Social theory needs to be completely rethought in a world of digital
media and social media platforms driven by data processes. Fifty years
after Berger and Luckmann published their classic text The Social
Construction of Reality, two leading sociologists of media, Nick
Couldry and Andreas Hepp, revisit the question of how social theory can
understand the processes through which an everyday world is constructed
in and through media.
Drawing on Schütz, Elias and many other social and media theorists, they
ask: what are the implications of digital media�s profound involvement
in those processes? Is the result a social world that is stable and
liveable, or one that is increasingly unstable and unliveable?