Impacts of New Social Media

In this presentation, we will take stock and draw together our work during the project on how new digital media have reshaped political and cultural life. On one side, we identify social media as driving integration, conformity, and aesthetics, and on the other, we find it implicated in shifts in commodification, personhood, and polarization. We draw on several studies – empirical, theoretical and simulation-based – to tell the larger story on how digital media is transforming society, and look ahead toward future possible research.