The Dark Side of F. Reflections on Siva Vaidhyanathan’s Antisocial Media. How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy

• Main Author: Jakub Jakubowski
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA), College of Communication and Public Relations, Bucharest 2020-04-01
• Series: Romanian Journal of Communications and Public Relations
• Online Access: https://journalofcommunication.ro/index.php/journalofcommunication/article/view/293

The book takes a natural and necessary direction on the path to the modernization of the critical tradition, choosing Facebook, which has provided numerous reasons to be criticized by the author of this book, and by others. After a relatively long stage of cognitive optimism which prevailed in the discourse on the internet and democracy, this relationship has begun to be looked at with increasing caution and doubt (Loader & Mercea, 2011). With Brexit, Trump and several other ‘phenomena’ around the world, we have become disillusioned about the ability of the internet in its modern incarnation to help us rebuild a badly bruised democracy (Tucker et al., 2017). The book systematically identifies these illusions, accusing Facebook of exerting an adverse impact on social discussion, redistribution of goods, social relations and values, access to reliable information and so on. Using the concept of myth (cf. Barthes), the author argues that Facebook covertly constructs our vision of reality the same way television did in the past.