The world is in the midst of a social media paradigm. Once viewed as trivial and peripheral, social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and WeChat have become an important part of the information and communication infrastructure of society. They are bound up with business and politics as well as everyday life, work, and personal relationships.

This international Handbook addresses the most significant research themes, methodological approaches and debates in the study of social media. It contains substantial chapters written especially for this book by leading scholars from a range of disciplinary perspectives, covering everything from computational social science to sexual self-expression.

Part 1: Histories And Pre-Histories
Part 2: Approaches And Methods
Part 3: Platforms, Technologies And Business Models
Part 4: Cultures And Practices
Part 5: Social And Economic Domains

About the Author
Jean Burgess is Professor of Digital Media and Director of the QUT Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC), Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She is author or editor of more than 100 publications on digital and social media, including YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture (Polity Press), Twitter and Society (Peter Lang), Studying Mobile Media (Routledge) and The Handbook of New Media Dynamics (Wiley-Blackwell) Alice Marwick (PhD, New York University) is a Fellow at the Data & Society Research Institute, where she leads the Media Manipulation project, and an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her current book project examines how the networked nature of online privacy disproportionately impacts marginalized individuals in terms of gender, race, and socio-economic status. She is the author of Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity and Branding in the Social Media Age (Yale 2013), an ethnographic study of the San Francisco tech scene which examines how people seek social status through attention and visibility online. Marwick was previously Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies and the Director of the McGannon Center for Communication Research at Fordham University. She has written for popular publications such as The New York Times, The New York Review of Books and The Guardian in addition to academic publications such as Public Culture and New Media and Society. Thomas Poell is Assistant Professor of New Media & Digital Culture and Program Director of the Research Master Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He has published widely on social media and popular protest, as well as on the role of these media in the development of new forms of journalism. His next book, co-authored with Jose van Dijck and Martijn de Waal, will be titled The Platform Society. Public values in a connective world.

Reviews

In this comprehensive, ambitious and timely book, Burgess, Marwick and Poell present to us 'the social media paradigm' - a distinctive and potentially transformative moment in the history of media and communications, perhaps also in the world's cultural, economic and political life. Grounded in rigorous intellectual and empirical work and committed to international, multi-and inter-disciplinary endeavor, this book provides a much-needed basis for critical understanding and future research on the social shaping and social consequences of today's social media paradigm.

-- Sonia Livingstone

This phenomenal collection of articles by such esteemed scholars offers a critical glimpse into the various ways in which social media has reconfigured contemporary life. This book is essential for both scholars and students.

-- danah boyd

This remarkable collection of original and thoughtful essays will have lasting value for students and researchers. The Handbook of Social Media not only defines the broad field of social media studies, but it sets the agenda for the future.

-- Lance Bennett



Book Information
ISBN 9781412962292
Author Jean Burgess
Format Hardback
Page Count 662
Imprint SAGE Publications Inc
Publisher SAGE Publications Inc
Weight(grams) 1320g