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Geert Loving - What is social in Social media?

In the beginning of ‘the internet’ the computer network was primarily seen as a tool to collaborate among people. In recent writings people try to get rid of the word ‘social’ since it’s just calculation. Other people say networks are a tool to for personal liberation. 

In the 90’s due to (a/o) growing computer power more and more loosely connected individuals got empowered (instead of groups, forums and communities already connected to each other). According to Baudrillard the historical role of the social imploded into the media. What does social mean if it’s not anymore about coming together to share or revolt. (In what way) will the online transfer to the offline? ‘Social Media’ is not a nostalgic project aimed at reviving the dangerous potential (uprising, revolts etc.) of the social. Instead it pretends to create meaningful relations. The social is no longer a reference to society. The ‘users’ have the possibility to break free from traditional roles. Nowadays the social manifests itself as a network instead of a mob, institution or movement. As the social network and the institution are two parts of life that are hard to imagine becoming a synthesis, the institutions hire consultants to manage social media for them. Social media fulfil the promise of communication as an exchange; instead of forbidding responses, they demand replies. In Baudrillard’s writings he talk about his aswel; “reciprocal spaces of speech and respond.” Later he changed it in saying that restoring the symbolic exchange wasn’t enough, what counted was the superior position of the silent majority.

Looking for traces of 19th century European social theory in social online. In the text Geert proposes that we should look at the social without these theories and see it for what it is. Small, informal and indirect. To look at it beyond good and evil, as something that is both cold an intimate. A lot of literature shies away from these notions, focusing on accessibility and usability instead of what people are looking for ‘out there’.