“I Use Social Media as an Escape from All That” Personal Platform Architecture and the Labor of Avoiding News

Abstract

We examine the work that U.S. young adults undertake to design and maintain their personal media worlds across digital platforms, and the consequences of those practices for news use. Drawing on 50 in-depth interviews with 18-34-year-olds, including a shared reading of participants’ most-used social media platforms, we develop the concept of personal platform architecture and articulate links between this architectural work and other forms of digital labor. We illustrate the types of labor young platforms users engage in as they construct and curate across multiple “public” and “private” spaces online, with an emphasis on architectural labor that leads away from encounters with news.

Keywords:

• Media repertoires
• news use
• youth
• social media
• new media

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was assisted by the Social Science Research Council’s Social Data Research Fellowship, with funds provided by Omidyar Network.