Social Life and Political Life in the Era of Digital Media

This book explores the ways in which social media has given new political importance to social life. In seizing certain economic and political functions and turning them into social practices through the various devices and technologies of digital copying and sharing, social media has enabled new forms of political participation, thus reinvigorating political activity, without extending the practice of ‘politics as usual’. Rather, as is demonstrated by studies of social media in relation to social and political theory, in emphasising the sociality of users’ practices, social media makes possible the limitation – by ordinary people – of political life within certain boundaries, thus constraining demagoguery and challenging the arrogance of elites who seek to impose certain forms of political life.