Facebook Democracy: The Architecture of Disclosure and the Threat to Public Life

by Jose Marichal

In July 2010, Facebook had over 500 million subscribers worldwide and the rapid rise of the site prompted Time magazine to name Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg its person of the year for 2010. This novel book advances our understanding of how democratic citizens are transformed by the "Facebook revolution". Despite increasing interest in politics and popular media, there has been little academic work on the impact of Facebook on politics in general, and on democratic processes in particular. The work that does exist has been limited to Facebook's impact on politics as a mobilization tool used by social movement activists. In this book, José Marichal argues that understanding Facebook's impact on political processes requires an understanding of how Facebook's architecture of disclosure shapes the construction of individuals' political identities by drawing users further into their pre-selected social networks. Drawing on a number of disciplines and an ethnographic analysis of 250 Facebook political groups, Marichal explores how Facebook's emphasis on social connection impacts key dimensions of political e.g., mobilization, deliberation, and attitude formation.

200 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Moss 慈映夢図 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-balanced study that explores the developing positives and negatives of social media use and the role it will go on to play in the public sphere. You can tell the author is softening his own biases at times so as to present a more objective overview which I appreciate, and the copious studies and sources are evidence of thorough research. For one, it's interesting to see the line where innate human impulses are encouraged (in a benign way), and where they are nudged (exploited) by the infrastructure of FaceBook et al. Given how recent and ongoing all of these developments are, I'm impressed at the level of detail.

TLDR; I give mad props to anyone who can steel-man a perspective with which they do not necessarily agree and with that I'd highly recommend this read.

Also Zuckerberg's kinda an asshole. 5 stars.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

People should be kept into ignorance. People should obey the enlightened castes. That is what Marichal calls Democracy. And it looks pretty much like a North Korea with supermarkets.