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Gilroy-Ware, Marcus (2017) Filling the Void: Emotion, Capitalism and Social Media. London: Repeater Books.

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Abstract

Filling The Void is a book about how the cultures and psychology of social media use fit within a broader landscape of life under capitalism. It argues that social media use is often a psychological response to the need for pleasure and comfort that results from the stresses of life under postmodern capitalism, rather than being a driver of new behaviours as newer technologies are often said to be. Both the explosive growth of social media and the corresponding reconfiguration of the web from an information-based platform into an entertainment-based one are far more easily explained in terms of the subjective psychological experience of their users as capitalist subjects seeking 'depressive hedonia, ' the book argues. Filling the Void also interrogates the role of social media networks, designed for private commercial gain, as part of a de-facto public sphere. Both the decreasing subjective importance of factual media and the ways in which the content of the timeline are quietly manipulated--often using labour in the developing world and secret algorithms--have potentially serious implications for the capacity of social media users to query or challenge the seeming reality offered by the established hegemonic order.

Item Type: Authored Books
Keywords: social media, capitalism, psychology
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > School of Arts
ISBN: 9781910924945
Copyright Statement: Copyright © Marcus Gilroy-Ware 2017 Marcus Gilroy-Ware asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. Chapter reproduced by kind permission of the publishers. Re-use is subject to the publisher’s terms and conditions
Date Deposited: 23 Jun 2022 08:47
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/37552
Related URLs: http://www.mjgw ... lling-the-void/ (Author URL)

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