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.
By:
Niall Docherty
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 20mm
Weight: 363g
ISBN: 9780520390638
ISBN 10: 0520390636
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 20 May 2025
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Social Media Well-Being, Habit, Power 1 Healthy Use and How to Refuse It 2 Neuroliberal Interfaces 3 Scrolling Guilt, Shame, and Blame Conclusion: A Different Ethics of Living Well Online Notes Bibliography Index
Niall Docherty is a Lecturer in Data, AI, and Society in the Information School at the University of Sheffield.
