Meaning in the Age of Social Media

The search for meaning is an essential human activity. It is not simply about agreeing on some definitions about the world, objects, and people, but is also an ethical process of opening up to others and to the world to find new possibilities. Social media corporations commodify our search for meaning by defining the parameters through which we can experience meaningfulness. This new context of meaning requires rethinking the relationships between language, software, and the psyche. Langlois uses case studies of popular social media platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon, among others) to revisit traditional conceptions of meaning. She develops a new theoretical and methodological framework drawing from post-Fordist theories, software studies, critical theory, and relational psychoanalysis to examine the technical mediation and commodification of the psychic, cultural, and linguistic processes involved in the search for meaning.

Ganaele Langlois is Assistant Professor in the Communication Program at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada, and Associate Director of the Infoscape Centre for the Study of Social Media at Ryerson University, Canada. She is the co-author of The Permanent Campaign: New Media, New Politics (with Greg Elmer and Fenwick McKelve, 2012).

Introduction: Meaning and Social Media
1. Governing Meaning
2. Meaning Machines
3. Meaningfulness and Subjectivation
4. Social Networking and the Production of the Self
5. Being in the World Afterword: Social Data and the Politics of Existence