Social Media: A Critical Introduction

In his book, "Social Media: A Critical Introduction," Christian Fuchs can be alarming and disarming but certain diagnosis and prognosis must just be told before the disease gets out of hand. Indeed Fuchs looks at social media with a critical voice - and he claims that is just the introduction. Can too much of a good thing be so harmful? Is internet addiction only a symptom of social media disease? Is social media disease a mutant of the cancer of communication?

When a child is fed with chips and junk food everyday, parents don't notice its harmful consequences until the child becomes obese or is diagnosed with kidney malfunctioning. When an adult is told to slow down on fastfood and alcohol, that person does not heed until diagnosed with hypertension and health complications. When a person is told that Google content use is demonizing and Facebook is mesmerizing, in all likelihood that person will not heed until he becomes a victim of stalking, internet addiction and dumb downing.

Fuchs confronts audiences with what maybe the ills of social media, before its excesses make people ill. He defines social media as a tool that allows its user to understand (cognition) and access information in a reciprocal process (communication) that takes place repeatedly involving feelings of belonging together or friendships and relationships (community) bringing about cooperation and collaboration through computer-supported cooperative work. Social media is necessarily not face-to-face and can only be social if the means of communication between two or more people is mediated with a device.

What makes social media different from television and radio is that it involves cooperative and collaborative editing such as is done with Facebook, in the Wikipedia and or even in blogs where collaborative interaction is involved. In television and radio, there is only linear, one-way transmission from the network to the audience, from producer to consumer, no collaboration involved.

In social media, the user is both producer and consumer - a "prosumer," according to Fuchs. In posting at Facebook or Blog, the user is producing the message and consuming, as well, for accessing an account and letting people view his account. This is not so with television and radio.

And, while television and radio need big capital to produce and deliver messages, social media needs only a computer or other such gadgets to produce and consume messages, photos and videos - all in real time.

In analyzing social media, Fuchs formed his thoughts from a guy you and I didn't quite expect - Karl Marx, the guy known for his critique on capitalism and labor. On page 13 of the book, Fuchs boldly writes: "Karl Marx invented the internet!"  Merging his own thoughts with those of Karl Marx, Fuchs believes that social media has turned words and content use into commodities. Fuchs calls it the commodification of words and content use - like words for sale. To bring his arguments closer to the experiences of his readers, he relates it with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikileaks and Wikipedia.

Fuchs describes Google as the "ultimate surveillance machine," because it "generates and stores data about the usage of these services" to enable targeted advertising. The data are sold to advertising clients, who then provide advertisements that are targeted to specific users of Google services. Hence, Google is the "ultimate user-exploitation machine," according to Fuchs. Anyone who uses Google unwittingly becomes an unpaid advertising labor generating untold profits for Google.

Fuchs is equally less endearing about Facebook, describing it as a "big shopping mall without an exit." The posts on Facebook, including nonsense invectives, are not as faceless as it seems. He points out that in privacy settings, "users can only select which information to show or not to show to other users, whereas they cannot select which data not to show to advertisers." Fuchs writes: "Advertising is not part of the privacy menu and is therefore not considered as privacy issue by Facebook."

So, a Facebook user can hide but cannot conceal. Facebook is a form of "self-mass communication" and "self-surveillance." Anything uploaded on Facebook - whether photos, videos or text - become commodities for the consumption of advertisers and to anybody who clicks on the site. No advertisement necessary so everybody can see the user in the nude. He or she only has to upload it, then it goes "viral" or mass communicated. Most Facebook users have the tendency to click on one friend to another because of the "happy-go-like" ideology. Moreover, anything posted on Facebook is shared with partner sites. One just keeps on liking… like window shopping in a big shopping mall without an exit.

Of course, pornography and backbiting, like targeted advertising, are also issues with the internet.

This constant uploading of thoughts, ideas, stories and information in Twitter, Wikileaks and Wikipedia provides platforms for harvesting and emptying of minds so that thinking beings - emptied of their thought patterns - become like robots and zombies who are easy to manipulate.

But Fuchs gives a sliver of hope. He said that the problem is not technology. He mentions responsible content use and advertising-free platforms. To some extent, Fuchs gives enlightening and discerning scenarios of social media from a Karl Marx perspective. Yet perhaps something more is needed - to look at the World Wide Web from a Scriptural angle.

Reviewed by Ruth G. Mercado

Ms. Mercado is a doctoral student of the Doctor of Communication program at the UP Open University and currently Dean of the Development Communication Department at Cebu Eastern College.