Digital Sociology Podcast Episode 26: Ben Jacobsen and David Beer on Social Media and Memory

Digital Sociology Podcast

This episode is a really great chat I had with Ben Jacobsen and David Beer both of The University of York.

We talk about their new book Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory Classification, Ranking and the Sorting of the Past which is an exploration of the ways in which social media engages with memory and how this becomes significant for their platforms. They focus on the "Facebook Memories" app within the Facebook platform which generates reminders to users of previous posts, photos or other content.

We talk about what kinds of memories Facebook values and how it draws in previous interactions to create new content which is likely to produce more engagement in the present.

They tell me about how the distinction between a "real" memory and one created by Facebook is blurring and how the platform's perspective on what memories are valuable differ from those of users. This also tells us a lot about the role which the platform plays in creating or assessing the value of memories.

You can read more about their work in an LSE blog post.

You can follow Ben on Twitter @bn_jacobsen and find David's website here.