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Filling the Void: Emotion, Capitalism and Social Media

Filling the Void: Emotion, Capitalism and Social Media
Library Shelf Location 35.DIGI
Publication Date 2017
Description

SELECTED FOR BALTIC LIBRARY TO COMPLIMENT THE DIGITAL CITIZEN-THE PRECARIOUS SUBJECT EXHIBITION (25 January – 16 June 2019)

Filling The Void is a book about how the cultures and psychology of social media use fit within a broader landscape of life under capitalism. It argues that social media use is often a psychological response to the need for pleasure and comfort that results from the stresses of life under postmodern capitalism, rather than being a driver of new behaviours as newer technologies are often said to be. Both the explosive growth of social media and the corresponding reconfiguration of the web from an information-based platform into an entertainment-based one are far more easily explained in terms of the subjective psychological experience of their users as capitalist subjects seeking 'depressive hedonia,' the book argues.

Filling the Void also interrogates the role of social media networks, designed for private commercial gain, as part of a de-facto public sphere. Both the decreasing subjective importance of factual media and the ways in which the content of the timeline are quietly manipulated -- often using labour in the developing world and secret algorithms -- have potentially serious implications for the capacity of social media users to query or challenge the seeming reality offered by the established hegemonic order.

 

ISBN 9781910924945
Quantity 1
Pages 240p; 12.5 x 1.7 x 19.8 cm
Author Marcus Gilroy-Ware
Format Paperback
Publisher Repeater Books, London
Category Non-art books relating to BALTIC exhibitions
Keywords Social media, Capitalism, Post-capitalism, Technology and social change
Related Event Digital Citizen – the Precarious Subject (25 January – 16 June 2019)
Language English

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