Social media: implications for everyday life, politics and human agency

Lövheim, Mia; Jansson, André; Paasonen, Susanna; Sumiala, Johanna (2013)
 
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Lövheim, Mia
Jansson, André
Paasonen, Susanna
Sumiala, Johanna
The Donner Institute, Åbo Akademi
2013
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Mia Lövheim is professor of sociology of religion at the Uppsala University. Her research focuses on media as an arena for expressing and negotiating religious and cultural identities in late modern Swedish society, with a particular focus on youth and gender. Her current research concerns representations of religion and modernity in the Swedish daily press, and the interplay between religion and mediatization. Some of her recent publications are ‘Mediatization of religion: a critical appraisal’ (Culture and Religion, 2011), ‘Young women’s blogs as ethical spaces’ (Information, Communication and Society, 2011), ‘Halal-tv: negotiating the place of religion in Swedish public discourse’ (Nordic Journal of Religion and Society, 2011) and the edited collection Media, Religion and Gender: Key Issues and New Challenges (Routledge 2013).

André Jansson is professor of media and communication studies at Karlstad University, Sweden. His research deals primarily with issues related to media, globalization and cultural identity. His most recent project studied perceptions of various forms of mediated surveillance, including the significance of new (social) media at the intersection of cosmopolitanization and social monitoring. Currently he leads a project focusing on the role of various (trans)media technologies for sustaining close relationships among globally mobile class factions. Jansson’s research is influenced by cultural sociological as well as human geographical and phenomenological theoretical traditions, notably in the spirit of Pierre Bourdieu.

Susanna Paasonen is professor of media studies at the University of Turku. With an interest in studies of popular culture, internet research, affect theory and pornography, she is most recently the author of Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography (MIT Press 2011) and coeditor of Working with Affect in Feminist Readings: Disturbing Differences (Routledge 2010) and Networked Affect (MIT Press, forthcoming). Her current research focuses on affect, technology and materiality.

Johanna Sumiala is docent at the Department of Social Research/Media and Communication Studies at the University of Helsinki and Kone Senior Research Fellow at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. Sumiala is a media scholar specializing in media anthropology, social media, ritual studies, death and visual culture. She has published widely including such journals as Media, Culture & Society, Social Anthropology and Communication, Culture and Critique. Her most recent book is Media and Ritual: Death, Community and Everyday Life (Routledge 2013).
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With the current saturation of digital devices in contemporary society, the boundaries between humans and machines have become increasingly blurred. This digitalization of everyday life both obscures and reminds us of the fact that identity, agency and power cannot be attributed to the individual or the machine alone: rather, they are the outcome of interactions and negotiations within a network of actors. Social media, such as Facebook, blogs, Twitter and YouTube, show clearly that the ‘meaning’ or ‘effect’ of digital technologies is formed through the practices in which they are used and the social relations and institutions that develop around them. This article presents views expressed during a panel discussion on the implications of social media for everyday life, politics and human agency at the Aboagora Symposium, held on 14th August 2013. The panel was organized as a dialogue between the participants and the discussion was structured around three questions, presented below. The participants in the panel were; Professor André Jansson (Karlstad University), Professor Susanna Paasonen (University of Turku) and adjunct Professor Johanna Sumiala (University of Helsinki). The panel was chaired by Professor Mia Lövheim (Uppsala University).
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