This highly international handbook addresses the most significant research themes, methodological approaches and debates about social media. Leading scholars provide a range of disciplinary perspectives.

Introduction - Jean Burgess, Alice Marwick and Thomas Poell Part One: Histories and Pre-Histories 1. Pushing Back: Social Media as an Evolutionary Phenomenon - John Hartley 2. Early Social Computing: The Rise and Fall of the BBS Scene (1977 – 1995) - Aaron Delwiche 3. Alternative Histories of Social Media in Japan and China - Mark McLelland, Haiqing Yu, and Gerard Goggin 4. From Hypertext to Hype and Back Again: Exploring the Roots of Social Media in Early Web Culture - Michael Stevenson Part Two: Approaches and Methods 5. Digital Methods for Cross-platform Analysis - Richard Rogers 6. A Computational Analysis of Social Media Scholarship - Jeremy Foote, Aaron Shaw and Benjamin Mako Hill 7. Digital Discourse: Locating Language in New/Social Media - Crispin Thurlow 8. Ontology - Nick Couldry and Jannis Kallinikos 9. Analysing Social Media Images - Simon Faulkner, Farida Vis and Francesco D’Orazio 10. Ethnography - Jolynna Sinanan and Tom McDonald 11. Web History and Social Media - Niels Brügger 12. The Incomplete Political Economy of Social Media - Siva Vaidhyanathan Part Three: Platforms, Technologies and Business Models 13. The Affordances of Social Media Platforms - Taina Bucher and Anne Helmond 14. Governance of and by Platforms - Tarleton Gillespie 15. Social Media App Economies - Rowan Wilken 16. Labor and Social Media: the Exploitation and Emancipation of (Almost) Everyone Online - Jack Linchuan Qiu 17. Silicon Valley and the Social Media Industry - Alice Marwick 18. Alternative Social Media: From Critique to Code - Robert W. Gehl Part Four: Cultures and Practices 19. Personal Connection and Relational Maintenance in Social Media Use - Kelly Quinn & Zizi Papacharissi 20. Television Viewing and Fan Practice in an Era of Multiple Screens - Rhiannon Bury 21. Trolling, and Other Problematic Social Media Practices - Gabriele de Seta 22. Memes - Kate Miltner 23. Self-Representation in Social Media - Jill Walker Rettberg 24. Sexual Expression in Social Media - Kath Albury 25. Privacy and Surveillance - Daniel Trottier Part Five: Social and Economic Domains 26. Social Media Marketing - Michael Serazio and Brooke Erin Duffy 27. Social Media and Journalism - Alfred Hermida 28. Social Media and the Cultural and Creative Industries - Terry Flew 29. Politics 2.0: Social Media Campaigning - Jessica Baldwin-Philippi 30. Social Media and New Protest Movements - Thomas Poell & José van Dijck 31. Lively Data, Social Fitness and Biovalue: the Intersections of Health and Fitness Self-Tracking and Social Media - Deborah Lupton 32. Social Media Platforms and Education - José van Dijck and Thomas Poell 33. Scholarly Communication in Social Media - Katrin Weller and Isabella Peters

In this comprehensive, ambitious and timely book, Burgess, Marwick and Poell present to us ‘the social media paradigm’ – a distinctive and potentially transformative moment in the history of media and communications, perhaps also in the world’s cultural, economic and political life. Grounded in rigorous intellectual and empirical work and committed to international, multi-and inter-disciplinary endeavor, this book provides a much-needed basis for critical understanding and future research on the social shaping and social consequences of today’s social media paradigm.