Mainstream right-wing parties and politicians in the West have beeneffective at using social media to bolster support and engage in positiveand negative campaigning
I'd be interested in diving deeper into this concept - is the implication that right-wing parties are more effective at utilizing social media for campaigning? Why would right-wing ideologies be more effectively promoted, as opposed to left-wing ideals?
All interaction and connection with the Net isa game of identity-making and community-making, where we choose toshow off our position within certain established, acceptable social net-works
This is genuinely fascinating - the idea that communities and social networks are forming just by participating in certain online forums, chat rooms, or just following the same news platforms as others. It seems to natural and effortless to find others with a shared interest (community) on the Net that it seems difficult to imagine how these kind of social groups formed before the Internet.
Facebook is a great way to maintain contacts and social networks.
While I agree that Facebook makes it very easy to maintain a social network, I wonder how many of these contacts can be considered as genuinely in your social "circle". Consider Dunbar's number, which is a widespread belief that humans can only maintain around 150 genuine, stable relationships. While this has been analyzed and somewhat debunked, some studies have demonstrated with 95% confidence that this number lies somewhere between 4-520 (Lindenfor, Wartel, Lind (2021)) and then consider how many people have thousands of Facebook friends!
Lindenfor, Wartel, Lind (2021) ‘Dunbar's number’ deconstructed