ABSTRACT
The final chapter reiterates the book’s psychological definition of social media, with a particular focus on the idea that these online services encourage their users to digitise previously private personal information. As such, Chapter 7 is concerned with dual meanings of the term ‘values’, as social media’s principles are essentially quantitative. It begins by summarising the preceding chapters. Discussion then moves to a historic tragedy on the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, and how the idea of commodifying our selves helps understand social media. This brings us to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the psychometric personality research behind it. However, this paradigm relies on an assumption that social media accurately reflects human behaviour, which is queried by exploring censorship, fake accounts and black markets for upvotes and comments. It is further argued that the fallacy of dataism also highlights how little users understand of how social media services operate. While it might seem a long way off at present, it is hoped that in the future we will develop not only better methods of managing social media, but better understanding of our selves as a result.
