Social Media Frenzies

This book examines the relation between agitation and social change in the digital context. Focusing on the phenomenon commonly referred to as social media storms, it conceptualizes digitalized agitation, reflecting upon its transformative potential and socio-political effects.Situating its analysis within the occidental context, the book firstly elaborates on the modern sociopolitical uses of agitation, addressing three of its key configurations: revolutionary, totalitarian, and entrepreneurial. Secondly, it focuses on the contemporary applications of agitation, exploring the workings of social media frenzies from the perspective of (a)moral and (re)activist entrepreneurship. Examining the ways in which the increasing mediatization of entrepreneurial agitation established mimetic frenzy as a dominant subjective (pre)disposition of our times, the book draws on a wide range of contemporary examples, from conspiracy theories to online call-outs. It argues that social media frenzies emerge out of the false need to agitate and to be agitated, contending that digital agitation is a source of compensatory intoxication, functioning as today’s opium of the people.This book is of relevance to anyone concerned with social change. It will be of particular use to academics, postgraduates, and advanced undergraduate students working in the areas of Sociology, Media, Cultural Studies, and Politics.

Diana Stypinska is Lecturer in Social Theory in the School of Political Science and Sociology at University of Galway. Her work traverses critical theory, continental philosophy, and critical sociology. She is the author of On the Genealogy of Critique: Or How We Have Become Decadently Indignant (2020) and Social Media, Truth and the Care of the Self: On the Digital Technologies of the Subject (2022).