Sticky e/motional connections: young people, social media, and the re-orientation of affect

Abstract

In this paper, I offer a provisional look at some of the ways that belonging, participation, and affective relations are being reconfigured through young people’s relationship to social media as an important site of popular culture in South Africa, where the increasing ubiquity of digital devices is clearly shifting the nature of everyday relationships that shape their individual and collective sense of self. Despite concerns about the digital divide, the reality is that most young people in South Africa are already accessing social media platforms via their cell phones. Therefore, it is no longer a question of mere access to technology (although in many places, access is still a key issue) but the quality of access. Exploring the everyday and popular realm of social media as a site of “emergent consciousness” for youth, I suggest that it is important to think about the relationship between two senses of “stickiness”—both when it comes to the economic entanglement of users, as well as the degree of their affective investment in social networks—when understanding social media as providing a platform for an “intimate public sphere,” a contested and contradictory terrain that can ultimately be both potentially dangerous and emancipatory.