ABSTRACT
Social media is often associated with the ‘Shallows’, and the worst excesses of triviality, ephemerality and narcissism. The rise of social media has coincided with concerns about precarity and a shift towards short term contracts and a ‘gig economy’ where flexibility of work practices is gained at the expense often of fundamental safeguards. Concerns about the psychological and emotional impact of social media have focused on younger or more vulnerable users. Twitter, the microblogging platform which restricts users to posts of no more than 280 characters, dominates discussion of social media, perhaps because it has become so influential in setting up and maintaining academic social and professional networks. Twitter will be prominent in the discussions that follow, having given rise to its own literary forms, and being one of the main conduits for interaction between authors and their readers. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
