Bringing Field Theory to Social Media, and Vice-Versa: Network-Crawling an Economy of Recognition on Facebook

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Social media research needs social theory in order to historicize and contextualize findings. At the same time, (analogue) social theory may benefit from the affordances of digital methods. This article explores this Janus-faced argument by way of a Facebook crawl of the Swedish field of culture. First, it is argued that field theory helps understand inter-institutional interaction on social media, and that it places activities on social media in a broader social context. Findings of the Facebook crawl illustrate the persistence of the structure and autonomy of the field of culture as depicted by Bourdieu. Second, despite Bourdieu’s rejection of network analysis, it is argued that it supplements empirical field research on two counts. Bourdieu argued for a relational understanding of the social world and for the study of “objective relations” between agents in a field. Following this, the network analysis provides a focus on actual practices—crystallized acts of recognition in the form of “likes” between institutions. This contrasts the somewhat oxymoronic use of self-reports to study “objective relations” that to date characterize Bourdieusian sociology. Additionally, the network analysis of a crawl of institutions on social media has the capacity to begin to uncover the amplitude, or reach, of a social field—which to date is rare in empirical field research. The article concludes by arguing for the mutual benefit of social theory and digital methods.