What is a critical introduction to social media? -- I : Foundations -- What are social media and big data? -- Social media as participatory culture -- Social media and communication power -- II : Applications -- The power and political economy of social media -- Google: good or evil search engine? -- Facebook: surveillance in the age of edward snowden -- Twitter and democracy: A new public sphere? -- Weibo: power, ideology and social struggles in Chinese capitalism -- Airbnb and uber: the political economy of online sharing platforms -- Wikipedia: a new democratic form of collaborative work and production? -- III : Futures -- Conclusion: social media and its alternatives - towards a truly social media

1. Social media