earticle

영어

What prevails in the today’s research on social media is a functional view of technology. Technology is regarded as a set of technical devices used to conduct specific social functions, such as personal communication, social networking, public posting, and corporate advertising, among others. This paper proposes that such a functional view of technology renders social media research unduly limited and constrained in its scope, level, and direction of inquiry. Problematizing on some representative social media research efforts in the field of IS, this paper provides an alternative perspective, that is, to view social media as a technology-for- being that exerts a deeper level of influence on our existence, molding and shaping the nature and mode of being itself. Such a technology- for-being perspective has been rarely explored or subscribed to in the present IS social media research. Building upon the new conception of social media as a technology-for-being, this essay explores the quality of being in the context of social media. Five such qualities are discussed, including virtuality, materiality, externality, liquidity, and hybridity. The essay also explores the deep structural problems of research to guide future social media research. Six of such problems include Problematize-the-Natural, Follow- the-Actor, Welcomethe- Frankenstein, Weber-meets-Frankenstein, Freud-meets-Frankenstein, and Marx- meets-Frankenstein. The essay concludes with discussions on the implications of the essay, its limitations, and suggestions for future work.