BOOKS

The Private is Political: Networked Privacy and Social Media

Best Book Award, Information Technology & Politics Division, American Political Science Association.

Outstanding 2023 Academic Title, Choice Reviews.

Online privacy is under constant attack by social media and big data technologies. But we cannot rely on individual actions to remedy this—it is a matter of social justice. Alice E. Marwick offers a new way of understanding how privacy is jeopardized, particularly for marginalized and disadvantaged communities—including immigrants, the poor, people of color, LGBTQ+ populations, and victims of online harassment.
 
Marwick shows that there are few resources or regulations for preventing personal information from spreading on the internet. Through a new theory of “networked privacy,” she reveals how current legal and technological frameworks are woefully inadequate in addressing issues of privacy—often by design. Drawing from interviews and focus groups encompassing a diverse group of Americans, Marwick shows that even heavy social media users care deeply about privacy and engage in extensive “privacy work” to protect it. But people are up against the violation machine of the modern internet. Safeguarding privacy must happen at the collective level.

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“The analyses and arguments are well researched, documented, and above all cogently and convincingly presented. This work will be a point of reference for all subsequent scholarly, journalistic, and political discussions of privacy and the dangers inappropriately mined and shared personal information pose. . . . It should be in every library collection.”–D. Bantz, Choice

“A powerful exploration. . . . The Private Is Political provides a much needed conceptual update to privacy, supplemented by a rich and thoughtful methodology, that should be applauded and referenced in future privacy work.”–Alexis Shore, Convergence

Winner of the 2024 APSA ITP Best Book Award

“Drawing on rich insights from people trying to negotiate social media in a range of contexts, The Private is Political reveals the complexity and beauty of privacy in practice. Marwick’s book illuminates why privacy is especially important in a networked world.”–danah boyd, author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“Alice Marwick has written a richly textured, deeply perceptive account of privacy’s impossible, unending, and profoundly unequal burdens.”–Julie E. Cohen, author of Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism

“The Private Is Political is an insightful and provocative book about privacy and marginalized individuals. In a vivid, theoretical, and practical way, this excellent book examines the power dynamics at play with privacy and modern technologies.”–Daniel J. Solove, coauthor of Breached! Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It

Other Books

The SAGE Handbook of Social Media

A full exploration of the state-of-the-art of social media research. Includes 33 chapters from emerging scholars and leaders in the field written exclusively for this volume, including Nick Couldry, Jose van Dijk, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Tarleton Gillespie, Zizi Papacharissi, Brooke Erin Duffy, Alfred Hermida, Jill Walker Rettberg, Jack Linchuan Qiu, Gerard Goggin and many, many others. An excellent text for graduate social media study.

Edited by Jean Burgess, Alice Marwick & Thomas Poell

Sample Chapters:

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In this comprehensive, ambitious and timely book, Burgess, Marwick and Poell present to us ‘the social media paradigm’ – a distinctive and potentially transformative moment in the history of media and communications, perhaps also in the world’s cultural, economic and political life. Grounded in rigorous intellectual and empirical work and committed to international, multi-and inter-disciplinary endeavor, this book provides a much-needed basis for critical understanding and future research on the social shaping and social consequences of today’s social media paradigm. –Sonia Livingstone

This phenomenal collection of articles by such esteemed scholars offers a critical glimpse into the various ways in which social media has reconfigured contemporary life. This book is essential for both scholars and students.–danah boyd

This remarkable collection of original and thoughtful essays will have lasting value for students and researchers. The Handbook of Social Media not only defines the broad field of social media studies, but it sets the agenda for the future.–Lance Bennett

Status Update:

Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age

Alice Marwick, Yale University Press, 2013

Social media technologies such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook promised a new participatory online culture. Yet, technology insider Alice Marwick contends in this insightful book, “Web 2.0” only encouraged a preoccupation with status and attention. Her original research– which includes conversations with entrepreneurs, Internet celebrities, and Silicon Valley journalists– explores the culture and ideology of San Francisco’s tech community in the period between the dot com boom and the App store, when the city was the world’s center of social media development. Marwick argues that early revolutionary goals have failed to materialize: while many continue to view social media as democratic, these technologies instead turn users into marketers and self-promoters, and leave technology companies poised to violate privacy and to prioritize profits over participation. Marwick analyzes status-building techniques– such as self-branding, micro-celebrity, and life-streaming– to show that Web 2.0 did not provide a cultural revolution, but only furthered inequality and reinforced traditional social stratification, demarcated by race, class, and gender.

Sample Chapters:

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“A must-read for anyone interested in the culture of the tech world and in the techniques of status-building in contemporary digital society.” (Finola Kerrigan, Times Higher Education Supplement)

“A fascinating ethnographic account of Silicon Valley culture and how entwined that culture is in the design of the social media platforms that we use daily.” (Barbara Fister, Inside Higher Ed)

“Marwick makes a compelling case that the rhetoric does not always match the reality, particularly when it comes to social media.”–Ravi Mattu, Financial Times

“[Marwick is] a keen ethnographer of Silicon Valley.”–Sue Halpern, New York Review of Books

“Marwick brilliantly gets beneath the shiny exterior of the Web 2.0 startup scene to uncover the ways in which geeks, entrepreneurs, and technologists use their creations to jockey for status and seek attention. This book is critical for all who care about or use social media.”–danah boyd, Microsoft Research

“With thoughtfulness and rigor, Marwick explains the importance of major social networks from cultural, economic, and human standpoints. Status Update offers a true understanding of what it means to share ourselves online, with a healthy skepticism about Silicon Valley’s utopian promises.”–Anil Dash, ThinkUp

“Marwick masterfully weaves together what motivates us as humans and what defines identity online. If you want to understand the future of social media, this book is required reading.”–Dennis Crowley, co-founder Foursquare

“San Francisco and environs have long been the home of American dreaming. In this fascinating book, Marwick interrogates Silicon Valley’s recent dream: Web 2.0 and the tools and behaviors it spawned.”–Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus

“Marwick’s lively, sophisticated book shows how deeply intertwined our lives are with the whims and biases of a handful of coders. An essential read for anyone who is curious about how social media work.”–Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Googlization of Everything–and Why We Should Worry