Synopses & Reviews
This book explores the diverse ways people engage with social media to build, maintain and display personal networks. Despite the remarkable technological possibilities for global networking, most people's online connections are personal, localized or stem from previous local connections. Yet this study also shows how social media are used to generate new modes of self presentation, interaction, and etiquette. Deborah Chambers develops a theory of mediated intimacies to understand how digital communication coincides with new intimacies and meanings of 'friendship' as features of a networked society. The book combines sociological debates about intimacy, family and friendship with media studies of computer mediated communication. How social media transforms personal life is investigated through five broad themes of social media engagement: the presentation of online self; teenage friendships; home, families and new media; digital dating; virtual community and online social capital. The author explains how social media technology contributes to a dramatic reconfiguration of our ideas about intimacy and friendship.
Review
To come
Review
"There is much to recommend this book in the way it synthesises the research of leading digital scholars and the extent it draws on the theoretical frameworks of Bauman, Beck, Giddens, Goffman and many others to help us understand the effects of digital media on our personal and public lives." - Information, Communication and Society
Synopsis
This book explores how digital communication generates new intimacies and meanings of friendship in a networked society, developing a theory of mediated intimacies to explain how social media contributes to dramatic changes in our ideas about personal relationships, through themes of self, youth, families, digital dating and online social capital.
Synopsis
This book explores the diverse ways people engage with social media to build, maintain and display personal networks. Despite the remarkable technological possibilities for global networking, most people's online connections are personal, localized or stem from previous local connections. Yet this study also shows how social media are used to generate new modes of self presentation, interaction, and etiquette. Deborah Chambers develops a theory of mediated intimacies to understand how digital communication coincides with new intimacies and meanings of 'friendship' as features of a networked society. The book combines sociological debates about intimacy, family and friendship with media studies of computer mediated communication. How social media transforms personal life is investigated through five broad themes of social media engagement: the presentation of online self; teenage friendships; home, families and new media; digital dating; virtual community and online social capital. The author explains how social media technology contributes to a dramatic reconfiguration of our ideas about intimacy and friendship.
About the Author
Deborah Chambers is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Newcastle University, UK. Her research areas intersect sociology and media and cultural studies. Her publications include Representing the Family; New Social Ties: Contemporary Connections in a Fragmented Society; and A Sociology of Family Life: Change and Diversity in Intimate Relations.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Technologically Mediated Personal Relationships
3. Conceptualising Intimacy and Friendship
4. Self Preservation Online
5. Social Media and Teenage Friendships
6. Home, Families and New Media
7. Digital Dating and Romance
8. Virtual Communities and Online Social Capital
9. Mediated Intimacies