581185
research-article2015
SMSXXX10.1177/2056305115581185Social Media + SocietyPapacharissi
Editorial
We Have Always Been Social
Zizi Papacharissi
Keywords
social media, sociality, platforms
. . . And we will always be social.
When SAGE first approached me with the opportunity to lead
an open access journal, tentatively titled Social Media +
Society, I have to admit I cringed. I have never been a fan of
the term “social media.” Not only had I not been a fan of the
term but I had also expressed this distaste frequently and fer-
vently, in public talks and in writing, academic and not. The
reason why I dislike the term, as I regularly explain, is that all
media are social. All media foster communication and by defi-
nition are social. This is not that groundbreaking a position
anymore, although it has been my mantra ever since I started
studying the social character of the Internet in the mid-1990s.
In fact, it is a position held by many of our Editorial Board
members who have contributed to this issue, and you will
encounter variations of it as you read through this first issue.
To term some media social implies that there are other
media that are perhaps anti-social, or even not social at all—
asocial. It also invites comparisons between media based on
how social each medium is. But each medium is social in its
own unique way and invites particular social behaviors, its own
form of sociality. Finally, the term identifies as social platforms
that are no more, and perhaps less so, social than media not
characterized by that moniker, such as the telephone.
But, whether I like it or not, “social media” has become
mainstream, and I have come to terms with that. As self-con-
scious as I was about potentially editing a journal containing
a term in its title that I had so publicly criticized, I also
thought, “Well, here is my opportunity to redefine it.” Let us
make this journal not about social media, but about why and
how all media, old and new, are social. We have always been
social, and we will always be social. Even the rejection of
social activity is, in effect, a social decision and behavior. Let
us have this be a journal about the social character of media as
they develop within the context of societies and everyday life.
While current social media architectures and research
focus on trends presented by leading platforms like Facebook,
Twitter, Google+, and others, the purpose of this journal is to
examine tendencies that evolve within and beyond a particu-
lar era. Recognizing that social media are as old as
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Social Media + Society
April-June 2015: 1­–2
© The Author(s) 2015
DOI: 10.1177/2056305115581185
sms.sagepub.com
communication itself, and that socially based communication
has always utilized platforms, digital or non-digital, which
were somehow networked, the editorial scope of the journal
includes and extends beyond contemporary trends to invite
scholarship that broadly studies media as social entities, envi-
ronments, and architectures.
Social Media + Society is thus deeply committed to advanc-
ing beyond an understanding of social media that is temporally
bound. Our understanding of social media is temporally, spa-
tially, and technologically sensitive—informed but not
restricted by the definitions, practices, and materialities of a
single time period or locale. How we have defined social
media in societies has changed, and will continue to change.
Our use of the term social media is aimed at embracing the
social character of media as it presents itself in media past,
present, and future. The editorial vision of this journal draws
inspiration from current research on social media to outline a
field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies
evolve. We foster the open access sharing of research on the
social properties of media, as they manifest themselves
through the uses people make of networked platforms past and
present, digital and non-digital.
To this end, I invited members of our Editorial Board to
contribute short essays that would serve to outline the scope
for Social Media + Society, in defining how we understand
social media. I asked potential contributors to think about
what social media mean to them, what it should mean, what it
could be, and what they do not want to see it become. But
beyond that, I left it open for people to be as spontaneous,
unorthodox, formal, personal, or scholarly as they wanted to
be. I wanted people to write about whatever they may have
been yearning to write about but had no previous outlet to do
so in—as long as it pertained to the broad topic of social media
and society. The result is a magnificent set of essays presented
in the democracy of alphabetical order, serving as our first
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), USA
Corresponding Author:
Zizi Papacharissi, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Chicago, IL, USA.
Email: zizi@uic.edu
2 Social Media + Society
issue, and a manifesto for our journal. I hope you enjoy read-
ing them and are inspired by them as much as I have been.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
Author Biography
Zizi Papacharissi (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is
Professor and Head of Communication at the University of
Illinois at Chicago. She is the founding and current Editor of
Social Media + Society, and also serves as the Editor of the
Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. Her latest book is
Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics (Oxford
University Press, OUP), and she studies the social and political
consequences of the Internet and the many platforms it supports
and connects.