ABSTRACT
There are a lot of claims about social and other media’s power today: Some say that we have experienced Twitter and Facebook revolutions. Others claim that social media democratises the economy or brings about a participatory culture. Other observers are more sceptical and stress social media’s realities as tools of control. Understanding social media requires a critical theory of society that uses a dialectical concept of power. A critical theory of society can then act as a framework for understanding power in the age of social media. This chapter is a contribution to critically theorising media power in the age of social media. It categorises different notions of power, introduces a dialectical notion of media power discusses the dialectics of social media power, and draws some conclusions about the need for a dialectical and critical theory of the media and society.
