ad:tech London 2012
Digital Sociology: Understanding The Mechanics Of Interaction, Groups And Politics Online
Simon Lindgren, Professor, Umeå University
Digital Sociology: Understanding The Mechanics Of Interaction, Groups And Politics Online
1. Digital Sociology
Understanding the Mechanics of Interaction, Groups and Politics Online
ad:tech, London, 12.09.20
Simon Lindgren, Umeå University
simon.lindgren@soc.umu.se
@simon_lindgren
2. The state of social web research!
Naïve optimism vs. Marxist pessimism
Participation vs. exploitation
3. My research
Getting past the dualism
“What is actually going on?”
Realization of potentials
Harnessing the power of the good examples
4. A marketing perspective
Web 2.0 manifestos
Buzz words:
wikinomics, participatory culture, co-creation,
user-generated content, democratized innovation
5. Slogans
Peer production models will replace top-down
business models
Power will be shared between responsible
companies and skilled users
Democratization, collaboration, openness and
transparency
6. Business gurus
A democratized and collectivist digital space will
benefit everyone
Hierarchical business models (producer-consumer)
are replaced by ‘mass-creativity’ and ‘peer-
production’ as crowds define their own needs
8. Users are now content producers
Creative masses participate in the digital economy,
and businesses must harness this to spur innovation
and growth
An army of users work for free developing and
sustaining Linux, Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook ...
Companies provide platforms; users create value
9. Towards digital utopia
Join the participatory revolution or perish ! / ?
Customers get what they want, while businesses
get free R&D ! / ?