Social media and the co-production of bodies online: Bergson, Serres and Facebook’s Timeline

• Published in: Media, Culture & Society
• Main Authors: Goodings, Lewis, Tucker, Ian
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 2013
• Subjects: Terranova
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0163443713507813; https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0163443713507813; https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/0163443713507813

Social media’s networked form of communication provides people with bodies that are combinations of embodied and technologically mediated action. This creates multiple forms of visibility within the infospheres (Terranova) of social media, which require simultaneous production of bodies in and through offline and online spaces. Bergson’s non-dualistic model of bodies as images addresses the challenges of experiencing ‘bodies online’; understood as expressions that blur the subject–object and representation–being dualisms. This article explores how socially mediated bodies are disposed for action in ways that involve negotiating communication through the mediated noise (Serres) of social media, along with managing bodies that are faced with the spatialisation of time through new features such as Facebook’s Timeline.