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Celebrities have gained considerable influence in the last one hundred years or so, but the advent of so-called Web 2.0 technologies has given celebrity culture a new momentum. We are living in a world in which celebrities are striving to curve their place in every niche and hence we have to become more media literate in order to avoid being exploited by celebrity media and culture. We have to be aware that celebrities promote commodities that they will never use, that they are carefully working on their image to become pleasant to us, and that if they do humanitarian work, they are mainly doing it for their reputation, and not for a real and authentic cause.

Internet Addiction Among Cyberkids in China: Risk Factors and Intervention Strategies by Qiaolei Jiang, 2019, Singapore: Springer, 199 pp., €84.99(h/c), ISBN 978-981-13-3791-8

In this study, the issue of using Instagram social network by different groups of Iranian women and their interests and desires in publication of photos is investigated. The purpose of the study is to identify the common aspects and differences in women’s lives reflected in their self-expression efforts based on their social characteristics. Therefore, the women were classified into eight groups based on the elements affecting the way they show their daily lives, such as education level, occupation and marital status. Then, qualitative method, including virtual ethnographic techniques, content analysis and online interviews, was used. Photos posted on Instagram by 32 users were studied and analyzed, and these users were interviewed. Questions were asked about their tendency towards posting photos of their daily lives on Instagram via direct messages. The conceptual framework of the study included Bourdieu’s theory of ‘distinction’ and Baudrillard’s concept of ‘system of objects’. Results showed that women in each group select specific approaches to the publication of photos based on their social conditions. In the present article, these differences are discussed in detail. The significance of this research lies in the<span class="tlid-translation"> possibility of understanding different aspects of women’s everyday life and their individual identity through self-reports in the new media as opposed to the traditional media which only presents a standardized type of identification. Since studying women’s efforts in presenting themselves on social media has been neglected in studies conducted on social networks in Iran, this study leads to a better understanding of Iranian women’s diverse identities.

Past researchers have examined the impact of personality types on technology usage among students from varying angles. However, due to dearth of studies on personality types and smart phone addiction among students in the Nigerian environment, this study investigated the relationship between personality types, smart phone addiction and specific phone usages among University students. A sample size of 200 was used for this study using systematic sampling technique in the selection of respondents in the study area. Findings revealed that conscientiousness and agreeableness personality types had significant positive correlation with smart phone addiction; while extraversion and neuroticism had significant negative correlation with smart phone addiction. Again personality types had significant positive and negative correlation with specific phone usages. In addition, findings revealed that majority of the specific phone usages had positive correlation with smart phone addiction. Based on the findings of this study, recommendations were made towards curbing addictive tendencies among university students in the use of smart phones.

The present study is an attempt to problematize the multivalent data in the cyberspace through the lenses of Wittgenstein’s analytic philosophy of language. Adopting this linguistic philosophy approach is aimed at exploring the dichotomous question of whether cyberspace is a possibility for social power or it is a contributory cause of communicative discontinuity and henceforth a possibility for social anomia. The central argument here is that within cyberspace there exist three languages at work each one with a degree of semiotic power: pictorial, verbal and mathematical. Since none of them is based on a one-to-one correspondence between the signifiers and the signifieds, the cyberspace users in practice are led to misinformation and disinformation instead of information. This situation creates an epistemic chasm in their real life. This is because their finite mind is not able to grasp the infinite reality of the cyberspace multivalent data. Accordingly, cyberspace with its abundance of misinformation and disinformation leads us to a mental disorder. This constitutes the real power of social media in creating a socio-political turmoil and anomia.

Social networks have been resorted to as effective platforms for social mobility in many parts of the world. This mobility occurs when social media users exploit their interpersonal relationships, especially their ‘weak ties’ (Granovetter, 1973). Social networks enable their users to be producers of information, rather than mere consumers, and to be socially and politically well-informed. They have come to function as the alternative media serving citizens rather than governments’ agendas. The paper investigates whether or not social networks are used for social and political mobility in Morocco. Practically, the boycott campaign 2018 in Morocco is considered to uncover the new services these networks are offering. All these issues are investigated in this paper through administering a survey questionnaire to a Moroccan population. A quantitative and a qualitative analysis of 112 questionnaires show that the majority of the participants not only follow social and political content on social media but also share, post, and re-tweet content. The paper indicates that social media are useful platforms for political and social mobility since they are risk-free, costless, and accessible by everybody. The participants do not deny the outstanding roles that social networks play in organizing campaigns as forms of social mobility, yet they do not consider social media a prerequisite for making such events a success because the world has been witnessing successful mass street protests wherein no use of social media platforms has been mentioned.

Contesting Cyberspace in China: Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience by Rongbin Han. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. 336pp., $30.00 (p/b), ISBN 978-0231184755

The People Vs Tech: How the Internet is Killing Democracy (and How We Save It) by Jamie Bartlett. New York: Dutton, 2018. 256 pp., £8.99 (p/b), ISBN 978-1785039065.

Given the immense shifts the social networking sites and applications have brought about, a considerable number of researchers in the field of communication studies have turned to study different aspects of social media usage and factors influencing it. This study gathered data from 33318 US non-institutionalized citizens over 18 including 17079 females and 16239 males; they were members of web panelists of Pew, and their answers revealed that a majority of this online participants used a kind of social media. The results of this study revealed women use social media more than men, and religious people more than non-religious people. In addition, the results indicated that married people are the least users of social media in comparison with other marital groups. Our results showed that all demographics are significantly related to social media usage. But this significance can be somehow misleading because of weak practical effect sizes. Except for marital status and age Cramer’s V values are too small and their significance may have nothing to say but sensitivity to the degree of freedom.

In the present paper, a translational model to psychoanalyze the cyberspace is presented with the argument that cyberspace is a translated version of human unconscious that projects both our unfulfilled desires and suppressed anxieties. This Freudian-based line of argument is followed by Lacanian (1950s)and Zizekian (2004) psychoanalysis to problematize the digitalization of Oedipus complex and the dialectic of castration and subjectivity within the cyberspace. By adopting a fuzzy logic-based approach, it is argued that cyberspace has both a panopticon-like and synopticon-like structure. The former is Oedipal in that it induces a sense of paranoia in the subjects and makes them symbolically castrated, but the latter is anti-Oedipal in that it promotes indeterminacy and pushes the subjects to the climax of self-subjectivity and subversion of the Oedipally determined identities. This is a counterargument to Zizek’s (2004) strong view that cyberspace is essentially anti-Oedipal, a transition from the symbolic castration structure to post-Oedipal libidinal economy. The central argument of the paper is that cyberspace is the realm of both the Imaginary and Symbolic Orders where both the pleasure and morality principles are at work and access to the Real Order is maximized.

In Internet-based social networks, the nodes have the most pivotal role in the processes and outcomes of the networks. Whether they pay attention to a message in the network or ignore it defines the fate of the message. One message is shared and re-shared by millions of users and another is left forgotten. The current study tries to shed light on one aspect of the role of the users in a social network: How are people different in the types of messages to which they pay attention? Some 500 Facebook users were interviewed and a creative method were used to find the public Facebook messages on which they had commented. Then, the researchers coded the data into different categories and carried out statistical analyses looking for significant relations between the types of Facebook users and the types of messages on which they commented. The results of the study include 21 significant relations, suggesting that the approach taken by this study can be promising and if completed by several other studies it could help us find local and universal patterns that affect the flow of information. With enough knowledge on social networks we must be able to design specific messages, for specific groups of people.

The social contract has been about rights and responsibilities in human societies. Facebook and its role in manufacturing and sustaining a global social contract, a new “we” is clearly one of the research areas that needs more attention. A new “we” is coming of age in the new age of connectivity and communication with a new outlook toward responsibility and rights at individual and collective levels. Facebook purports to build a new world based on connection and communication which is based on progress and prosperity. However, a fundamental factor and feature of Facebook that needs attention and more research is that people and users are becoming increasingly lonely, separated and independent from each other in this process while connecting and communicating with one another. This new social contract and “we” thus have the new features of the relationship between the human agency and his/her social structures. Cyberspace is the product of human agency and clearly creates and sustains a specific social structure. This research seeks to study the relationship between human agency, changing technical tools of communication and connection and emerging and evolving social structures and social contracts. Bandura’s “social cognitive theory” (2006) rejects a conflict and dichotomy between agency and social structure. As agency helps to build new social structures after destroying the old ones these new structures create and sustain a new social contract and “we” with a new sense of responsibility, obligations, and rights.