Shirky, Here Comes Everybody.
20. Rudé, Crowd in History; and Thompson, “Moral Economy.”
21. Negroponte, Being Digital.
22. Bratton, “We Need to Talk.”
23. Benjamin, “Work of Art.”
24. Benjamin, “Work of Art.”, 218.
25. Benjamin, “Work of Art.”, 218.
26. Darnton, “Early Information Society,” 1.
27. “Twitter’s Folksy Forerunner.”
28. Atkins, “Edwardian Social Network.”
29. Humphreys et al., “Historicizing New Media,” 414.
30. Miller, “New Media,” 387–388; and White, Content of the Form.
31. Cohen, “Valorization of Surveillance.”
32. Tweetlevel.
33. Halverson, Ruston, and Trethewey, “Mediated Martyrs,” 313.
34. Christensen, “Twitter Revolutions?”; and Khondker, “Role of the New Media.”
35. Christensen, “Twitter Revolutions?”; and Khondker, “Role of the New Media.”, 156.
36. Khondker, “Role of the New Media.”
37. Khondker, “Role of the New Media.”, 676.
38. Khondker, “Role of the New Media.”, 676.
39. Khondker, “Role of the New Media.”, 677.
40. Khondker, “Role of the New Media.”, 676.
41. Frangonikolopoulos and Chapsos, “Explaining the Role.”
42. Frangonikolopoulos and Chapsos, “Explaining the Role.”, 10.
43. Frangonikolopoulos and Chapsos, “Explaining the Role.”, 10.
44. Frangonikolopoulos and Chapsos, “Explaining the Role.”, 17.
45. Frangonikolopoulos and Chapsos, “Explaining the Role.”, 10.
46. Frangonikolopoulos and Chapsos, “Explaining the Role.”, 17.
47. Lim, “Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses.”
48. Lim, “Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses.”, 232.
49. Lim, “Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses.”, 234.
50. Lim, “Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses.”, 234.
51. Lim, “Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses.”, 234.
52. Lim, “Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses.”, 240–241.
53. Lim, “Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses.”, 244.
54. Bratich, “User-Generated Discontent.”
55. Spiegel, “Above, About and Beyond.”
56. White, Content of the Form.