Facebook

Taina Bucher is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Facebook is Facebook1 Framing Facebook: The many metaphors at work2 Of electric lighting and chairs: Facebook as infrastructure3 Grounded in reality: How Facebook programs sociality4 Engineering a platform: Facebook’s techno-economic evolution5 Monetizing You: Facebook’s advertising ecosystem6 Personalized politics: Facebook’s data-driven profiling machineryConclusion: The many faces of FacebookNotesReferencesIndex

‘Taina Bucher has authored the best book to date in the rapidly growing literature on Facebook. It has rigorous analysis, theoretical nuance and sweeping empirical scope. It sets the standard for accounts of the platform and should be required reading for researchers and journalists grappling with what Facebook means for political, social and cultural life around the world.’Daniel Kreiss, University of North Carolina‘Taina Bucher is one of the best analysts of social media platforms we’ve got. Here, she insightfully focuses on Facebook from many complementary angles that together reveal how it has become an ever-present infrastructure in the feel of daily life, shaping our social and political worlds, whether we use it or not.’Nancy Baym, Microsoft Research‘While...a book of this kind can only ever be a partial and unfolding guide, the breadth and depth of its scope is impressive. … Bucher makes an important philosophical and theoretical contribution to media and communication studies as the book destabalizes conventional narratives of Facebook as a mere social media platform.’Australian Journalism Review‘a useful introduction to the current state of research on Facebook.’European Journal of Communication