What is social media for

Brazil's Lula accuses social media giant Meta of election interference amid tight run-off campaign

Social media platform Meta has 48 hours to respond to claims by Brazil's leftwing candidate and incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's campaign accusing the tech platform of blocking content…

META must protect political expression and guarantee effective remedy during Brazil elections: UN experts

GENEVA – Reports of restrictions on legitimate political expression on Meta platforms during Brazil’s elections raise concerns for freedom of expression, association, political participation and equal treatment of political viewpoints, UN experts* said today.“Online platforms are key actors in democratic debate. Preventing people from speaking or reaching audiences without explanation affects who is heard,” the experts said.

Building A Prosocial Media Ecosystem | NOEMA

There’s never been a better time to make social media what it always should have been: a tool to strengthen rather than strip-mine the social fabric.

Everyone Cheering The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Against Meta Should Understand What They’re Actually Cheering For

First things first: Meta is a terrible company that has spent years making terrible decisions and being terrible at explaining the challenges of social media trust & safety, all while prioritiz…

AI-driven disinformation running rampant on social media before US midterms, experts warn

Social media companies including Meta have pulled back on efforts to protect voters from election-meddling lies

On Social Media and Its Discontents - Cal Newport

Split Reactions As someone who has publicly criticized the major social media platforms for years, I’ve become familiar with the common arguments surrounding this topic. ... Read more

Do people learn about politics on social media? A meta-analysis of 76 studies

Abstract. Citizens turn increasingly to social media to get their political information. However, it is currently unclear whether using these platforms act

Why Would Anyone Use Another Centralized Social Media Service After This?

So, it’s been quite a year for legacy, centralized social media — and all without any really big change to the laws that govern it (yet — the EU’s are coming into force shortly, but pos…

Latinsky

Decentralized social media built for community power, culture, and collective freedom.

The Interplay of Knowledge Overestimation, Social Media Use, and Populist Ideas: Cross-Sectional and Experimental Evidence From Germany and Taiwan - Niels G. Mede, Adrian Rauchfleisch, Julia Metag, Mike S. Schäfer, 2024

Social media expose users to an abundance of information about various issues. But they also make it difficult for users to assess the quality of this informati...

Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020–2024: Decline, Fragmentation, and Enduring Polarization

The social media ecosystem appears to be in flux. Twitter’s rebranding to X has come to symbolize a broader reorganization of online publics – political reshuffling, user attrition, and uncertainty over the role of legacy platforms. Simultaneously, the shift from text-based, networked feeds toward algorithmically curated, short-form video has accelerated, with TikTok setting the pace for the wider ecosystem [18, 14, 16]. At the same time, everyday communication increasingly migrates from large, open networks to semi-private spaces such as group chats and messaging apps. Commentators describe a digital public sphere in transition: smaller, more fragmented, less dominated by traditional social networking sites, and rise of more broadcast-oriented forms of media – with some even suggesting that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the social media era.

The limits of social media as a source of political information during routine and crisis times across 17 countries

Recent studies on political knowledge suggest people learn little about political events and societal issues from social media. Potentially, social media are a more effective source of information ...

Meta Doesn’t Want to Be a Social Media Company Anymore

Despite an $18 billion settlement to end a nationwide child endangerment lawsuit, the firm clearly no longer sees social media as its main product—or its future.

How The Enshittification Of Social Media Is Decreasing The Switching Costs And Enabling Something New

In the last few weeks I’ve written about how Elon Musk’s “changes” to how Twitter is running have done an amazing job convincing people to join Mastodon. And I’ve also…

Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media

When practitioners used the term “social media” to describe the internet tools that emerged in the mid-aughts, they were giving a name to the kinds of platforms and protocols that allowed people to socialize with friends and communities of interest by using digital technologies. Twenty years later, users of social media are far more likely to scroll than post – and the content that they consume is often strategically produced and algorithmically curated. In this essay, I argue that the very essence of social media has changed. To more effectively interrogate what we are witnessing, we need to stop presuming that these tools are “social media” and begin recognizing that they are now “parasocial media.” Doing so raises new questions about digitally mediated sociality, not to mention the politics and governance of these platforms.