This chapter explores patterns of misinformation in online conspiracy theory information worlds such as QAnon, as seen in publicly accessible Facebook pages. In particular, it examines issues related to expertise, authority, and gatekeeping; overt acts of misreading; the concept of connecting the dots, or seeing patterns and interconnections between often widely disparate phenomena; and interpretations of the symbolism in everyday life phenomena such as gestures, corporate logos, and celebrity photographs. It argues that, through its ubiquity and persistence, conspiracy theory misinformation functions as a persistent yet de-centered everyday activity, melding deeply serious interpretive acts with elements of gaming and sense-making.

Public whistleblowers typically depend upon journalists and reporters to take an interest in their story. But help from responsible and committed media professionals is elusive. Even when available, media support is challenging to manage. When whistleblowers speak to the press, it is usually necessary that they be the ‘human face’ of the story; there is no opting out of the spotlight in the battle for credibility. This brings further attention and stress. Journalists can have different agendas to the whistleblowers with whom they work. Some care for their sources, conscious of the challenges of speaking in public. Others do not. The exemplar case of Frances Haugen at Facebook is invaluable in how she planned and executed her disclosure, leading to international scrutiny of her firm’s practices and changes to laws across the globe.

It has long been argued that digital textuality fundamentally alters familiar conceptions of literary authorship. Critics such as Jay David Bolter, George Landow, and Mark Poster have articulated a conception whereby the interactive affordances of digital textuality level the playing field between author and reader. Rather than consuming the text passively, readers become “coauthors,” actively creating a unique narrative through their interactions and narrative choices. While these bold prophesies may not have materialized, digital textuality has worked to challenge the model of individual authorship. This chapter looks at two contemporary practices that serve to promote and “normalize” group authorship: fanfiction and social reading. It provides a literary history of collective authorship and analyzes the pressure that fan sites like FanFiction.net and An Archive of Our Own are putting on our conventional means of evaluating literary excellence, notably by challenging conceptions of originality and distinctiveness. It also considers how another facet of digital reading – social reading, as practiced on sites like Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter – is creating new feedback loops between authors and readers, facilitating the development of new “interpretive communities,” and working to undermine the centrality of the solitary genius and the solitary reader to literary production and reception.

Communities of guitarists have existed and evolved in parallel with the instrument’s long and varied historical development. Technological progress in the twentieth century saw two major milestones for the guitar: the invention of the electric guitar, and the birth of the internet. This chapter explores the shift of guitar-based communities to virtual spaces starting with email groups, internet forums, and chat rooms. These communities serve similar functions as real-world communities by sharing knowledge and resources as well as providing spaces for discussions and performances. Peer-to-peer file sharing regenerated an old form of guitar-specific written notation: tablature. Then along came social media, which changed the entire music industry, including online guitar communities. Many of the world’s largest and most visited websites, Facebook, YouTube, X, and Instagram, are havens for guitar communities no longer defined by geographical boundaries. This has had enormous consequences as cultural and aesthetic expressions, particularly in the form of guitar performance practices, are now freely transmitted globally and instantaneously via virtual networks.

The chapter will focus on the uses and abuses of Facebook and other social networks by Dark Tetrad personalities. In the first part, the importance and the uses of Facebook in modern life will be described. Then, the chapter will portray the benefits and potential harm inherent in Facebook. Next, theories that explain the attraction of Dark Triad personalities to Facebook will be presented. Chapter 3 will review the relationship between each Dark Tetrad personality and Facebook. The assumption is that each of the four personalities will have their habits relating to using Facebook. The chapter will also cover an important issue discussed in the literature-profiling Dark Tetrad personalities based on Facebook profiles and activities.

This chapter starts by reviewing the history of American news media since 1789, focusing on how new production technologies and business models led to a comparatively unbiased, objective journalism in the mid-20th Century. The difference today that audiences have become far more polarized. This has enabled market segmentation strategies in which each broadcaster avoid competition by pandering to a different political viewpoint. More recently, the rise of the Web has accelerated the rate at which new political messages can be invented, tested on audiences, and eventually refined to the point where mainstream outlets are prepared to broadcast it. The question remains how effectively large news organizations and Web platforms can suppress information they disagree with. The chapter explores when and to what extent todays markets permit this.

1 Introduction

2 Types of Political Participation

 2.1 Institutional Participation

 2.2 Political Protests

 2.3 Civic Engagement

 2.4 Political Consumerism

 2.5 Social Media as Political Participation

3 Affordances of Social Media and Political Participation

 3.1 The Origin of Affordances Scholarship

 3.2 Conceptualization of Affordances

  3.2.1 Technological Affordances

  3.2.2 Communicative and Social Affordances

 3.3 Affordances in Social Media

 3.4 Social Media Affordances and Political Participation

  3.4.1 Facebook

  3.4.2 Twitter

  3.4.3 YouTube

  3.4.4 Reddit

  3.4.5 Instagram

  3.4.6 Snapchat

  3.4.7 WhatsApp

4 How People’s Social Media Use Translates into Political Participation

 4.1 Uses and Gratifications Approach

 4.2 New Approach: When U&G Meets Affordances

 4.3 Motivations of Social Media Use and Political Participation

5 Active and Passive Uses of Social Media and Political Participation

 5.1 Low-Effort and High-Effort Social Media Activities

6 Conclusions

 6.1 Affordances

 6.2 Uses and Gratifications

 6.3 Active and Passive Uses of Social Media and Political Participation

 6.4 Social Media in the Political Process

7 Future Directions

1 The History of Social Media in the Workplace

  1.1 History of Social Media Research and Implications in the Workplace

    1.1.1 Determinants of Site Membership and Usage

    1.1.2 Social Implications and Motivation to Use Social Media

    1.1.3 Factors Influencing Content

    1.1.4 Ability of a Profile to Represent the Owner

    1.1.5 Leading Summaries of Social Media Work

2 Current Uses of Social Media in the Workplace

  2.1 Theoretical Frameworks for Understanding Social Media in the Workplace

  2.2 Individual Perspective

  2.3 Human Capital Management Perspective

    2.3.1 Recruitment

    2.3.2 Personnel Selection

    2.3.3 Onboarding and Employee Engagement

    2.3.4 Training, Growth, and Development

    2.3.5 Departures and Terminations

  2.4 Organization Perspective

    2.4.1 Corporate Branding

    2.4.2 Organization Insights

    2.4.3 Legal Risks

3 Future Research Directions

  3.1 Challenges of Past Social Media Research

  3.2 Broad Areas for Continued Social Media Research

  3.3 Future Social Media Research from the Individual, HCM, and Organization Perspectives

4 Conclusion

Many mediated channels are available for relational partners to use for relational partners. At times these channels are facilitating long-standing relational processes such as relational maintenance, whereas at other times the channels provide new mechanisms for relational tasks such as gathering information about potential and new romantic partners or presenting the relationship to the couple’s broader social network. This chapter reviews relational processes through the lens of social media. The chapter overviews how romantic couples use social media in the initial stages of relationships to find potential romantic partners and seek information about potential and new partners, to communicate maintenance behaviors throughout the relationship, and the impact of social media during the dissolution phases. Both positively valenced behaviors (e.g., comanaging relational impressions and using social media to create electronic tie-signs) and negatively valenced behaviors (e.g., ghosting and cyberstalking) are discussed.

This chapter examines the design and performance of the most prominent recent innovation in platform governance, the Facebook (now Meta) Oversight Board. It contextualizes the examination of that board in the rule of law ideas of the preceding chapter. In the course of this analysis, it also develops some ideas about the normative function of platform legalism in building a kind of hybrid corporate/userbase platform identity which may be morally valuable as well as tactically valuable in resolving controversial governance issues. Finally, it suggests that the Oversight Board's handling of the "great deplatforming" of Donald Trump illustrates the capacity of lawlike modes of the decision to shape such an identity. It also serves as a counterexample to some of Carl Schmitt's ideas about sovereignty and emergency power.

Platform governance matters. The failure of platform companies to govern their users has led to disasters ranging from the unwitting culpability of Facebook in the 2017 genocide of the Rohingya people, to the spread of fraud and disinformation exacerbating the COVID-19 crisis, and to the subversion of free and fair elections across the world. The Introduction to The Networked Leviathan frames the problem of platform governance and its similarity to some of the problems confronted for centuries by political states and recommends that policymakers and scholars of the internet turn to older forms of political organization for inspiration.

The content of this book is rather controversial. It paints a rather bleak picture, that the current EU legal economic system being developed for the data-driven economy is both outdated and – to some extent – a policy at war with itself. It promotes dominant platforms to detriment of others. Moreover, the fundamentals for creating rules are also missing. A liberal economic system needs to be based on aspects of a rights system, otherwise, we risk losing innovation, the establishment of new markets, and the creation of wealth, while we will see increasing market failures. Without a legal system for rights to data, we will lose out of a just system for the distribution of wealth. Indeed, it is time that the data-driven economy and the internet economy are granted their ‘property’ rights, reflecting the new paradigm of the data-driven industrial revolution. Moreover, such a regime fits well with the European economic constitution now being established.

Generally, it might seem that the problem of a few system leaders hoarding data should be addressed by competition law. Market power and monopolizations generally trigger competition-law remedies. However, as will be discussed below, when it comes to accessing data, and especially when access to data should be granted as a continuing service, competition law is generally the wrong platform to use. Access or forced collaboration is difficult to establish under competition law. The case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) makes it difficult to succeed in arguing that a refusal to grant access to data is an abuse of market dominance under Article 102 TFEU. Proving market dominance in data-related markets is a challenging undertaking and is highly case specific. Similarly, the very stringent requirements defining abuse were developed for different situations and may need to be adapted to circumstances of the data-driven economy. More importantly, only undertakings would be able to rely on a right to access data under Article 102 TFEU, which would generally exclude access claims of consumers. Finally, the enforcement system of competition law does not seem to be sufficiently effective to guarantee competitive markets for the mass phenomenon of data lock-ins caused by connected devices.1