tl;dr: Read “Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media”

The lovely folks at the Social Media + Society journal asked me to contribute to their anniversary issue by reflecting on the trajectory of social media. Ooof. Snark exuded from my pores as I tried to figure out what I might say. But then I thought about how my students don’t know about an era of social media without recommended content, algorithmically curated feeds, and an infinite scroll of cotton candy content. They never encountered a world of social media where people were focused on sharing with their friends rather than becoming influencers. They don’t realize how much the “social” in social media has changed.

As I tried to unpack in my mind what social media has become, I kept coming back to how the dominant practice has shifted to consumption rather than production. Media scholars have always argued that consuming TV is social even if you watch alone because of the power of using TV content in social settings, like the water cooler. I don’t want to negate this collective experience to TV, although the content we consume online is so fragmented that there is no unifying consumption pattern despite there being meaningful networked-based consumption practices. But still, there’s something tangibly different about the social-ness of consuming to discuss vs. consuming in a dialogic engagement.

In putting pen-to-paper, I kept coming back to how odd the term “social media” now feels to me. And of course I’m biased because I lived through the contestations over how to label the various websites that we’ve come to know as social media. So I had a very particular understanding of the term, one that no longer exists.

“Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media” is my attempt to reckon with the evolution of social media into a format that I feel is no longer meaningfully social. It’s open-access so check it out. And if you have feels, push back! I’d love to hear your thoughts!!!