Author : Kane X. Faucher
Publisher : University of Westminster Press
ISBN 13 : 1911534572
Total Pages : 195 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (115 download)
Book Synopsis Social Capital Online by : Kane X. Faucher
Download or read book Social Capital Online written by Kane X. Faucher and published by University of Westminster Press. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is ‘social capital’? The enormous positivity surrounding it conceals the instrumental economic rationality underpinning the notion as corporations silently sell consumer data for profit. Status chasing is just one aspect of a process of transforming qualitative aspects of social interactions into quantifiable metrics for easier processing, prediction, and behavioural shaping. A work of critical media studies, Social Capital Online examines the idea within the new ‘network spectacle’ of digital capitalism via the ideas of Marx, Veblen, Debord, Baudrillard and Deleuze. Explaining how such phenomena as online narcissism and aggression arise, Faucher offers a new theoretical understanding of how the spectacularisation of online activity perfectly aligns with the value system of neoliberalism and its data worship. Even so, at the centre of all, lie familiar ideas – alienation and accumulation – new conceptions of which he argues are vital for understanding today’s digital society.