Social media in capitalist society has taken repressive tolerance to a new level. The engaging/connecting/sharing-ideology often associated with social media presents these forms of communication as pure freedom, in which everyone can participate without constraints, where everyone can speak and be visible, heard and seen. Thereby the image of a tolerant, free and pluralist society is conveyed. Capitalist social media’s tolerance is, however, a form of repressive tolerance. Social media ideology tries to hide the repressive character of censorship and power asymmetry that is at play.
The diference between broadcasting and social media is that in the first kind of medium there are centres that control the dissemination of information. In social media, every consumer of information can be a producer who creates and disseminates information. It is, however, mere semblance and ideological appearance that the emergence of prosumption democratises the media because the ownership of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is not collective and there are hierarchies of reputation, visibility and voice on these media (Fuchs 2014a).
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Critical Theory of Communication