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Facebook claims that it is building a "global community." Whether this sounds utopian, dystopian, or simply self-promotional, there is no denying that social-media platforms have altered social interaction, political life, and outlooks on the world, even for people who do not regularly use them. In this book, Roberto Simanowski takes Facebook as a starting point to investigate our social-media society - and its insidious consequences for our concept of the self.

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Facebook Society is a wonderfully rich and deeply thought extended essay on a symptomatic social medium of our day. With his focus on autobiography, friendship, memory, and narrative Simanowski outlines ways in which digital media have the power to change human perception and social relations. A broad historical, literary, and critical perspective on social media such as Simanowski´s is very much needed both in the humanities and in the social sciences. Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University

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Roberto Simanowski is professor of digital media studies and digital humanities in the English and Creative Media Departments at the City University of Hong Kong and a visiting professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. His books include Data Love: The Seduction and Betrayal of Digital Technologies (Columbia, 2016). Susan H. Gillespie is a noted translator from German and vice president for special global initiatives at Bard College. Her translations include numerous essays by Theodor W. Adorno, selected poems of Paul Celan, and other works of fiction, philosophy, and musicology.

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