This chapter explores the increasing significance of social media in international political economy (IPE). How we experience and represent social media has profound implications for the ethical possibilities and limits of global market life. The chapter begins by problematizing social media through the related concepts of self-branding, the attention economy, and the prosumer. It then looks at social media via two popular documentaries on Netflix: Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (2018) and The Social Dilemma (2020). These documentaries tackle questions of reform and regulation, identifying how social media data carries immense value for corporate marketing, political strategy, credit rating, and other ways of knowing and governing society. This helps to establish an important dilemma: is social media a free and democratic space or a new infrastructure of surveillance? Finally, the chapter reflects on the politics of social media by considering different forms of critical agency.
Chapter
7. Social Media
Book
James Brassett, Juanita Elias, Lena Rethel, and Ben Richardson
I-PEEL: The International Political Economy of Everyday Life locates the study of international political economy (IPE) in the context of everyday life. It provides a fresh introduction to IPE, and highlights the relevance and prominence of IPE in the real world. In addition, the text establishes the conceptual and theoretical techniques required to engage with the IPE discipline and how those can help us understand the complexity of everyday power relations. Also, it prompts ethical self-reflection by asking if everyday economic relations are ‘right’ or ‘good’. The text starts off with an introduction to the topic. The first main chapter considers clothes. The next few chapters cover food, debt, and care. After that comes a chapter that looks at the concept of the ‘city’, followed by social media. The last two chapters present the idea of ‘share’ and humour. They are followed by a Conclusion.
