About social in social media

Abstract

A new generation of Web tools has emerged and has been assigned the label of “social media”, as if these new media stand out from other media by their capacity to build “something social”. But what is the nature of this social that would respond so effectively to the wishes of the users of these new tools? A social all the more desirable as it would be free of all traces of ideology and politics. On the contrary, we posit that social media have an ideological dimension, but that this one is absorbed by and in the technique itself.