Filling the Void: Emotion, Capitalism and Social Media

By Marcus Gilroy-Ware

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1910924946
• ISBN13: 9781910924945
• Release Date: April 2017
• Publisher: Repeater
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.8" x 7.6"