[ecrea] New open access book: How the World Changed Social Media

UCL Press is delighted to announce the publication of an open access 
book that may be of interest to members of this list: How the World 
Changed Social Media



Download Free: http://bit.ly/1WTmdvh



This title available in both free open access http://bit.ly/1WTmdvh and 
print editions (paperback, £15.00, http://bit.ly/1WTmdvh | hardback, 
£35.00 http://bit.ly/1WTmdvh).



How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a 
book series that investigates the findings of anthropologists who each 
spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers 
a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and 
explores the impact of social media on politics and gender, education 
and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual 
communication? Are we becoming more individual or more social? Why is 
public social media so conservative? Why does equality online fail to 
shift inequality offline? How did memes become the moral police of the 
internet?



Supported by an introduction to the project's academic framework and 
theoretical terms that help to account for the findings, the book argues 
that the only way to appreciate and understand something as intimate and 
ubiquitous as social media is to be immersed in the lives of the people 
who post. Only then can we discover how people all around the world have 
already transformed social media in such unexpected ways and assess the 
consequences.



Download a free open access copy: http://bit.ly/1WTmdvh



About Why We Post



Why do we post on social media? Is it true that we are replacing 
face-to-face relationships with on-screen life? Are we becoming more 
narcissistic with the rise of selfies? Does social media create or 
suppress political action, destroy privacy or become the only way to 
sell something? And are these claims equally true for a factory worker 
in China and an IT professional in India?



With these questions in mind, nine anthropologists each spent 15 months 
living in communities in China, Brazil, Turkey, Chile, India, England, 
Italy and Trinidad. They studied not only platforms but the content of 
social media to understand both why we post and the consequences of 
social media on our lives. Their findings indicate that social media is 
more than communication - it is also a place where we now live.



This series explores and compares the results in a collection of 
ground-breaking and accessible ethnographic studies. To find out more, 
visit http://www.ucl.ac.uk/why-we-post


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