Healthy Users - The Governance of Well-Being on Social Media

We are often told that social media well-being is simply the result of individual users making healthy digital choices. All it takes is a little self-discipline. In this book, Niall Docherty looks closely at this belief and exposes the complex relations of power expressed through its articulation and enactment. Docherty creatively and empirically shows how the discourses, designs, and habits of online well-being push user conduct in certain directions, at the expense of others. This is a contingent mode of governance that combines logics of neoliberalism, practices of psychologized person-making, and persuasive capitalist interfaces. By highlighting the damaging effects of this current arrangement, Healthy Users charts a path that will change how we understand and study social media well-being in the future.

Product details

• Authors: Niall Docherty
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 10.06.2025
• EAN: 9780520390638
• ISBN: 978-0-520-39063-8
• No. of pages: 288
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Society; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; Media Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies, Digital lifestyle, Social networking, Social media / social networking, Impact of science & technology on society, Ethical issues: scientific & technological developments, Media studies: internet, digital media and society, Impact of science and technology on society, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Technology Studies, HEALTH & FITNESS / Mental Health, PSYCHOLOGY / Psychology of Technology