Lovink - Social media abyss: critical internet cultures and the force of negation

Copyright Geert Lovink 2016

The right of Geert Lovink to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2016 by Polity Press

Polity Press

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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0775-7

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0776-4 (pb)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lovink, Geert, author.

Title: Social media abyss : critical internet cultures and the force of negation / Geert Lovink.

Description: Malden, MA : Polity, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015041526 (print) | LCCN 2016001138 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509507757 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509507764 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509507788 (Mobi) | ISBN 9781509507795 (Epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Social media. | Online social networksSociological aspects. | Popular culture. | BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture.

Classification: LCC HM742 .L698 2016 (print) | LCC HM742 (ebook) | DDC 302.23/1dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041526

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Social Media Abyss is book 5 in the series on critical internet culture that I began working on fifteen years ago. After Networks Without a Cause (April 2011), this is my second title with Polity Press, thanks to John Thompson, his team and their readers. I would like to thank Sabine Niederer, head of the Create-IT Knowledge Centre, and Geleyn Meyer, Dean of the Media & Creative Industries faculty at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA) where our Institute of Network Cultures (INC) is based, who have both been very supportive. In 2013, Geleyn Meyer gave me the opportunity to convert my three-days-a-week position into a full-time one. This change meant my departure from Mediastudies, University of Amsterdam (UvA), where I'd been involved in developing the one-year New Media master's degree since 2006.

The recent period at HvA has been marked by uncertain funding and a centralization of applied research towards the creative industries. Despite the cultural-budget cuts in the Netherlands and increased pressure to work within the commercial sector, the INC has been able to run a number of research networks, publication series and conferences on topics such as Unlike Us: Alternatives in Social Media (201113), MyCreativity Sweatshop: an Update on the Critique of the Creative Industries (2014), the Hybrid Publishing Toolkit: Research into Digital Publishing Formats (201314), Society of the Query: the Politics and Aesthetics of Search Engines (2013), MoneyLab: an Ongoing Collective Investigation into Internet Revenue Models (201415) and The Art of Criticism: a Dutch/Flemish Initiative on the Future of Art Criticism (201416). Early in 2015, a part of the INC was split off as The Publishing Lab, led by Margreet Riphagen.

I have developed many ideas in the two-day masterclasses that I lead around the world. I am particularly thankful to Larissa Hjorth and Heather Horst at RMIT's Digital Ethnography Research Centre in Melbourne for inviting me in 2013 and 2014, to Henk Slager from the MA of the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (HKU) in Utrecht for our long-term collaboration, Florian Schneider at the Art Academy Trondheim, Wolfgang Schirmacher for the annual three-day sessions at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee (where I've supervised my first four Ph.D. students), Christiane Paul at the New School who facilitated three classes from 2010 to 2012, Leah Lievrouw at UCLA, Michael Century at Renselaer, Ingrid Hoofd while at the National University of Singapore, and Mariela Yeregui for organizing my visit to Buenos Aires.

There have always been collaborations, and it is a great passion of mine to write with others, to push the discursive boundaries in order to break out of one's own invisible premises. In the case of this book there are three co-authorships that need to be mentioned. First of all, that of the Sydney media theorist Ned Rossiter, my friend and commentator on my work, with whom I have developed the organized networks concept (a project which will be the subject of a separate publication soon). Second, INC's ambassador and news connoisseur Patrice Riemens, with whom I co-authored the chapter on Bitcoin. And finally, Nathaniel Tkacz (Warwick University) with whom I initiated both the Critical Point of View network in 2009 and MoneyLab in 2012/13, and co-authored the chapter on the MoneyLab agenda.

Peter Lunenfeld in LA encouraged me to dive into contemporary American literature. I would like to thank him for his hospitality and friendship, thriving over long distances for almost two decades. The Jonathan Franzen essay is dedicated to him.

Writing the Uganda chapter would not have been possible without the generous support of Ali Balunywa, a former master's student at UvA, who organized my visit to Uganda in December 2012.

I would also like to thank Joost Smiers, Sebastian Olma, Mieke Gerritzen, Daniel de Zeeuw (re: lulz) and Michael Dieter for their encouraging Amsterdam dialogues; Margreet Riphagen, Miriam Rasch and Patricia de Vries at the INC for all their work; Henry Warwick for the collaboration on our offline library project; Saskia Sassen for her extraordinary support; and Bernard Stiegler and Franco Berardi for their friendship.

During the writing period, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung publisher Frank Schirrmacher died of heart failure in Frankfurt. In his case, the ambulance crew didn't get to him soon enough. Frank was exactly my age (b. 1959). Over the past years Frank encouraged me, via his favourite medium Twitter, to search for wider publics for my work, despite the considerable political differences between us. As Frank was, I am motivated by direct exchanges with American colleagues to create European alternatives. Despite recent despair and setbacks, this book was written in his spirit, in order to build an independent public European dialogue and infrastructure.

Some of the chapters were edited early on by Morgan Currie in LA. An amazing copy-editing job was done out of Berlin by Rachel O'Reilly, assisted by my long-term German translator and friend Andreas Kallfelz, who this time came on board early to identify the missing bits in the English original manuscript.