Social Networking and Local Controversies

Abstract

Based on the components of new media, this article focuses on the intersection between communication networks and content (media) through personal connections and cable/interactive television. First, it analyzes how connections through social networking as a communication and power maintenance strategy produce rhetorical devices through categorizations, symbols, and metaphors by standing on emotions, suspicions, and threats at the local level. Second, it examines the complex and ubiquitous nature of social networking to elaborate how local market actors create uncertainties and how uncertainties are socially constructed through rhetorical devices. Based on the in-depth interviews and participant observations, this article reveals how sociotechnical controversies are created, formed and shaped with rhetorical devices that produce uncertainties at the local level.