Facebook futures: Mark Zuckerberg’s discursive construction of a better world

Abstract

This article explores the future imaginaries used in Facebook’s corporate communications. It aims to reconstruct how these “Facebook Futures” are constructed over time and across different contexts by Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Focus of the investigation is a discourse analysis of Zuckerberg’s public language from 2004 to 2017. By employing qualitative and interpretive modes of enquiry, this study attempts to show (1) how Facebook’s future imaginaries change over time, (2) how Facebook’s central imaginaries “global connectivity” and “global community” are substantiated, and (3) how these imaginaries are supported by norms and values inherent in Silicon Valley culture. Overall, Facebook is analyzed as an example of a prophetic corporation, not only providing an explicitly corporate vision of a better world, but also blending it with the digital technologies and practices involved in making this vision reality.