The cost of (anti-) social networks: Identity, agency and neo-luddites

Abstract

The media coverage and resultant discourse surrounding social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Friendster contain narratives of inevitability and technological determinism that require careful explication. Borrowing a tactic from the Russian Futurists, this paper attempts to make strange (that is, to defamiliarize) social network sites and their associated discourses by drawing upon an eclectic but interrelated set of metaphors and theoretical approaches, including: the digital enclosure, network sociality, socio-technical capital and Steven Jones’s recent examination of neo-Luddites. Whenever appropriate, this paper will integrate relevant magazine and newspaper journalism about social networking sites.