Humans R Social Media – Open Textbook Edition 1

The social media landscape changes so quickly, it’s wise to question whether any book on the subject can remain relevant. One answer to this wise question is that any book or knowledge source remains relevant longer when it’s dynamic, or embracing of continuous change. This Open Textbook edition of Humans R Social Media is a culmination of work by the iVoices Student Media Lab, funded by the Center for University Education and Scholarship, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the iSchool at the University of Arizona. The goal of iVoices is to integrate student voices including narratives and media into instruction about technologies, and – beginning in Fall 2022 – to broaden our understandings of youth and new media experiences through research and scholarship.

Students hold extraordinary knowledge and experiences in our social media-saturated world, as I learned when I began inviting student perspectives in the Social Media and Ourselves podcast. Now, with iVoices running from 2020 through 2023, we are all in. Our student Media Lab workers help design assignments and train students in the large General Education course I teach, to produce media based on their experiences with technologies. Our team of iVoices interns training in Library and Information Science then carefully describes, tags, selects, and integrates student stories and media into the textbook. This edition you are reading now is the product of this extraordinary collaborative effort.

I am thrilled to broaden this book to include more student stories and media, and just as thrilled that you are here to read and share it.

Integrating hundreds of stories into a textbook can be a tedious process, but sometimes, student stories like this one grab your attention.

As part of the intern team in 2021, I was part of multiple phases of integration including tagging student media. I had been working for hours on tagging when I stumbled across this audio clip. Even though I love this story because it highlights how stepping away from social media can be as impactful as being on social media, it really made me smile for another reason. Most of the audio disruption we get is a result of static noise or technical difficulties. Imagine my laugh of surprise when I recognized the familiar sound of a cat purring! It made me so happy, I just had to share it with the other members of our team. It was such a special, endearing thing to find, we even made “cat purring” a tag in our tagging system.

It’s June 2020. The streets host surging protests against systematic racism in the US, and polls show a majority of Americans in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement at the protests’ foundation. However, social media metrics show at least seven of the ten top trending posts on major social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter are highly critical of Black Lives Matter.

The mismatch seems unusual, except we don’t need to look far back to see other serious misrepresentations of the social world on social networking platforms. Another example began in May 2020. Polls showed a majority of Americans trusting medical experts on coronavirus, agreeing with coronavirus-related restrictions, and in fear of going to work with the virus still spreading. Nonetheless, posts about government overreach and misinformation skeptical of the coronavirus threat were top trends on social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, and even TikTok. Drummed up and networked through connecting with these posts, in the midst of lockdown people staged “Reopen protests” that are widely covered by the media (including this author).