Social media, delinguistification and colonisation of lifeworld: changing faces of Facebook

The article critically investigates, from an interdisciplinary perspective, how the current evolution of social media – like social network sites – interferes with the balance between private, commercial and public space. We build on the concepts of lifeworld and systems, developed in Habermas' theory of communicative action. The discussion is supported and enriched by the work of Feenberg and van Dijck, integrating insights from Science and Technology Studies and media studies. Technology philosopher and critical STS scholar Feenberg introduces technology as a steering “medium” that delinguistifies and possibly colonises the lifeworld. by reinterpreting media sociological perspectives of Habermas, Marcuse, Latour and Callon. In a similar way media scholar van Dijck analyses the transition from human connectedness to automated connectivity in the context of social media. We then illustrate the delinguistification and the colonisation of lifeworld with a systematic analysis of the contingent evolution of Facebook as one particular case in social media. We focus on three specific artefacts in Facebook, framed as obligatory passage points: EdgeRank, Sponsored Stories and Gatekeeper. Each of them gives an idea how the private space is subsumed under the commercial space and how the colonisation reconfigures the public space in social media like Facebook. In this sense we complement the political economy analysis of prosumer commodity with the action-theoretical autonomist approach of immaterial labour, highlighting new potential threats of the current social media development.