How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and explores the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we becoming more individual or more social? Why is public social media so conservative? Why does equality online fail to shift inequality offline? How did memes become the moral police of the internet?

Supported by an introduction to the project’s academic framework and theoretical terms that help to account for the findings, the book argues that the only way to appreciate and understand something as intimate and ubiquitous as social media is to be immersed in the lives of the people who post. Only then can we discover how people all around the world have already transformed social media in such unexpected ways and assess the consequences.

Praise for How the World Changed Social Media 'A topic ripe for anthropological study, then. And such a study, the “Why We Post” project, has just been published by nine anthropologists, led by Daniel Miller of University College, London.'
The Economist

'This week, the project has culminated in the start of an online course and the launch of three of the books, which are open-access and translated into multiple languages.'
LSE Review of Books

'Chileans love 'footies', Chinese people dare to use ever increasing optical illusions in selfies and in India they aren’t keen on seeing a selfie stick. Anthropologists from the University College London investigated how selfies look globally by living with the locals for 15 months.'
Het Laatste Nieuws (HLN)

Introductory chapters
What is social media
Academic studies of social media
Our method and approach
Our survey results

The ten key topics
Education and young people
Work and commerce
Online and offline relationships
Gender Inequality
Politics
Visual images
Individualism
Does social media make us happier?
The future

How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and explores the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we becoming more individual or more social? Why is public social media so conservative? Why does equality online fail to shift inequality offline? How did memes become the moral police of the internet?

Supported by an introduction to the project’s academic framework and theoretical terms that help to account for the findings, the book argues that the only way to appreciate and understand something as intimate and ubiquitous as social media is to be immersed in the lives of the people who post. Only then can we discover how people all around the world have already transformed social media in such unexpected ways and assess the consequences.

Praise for How the World Changed Social Media

'A topic ripe for anthropological study, then. And such a study, the “Why We Post” project, has just been published by nine anthropologists, led by Daniel Miller of University College, London.'
The Economist

'This week, the project has culminated in the start of an online courseand the launch of three of the books, which are open-access and translated into multiple languages.' 
 LSE Book Review

'Chileans love 'footies', Chinese people dare to use ever increasing optical illusions in selfies and in India they aren’t keen on seeing a selfie stick. Anthropologists from the University College London investigated how selfies look globally by living with the locals for 15 months.'
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