Social Media—New Masses

Description

Mass gatherings are at the center of contemporary discussions about community formation, communication, and social control. As new digital technologies and social media platforms have emerged, the concept of the mass gathering has evolved in parallel to take account of the different ways masses and crowds may form, including digital masses like flash mobs and protest groups. At the same time, these new digital masses provide a remarkable opportunity to reevaluate the broader historiographical framework surrounding mass gatherings. With Social Media—New Masses, Inge Baxmann, Timon Beyes, and Claus Pias have brought together a diverse group of sociologists, media and cultural studies theorists, and historians of knowledge and technology who, together, outline the contours of this expanding field of research and analyze the differences between the old and new conceptions of masses and the distinct conditions and political consequences for each. Table of Contents An Introduction in Ten Theses I. Which Crowds? Introduction • Inge Baxmann Crowd Mediation: On Media and Collective Dynamics • Christian Borch From Masses to Collectives: Dimensions of a Discursive Paradigm Shift • Christiane Heibach Inertia, Acceleration, and Media/Theory • Florian Sprenger Creating Subsets of the Masses: Taxonomies, Orders, and Crowds in Facebook’s Open Graph Protocol • Irina Kaldrack and Theo Röhle Augmented Crowds: Identity Management, Face Recognition, and Crowd Monitoring • Roland Meyer II. Which Media? Introduction • Claus Pias Discharged Crowds: On the Crisis of a Concept • Wolfgang Hagen “Open” and “Free”: On Two Programs of Social Media • Michael Andreas The Sociology of Media • Dirk Baecker Reality Mining: On New (and Former) Methods of Social Simulation • Sebastian Vehlken Human Terrain System: Social Networks and the Media of Military Anthropology • Christoph Engemann III. Which Public Spheres? Introduction • Timon Beyes The Ornament of Mass Customization: On the Collective Consciousness of Dispersed Examiners • Sascha Simons Collectivity without Identity: Anonymous, Flexible Infrastructures, and the Event of the Common • Carolin Wiedemann Unstable (Counter)Publics: Online Platforms as Hybrid Forums for Socio-Political Debates • Mirko Tobias Schäfer Toward an Ethics of the Leak?WikiLeaks as a Programmed Public Sphere • Christoph Bieber Between the Madness and the Wisdom of Crowds: Computer Games and the Distraction Economy • Peter Krapp IV. Commentaries Short-Circuiting the Masses • Marie-Luise Angerer Falling Between Two Chairs – or Three, or • Charles Ess List of Contributors