Book Review: The Social Media Age by Zoetanya Sujon

This book review and the accompanying commentary are based on the book, The Social Media Age. This book might well have been titled, ‘the power of technology: social media, artificial intelligence, and the algorithm society. Social media are the dominant information technology of our time. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok invite new kinds of interaction, impacting friendships, family and peer groups, and business relationships while reconfiguring public engagement and discourse through influencers, memes, viral media, and the algorithms that drive the digital domain. The social media matrix—such as the number of likes, views, shares, and followers—shapes how individuals perceive and negotiate belonging (Roger 2015) as well as their own self-perception (Barry et al. 2019). Nevertheless, many questions remain open to answers and debate about the impact and meaning of social media (Sujon 2021). Some scholars take a broad view, arguing that all media are social (e.g., Humphreys 2016), while others take a narrower view, believing that social media include specific technology set aside for particular purposes. Despite many contrasting definitions, digital platforms enable public-facing social interaction (Sujon 2021), where social media are not just concerned with connection but also with the circulation of information and its communication. The Social Media Age (Sujon 2021), is a recent attempt to synthesize the full breadth of the current understanding of the topic. It provides a wealth of information concerning social media and the various structural elements that drive it. One such example is the meme. The meme phenomenon is grounded in the notion of “cultural evolution” and the idea that culture can be transmitted and replicated much like organic life, leaving the meme the genetic material of culture (Dawkins 1976). The author lays this argument out across three distinct sections. Part one focuses on the history and meaning of social media, examining its origins and exploring the impact such media have had on power and ideology, particularly as it relates to consumers of such products. Sujon (2021) then dissects the phenomena of social technologies and their impact on participation, culture, and protest throughout any variety of social arenas. Finally, the author discusses the influence social media has on everyday life, ranging from how we, as individuals, deal with the self to the development of personal connections and intimacy in a digital age. This book’s essence is to dissect current theoretical approaches to social media. For instance, Sujon (2021) applies the Foucauldian approach to power, Theodore Adorno’s work within the culture industry, and Dall Smythe’s theory of audience commodity to illustrate the use of power and ideology within social media. That said, media not only works as an entertainment-oriented phenomenon but also in popularizing and normalizing class-oriented ideologies. This commentary aims not to critique the theories applied to social media but to expand understanding of technology advancement, culture, and society. Most importantly, the authors endeavor to deeply explore the “front stage” of social media and digital technologies and their impact on consumers and culture. In the following, we review some highlights of this exploration and provide a brief examination of the “backstage” in the artificial intelligence and algorithms that drive such technologies are reviewed. Finally, we discuss the potential impact of how the advancement of technology impacts individuals, culture, and society is discussed.