Lovink G. A world beyond Facebook. LIFELONG EDUCATION: The 21st Century.
2015. № 2 (10). DOI: 10.15393/j5.art.2015.2810

Discussion platform

A world beyond Facebook

Lovink G
PhD
professor, director of the Institute of Network Cultures
(Amsterdam)
geert@xs4all.nl

Keywords:
social media
social networks
participatory culture
free services
«Unlike Us».

Abstract: The article discusses social media development and socio-economic mechanisms of social network transformation. The author specifies the term "social media", stresses the distinctive features of social networks as objects of study; shows the dual nature of social media involved in contradictory processes: facilitation of a free information exchange along with commercial exploitation of social relations. Through social self-reflection, the author shows contradictions and risks of the democratized Internet and provides a number of examples.
Studies of social media revealed panic among young people because of the privacy threats. In exchange for a user-friendly interface, society got less complex communication and reduced user's freedom. Typical actions (adding new friends to a group, liking, sharing, updating social media) create new levels of interaction between people. As a result, complex social relations are placed in a position where there are only "friends". The article expresses the idea of personal refusal to be involved in popular social networks such as Facebook.
The author describes a special network «Unlike Us» focused on the study of social media monopolies and their alternatives. The network is founded by the Institute of Network Cultures in collaboration with Korinna Patelis (Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol). “Unlike Us” is primarily interested in a broad arts and humanities angle also called web aesthetics and a possibility to transform the internet into a truly independent public infrastructure that can effectively defend itself against corporate domination and state control. The presented article will be interesting to researchers of social and economic, communication, information and education aspects of social media and modern internet culture.
The article is translated into Russian and provided with the necessary translator’s comments with the author’s and publisher’s (Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam) permission under the Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).
Originally published: Geert Lovink. A World Beyond Facebook: Introduction to the Unlike Us Reader / Unlike Us Reader. Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives / Editors: Geert Lovink and Miriam Rasch.- Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2013, pp.9-16
English version of the text is open access, URL: http://networkcultures.org/publications/
The full text URL: http://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/%238UnlikeUs.pdf

Paper submitted on: 06/04/2015; Published online on: 06/20/2015.

1. Taina Bucher, Programmed Sociality: A Software Studies Perspective on Social Networking Sites, PhD diss., Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo, 2012

2. Jean Baudrillard, ‘The Masses: Implosion of the Social in the Media’, New Literary History 16.3 (Spring, 1985): 1, URL: www.jstor.org/stable/468841.

3. Cory Doctorow, ‘Lockdown: The Coming War on General-purpose Computing’, Boing Boing, 10 January 2012, URL: http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html.

4. For more information on the Unlike Us network, the related email list, upcoming conferences, and workshops, including the blog and (academic) publications see, http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/ unlikeus/.

5. Vito Campanelli, Web Aesthetics, Rotterdam: INC/NAi Publishers, 2010.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15393/j5.art.2015.2810