Social media and the engineering of everyday life

In 2011, 82 per cent of the world’s internet populations logged on to some type of social media, up from 6 per cent in 2007. In less than five years, services like facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn have come to deeply penetrate our daily habits of communication and socialising. While most sites started out as amateur-driven community platforms, half a decade later they have turned into large corporations that do not just facilitate global connections, but have become global data mining companies. This lecture will reflect on how social media have become normalised in everyday life: the new meanings of social activities such as 'sharing', 'liking', 'following' and 'trending' in a world dominated by facebook and Twitter; and what are the implications of the fact that large portions of everyday life are increasingly commercialised and engineered through social media? Facebook’s and Twitter’s algorithms do not simply reflect our behaviour and habits, but actively steer and manipulate social activities. At the heart of the social media industry’s surge is the battle over information control: who owns the data generated by online social activities? More importantly, how are these data monetised?

This public lecture is part of the program for a Distinguished Visiting Professor from the University of Amsterdam. The lecture is on a topic of great importance and interest to the Australian public. Professor van Dijck is a distinguished international scholar from the University of Amsterdam. Her research is investigating how people use social media such as facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Wikipedia to create souvenirs, express their views, be creative and shape their social lives. Professor van Dijck is visiting UTS for three months on the Distinguished Visiting Scholar scheme to contribute to teaching in the Media Studies Sub Major, Postgraduate and Early Career academics' research in Journalism Studies and Media Studies and curriculum development in Journalism and Media Studies.