Prologue

It seems social media are taking over the world. Without social media we would not have witnessed the Arab spring, Brexit and Trump as president... At least, that is the impression you would get from reading the news over the past years.

When I started the PhD project in 2013 there was optimism about the potential of social media to empower citizens, diminish hierarchical structures and democratize societies. Over the past few years however this optimism seem to have been replaced by pessimism and concerns about power, polarization and misinformation.

The conversations I have had about social media in these past years were often about echo chambers, filter bubbles and fake news. Some tend to think of such characteristics as inherent to social media. As if social media dynamics steer the flows of information similar to the laws of physics that steer the flow of water. In contrast, others argue that social media simply reflects human tendencies; our tendency to connect with people similar to ourselves; our preference for stories that fit our worldview; and our craving for entertaining and emotionally engaging news. From their perspective, social media is just a different stage for the same performance. However, the social media dynamics that I have observed are not intrinsic to social media, nor a reflection of human tendencies. Social media dynamics emerge out of multiple interactions of social actors, online and offline. To understand these dynamics one has to study the use of social media, by social actors, in their social context.