EDUCATED USERS: REFINING MANNERS THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA CORPORATE CURRICULUMS

Abstract

This paper will scrutinise modes through which social media companies create, disseminate and deliver free digital literacy curriculums to educators, parents, caregivers and users. Following the thought of Norbert Elias, we consider these practices as part of broader attempts to $2 of human groups according to (contingent) values and beliefs, and which serve the capitalist interests of powerful global institutions seeking to inculcate them in doing so. Using Meta’s $2 digital literacy program and Instagram’s $2 as empirical case studies, we ask: What is the specific content of social media curriculums of safe, healthy and educated use? And how do these educational resources inculcate certain habits and manners, for whom, and with what implications? Our findings indicate that the type of digital literacy constructed through these resources is a distinctly responsibilized prospect, operating through self-control, and verified in relation to neoliberal behaviourist ideologies. We argue that by loading the pressure on individuals to protect themselves against the ‘toxicity’ of platforms, social media companies seek to absolve themselves from the responsibility to address the potentially harmful aspects of their services themselves. We argue that this constitutes a performance of corporate responsibility, responding to the criticisms that have been levelled at platforms in recent years, while diverting attention away from the exploitative capitalist logics motivating their operations. In highlighting the cultural, normative and political limits of social media corporate curriculums, our paper ultimately highlights the need to develop alternative critical, creative and independent digital literacies in response.