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This chapter lays out a historical map of social media’s transformation between 2001 and 2012. The Web 2.0 gradually changed from being an infrastructure for networked communication to offering a wide range of platform services, each occupying a distinct niche of online sociality, particularly social networking and user-generated content services. While the first half decade gave rise to user communities embracing the Web’s potential for collaboration and connectedness, after 2006, the word “social” came to mean: technologically manageable and economically exploitable. Early adopters and theorists of social media welcomed the emergence of a hybrid set of peer-produced, nonmarket principles inside or alongside a commercial model, a model that was embraced by companies like Facebook, Google and Yahoo! But gradually, the economic, political and cultural assumptions on which these platform owners operated, divulged a new set of norms and values staked in the ideology of technological progress and neoliberalism.

This chapter studies the change from prior senses of history to today's “real time” sense of history—or instant sense of community—of social networks. How was the equivalent of a sense of history experienced, and mediated, in prehistorical oral cultures? How did print culture at the height of the history of the book, which coincided with narrative historicism in the mode of Leopold von Ranke (Historismus), alter the sense of history? And how do "Web 2.0" and social networking today yet again change the sense of history? Can today's society "friend" past ones to imagine, and absorb, prior senses of history as a layered, enrichening texture of the present? What continuities—for example, of internet transmissions following the routes once forced by imperial roads across conquered lands—lock the digital present to its historical past? But, also, what discontinuities allow past historicism and today's information empire to challenge each other's assumptions, thus enabling a more humane texture of the present mindful of the past?

This chapter focuses on how the rise of social media has transformed media events. First, it considers the characteristics of the Web 2.0 era before considerin how the Olympic industry has organized its response to this new communication architecture. Next, it explores the risks of social media to the financial base of the Games, considering how to monetize Olympic social-media content. Subsequent sections in this chapter consider the risks of open media, the expansion of the user experience by digital technology, and the parallels between open-source volunteers and the Olympic volunteer ethos. In so doing, the chapter articulates a vision for digital culture that is born out of the values of social media, as an ideological force that coheres with the Olympic vision and with a broad perspective on the potential contribution of sports in society.

This chapter focuses on embedded video practice, which situates the medium within a complex of social practices and media technologies. Realizing that the strategic interventions and nonstandard genres of the early decades of video practice have been institutionalized and incorporated into the culture at large, it turns to the video hosting sites of Web 2.0 and examines their potential for democratized, equitable access to video distribution. It looks at a video project produced in Mexico City, Monumento a Tenochitlán 40: Voces de tepito (Monument to Tenochitlan: Voices of the people), a social documentary about the 2007 expropriation of a large residential building by the Mexican government in a district known as Tepito. Monumento a Tenochitlán 40 demonstrates that the culture of Web 2.0 is a symptom of a new form of political and economic power that is partially realized in media technology, and more broadly extends into areas adjacent to that technology across the material surfaces of society.

In this dialogue, Tim O’Reilly begins by explaining why change is natural and good and how we have to be open to the future. Later he discusses how the logic that makes things work is related to science and not to a particular set of beliefs; to understanding what is efficient and why within this logic there is a hierarchy that is made up of a set of values. He goes on to explain how the Web 2.0 applications he formulated— for example, the social networks—use network effects by harnessing collective intelligence in such a way that the more people there are who use them, the better they become. After this, he describes how his analysis of the paradigm shift in open code is equivalent to that expressed by Thomas Kuhn in his work “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. Later on, O’Reilly reflects on the different possible kinds of Internet of the future before moving on to explain why the most innovative people go beyond the limits of “canonical knowledge” in their daily practice, and the way in which their artistic transgressions or discoveries make them part of the new canon.

The recent Arab youth's rebellion offers a valuable insight into new forms of online participation, alongside the role of youth culture for political participation. In this chapter, first we reflect on the scientific debate on how to assess (young people's) political participation in the Web 2.0. Referring to our research project “Up2Youth” we further discuss the relation of youth culture and political participation. Finally, we analyze the elements of online participation and youth cultural participation throughout the Arab Spring; questioning the media label of a “Facebook revolution”. We conclude with comparing the rebelling Arab youth to the latest European youth riots in Spain and England: regardless the different regimes, young people share their experiences of exclusion and their use of non-traditional and non-democratic ways of expressing their anger, longing for a more democratic society.

This chapter begins with a description of The Noah’s Ark Principle story, which the author relates to the concept of museums. Museums, whose responsibility it is to safeguard distinguished artworks all over the world, are given attention in this chapter, along with the various aspects of Web 2.0. The prehistoric concept of museums continues with the modern age Web 2.0 discussion, which is a Web-based platform in which everything can be saved, stored, and retrieved. The chapter explores the technological advancements in the field of computers and the Internet, and debriefs the concept of user-generated content. The chapter revolves around the above-mentioned important topics along with the differences between them. In it, the author introduces the ZKM project FLICK_KA, where the virtual interactive world comes together with the localized museum in preserving the artworks.

Bebo White, the physicist and computational scientist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Stanford University, was one of the first people to get involved in Web technology as a result of his stay at CERN in the group developing the hypertext transfer protocol, HTTP. Almost immediately following this, he became part of the dedicated team who published the first web page in the USA, - and the first outside Europe -, and he is considered the first ‘webmaster’ in history. He agrees that IT is an approximate science but points out that this discipline, combined with web technology, has a huge impact on ‘what is going on’ at present in scientific research. Bebo then moves on to argument why one of the greatest threats for the future of the Web, - and for internet to reach its full potential -, is to ignore or shun open standards.

From an e-Research perspective, social networking is of interest for two reasons. First, the software is complex and based on large databases containing users' details, pictures, and other resources. Second, the success of social networks and Web 2.0 defies conventional wisdom. The reason why social networking systems seem to work is that they are enjoyable enough to attract enthusiastic users from an early stage. This chapter discusses the role of social networking in e-Research as well as the opportunities and risks it presents.

This chapter makes the case for what and how we should teach about media in K-12 schools and universities. The author takes a measured approach, advocating the teaching of both traditional media criticism as well as Web 2.0 skills related to content creation and participation. Further, Buckingham urges educators to resist what he calls “techno-fetishism,” or celebrating technology in education for its own sake. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that educators who do not participate in new media culture risk losing the so-called “right to teach” by living in a different society than that of their students.

This introductory chapter delineates the picture of stardom in participatory cyberspace, epitomised by Web 2.0. It then concentrates on Chinese icons who have established their status in cinema and have transited to the Web, exploring the changing mode of star-making. It hypothesises the cine-cyber imaginary that conceptually informs the Chineseness in the global cyber setting. It also demonstrates how user participation is adopted as new methodology of studying Chinese stardom.

This chapter focuses on the rise and digital marketing of a spate of musical series between 2009 and 2019. It explores the specific methods used to address audiences of Fox’s Glee, NBC’s Smash, ABC’s Galavant, and The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and how the shows’ industry-driven online footprints project both the television industry’s embrace of Web 2.0 techniques and varying methods of hailing fans of the Broadway musical. In various ways, these series blend techniques of Broadway and television fandoms and parlay theatrical language and stars into marketing tools, while acknowledging the contemporary power of online stardom in the cultivation of contemporary media texts. Whether through network websites, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or via interactive gif-creators and contests, these four musical series hung their hopes on the promise of fan interactivity.

The second chapter focuses on the user and examines how this subject has become an increasingly prominent element of copyright law across the twentieth century. After introducing the basics (and history) of fair dealing and fair use, the chapter discusses how people moved from creators to consumers due to regulatory frameworks and the technological limitations imposed on radio and television. I then turn to the late-twentieth century and consider the presence of a creative element in the discourse around users during the Web 2.0 moment and suggest that the on-going transitions between creative and consuming user can best be understood through a relational framework.

Chapter 7 turns to user-generated content, social media, and ‘Web 2.0’ technologies in digital China’s message boards and comment sections. The cases of the Nanjing Massacre and the Diaoyu Islands then show that online commentaries often provide a nuanced picture of how to make sense of Sino-Japanese relations, and yet the overarching discursive patterns combine with digital mechanisms such as ‘likes’ and algorithmic popularity rankings to push the discussion into nationalist media scripts. In contrast, China’s microblogging spheres at first sight offer a different story: discussions on Weibo or Weixin are diverse, dynamic, and can have impressive reach. Yet the nature of such social networks ultimately either skews them in favour of a few influential users or moves discussions into the walled gardens of small social groups, making nationalist discourse reverberate through the echo chambers of digital China and contributing to a visceral sense of a shared nationhood.

This chapter explores some of the identity formations emerging through online interaction among second generation Chinese migrants. The discussion draws on a survey of Internet use among Chinese young people in Britain conducted through two of the best-known British Chinese websites in late 2006. The preliminary survey findings are discussed here, together with material from some of the thirty-five follow-up interviews conducted with British Chinese young people. The chapter addresses four issues: online discussion forums, an enhanced profile of China that prompts ambivalent responses, experiences of East Asia travel that stimulate new forms of identity self-fashioning incorporating Web 2.0 technologies such as interactive forums, weblogs, and video download sites. The chapter discusses the relationship between online and offline interaction, and the potential for long-standing social networks and institutions to emerge.

This chapter examines key technical artifacts of e-Research, including e-Infrastructure and application software tools, from the perspective of the researchers who are trying to achieve their research goals using these technologies. It explores how traditional approaches to improving the usability of information and communication technology (ICT)-based systems can be reconceptualized to become of greater value in software development. The chapter also discusses one of the most important and frustrating areas of difficulty faced by researchers—the serious security weaknesses of online technologies and devices—and considers sustainable ways of building trust in e-Research systems. In addition, it assesses the implications for e-Research of the popular social networking approaches that typify Web 2.0, computer-supported cooperative work, software design and work practice in end-user development, multisited ethnography, and the Internet’s security vulnerability.

This chapter presents a detailed examination of the consumer side of the use of social media. We explore who is using social media the most and what characterizes those users in the context of Web 2.0. In addition, this chapter reviews the usage patterns from a group-level perspective and shows some of the broader patterns of usage and their implications. The group-level analysis is supplemented by a review of the variable effect of the potential discomfort people may experience as a result of exposure to information that is contrary to their predispositions. This creates the theoretical foundation for why there are differences across groups concerning how and why they may collectively respond to political information.

This chapter applies the technomoral practices and virtues defined in Part II to the ethical challenges presented by the emergence of new social media technologies. These increasingly mediate and transform human relationships of every sort, including our most important personal, commercial, and political ties. Starting with an overview of the Web 2.0 technologies that enabled the birth of new media and following their evolution to the mobile communication, multitasking landscape of the present day, chapter 7 surveys the significance of these media for the 21st century pursuit of the ‘good life.’ Contemporary examples of new media continue to engender moral controversies, hopes, and fears. The chapter explores their implications for core elements of moral practice such as habituation, attention, self-examination, judgment, and moral extension, as well as the cultivation of technomoral virtues such as honesty, self-control, empathy, care, courage, justice, humility, flexibility, perspective, and civility.

This chapter investigates how media industries’ partial and conditional embrace of fan culture and participatory practices subtly colors perceptions of which fans are (in many cases, quite literally) valuable within a post–Web 2.0 media landscape driven by user-generated content. In order to interrogate both the legal and ideological “terms and conditions” that govern sanctioned modes of fan participation within the convergence culture industry, this chapter focuses on two key issues. First, it considers how fan labor has been industrially co-opted, contained, and commercialized through a series of test cases. Second, it addresses the growing prominence and industrial reliance on enunciative fan production through an analysis of AMC’s fan aftershow The Talking Dead, considering how the show temporally (rather than legally) censures fan production, stressing “correct” interpretations that economically and ideologically reinforce industrial interests.

This chapter draws several distinctions between old and nouveau art video given the fact of YouTube and how it alters the production, distribution, and consumption of video (art) via Web 2.0 technologies and a corporate architecture. Haunted by dead links and frozen screen grabs, it documents the author’s search for art video on YouTube, which yielded some expected and some unexpected findings. In the process she critically reads the institutional discourse of video art history against this new media platform.