Selling social media: the political economy of social networking

Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, LinkedIn, and dozens of other services have been described as the vanguard of creative destruction across the media industries - disruptors of established business, heroes of a new economic narrative that supposes that the attention of individual users can be measured, managed, manipulated, backing methods that securitized, patented, and litigated attention in ways impossible before. 'Selling Social Media' catalogues the key terms and discourses of the rise of social media firms with a particular emphasis on monetization, securitization, disruption, and litigation.