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This essay deals with the problem of understanding social media, what it is and furthermore what it is perceived as. In the wake of increasing criticism, from for example Amnesty, the EU and the Swedish Internetstiftelsen´s report ”The Swedes and the Internet”, this essay studies the reactions from one of the actors involved in creating the meaning of the term ”Social media”, namely the Swedish media-industry-magazines and particularly Bonnier Business Media Groups papers. Its focus is to, through their reactions, unveil how the media industry as an active participant, contributes to creating meaning of the term, and potentially how they do so in their own interests.

The findings suggest that there is a need to further analyse how meaning is created, and stresses the importance of doing so. There is a potential problem of determinism and technology optimism, which echoes from the origins of the information society, consisting of both conscious and nonconscious ideological disguising of what role citizens play. In that sense, this essay reveals that if social media is treated as a given fact, the role of ”the social” is degraded to essentially the absence of social. The idea of social media as a way of realising the democratic potential in society is lost and communication will be a matter of consumerism and diverse homogenic groups, fractions of a whole.

There is hope, however, and that is through further understanding of ideology and the process in which knowledge and awareness is created. This essay is not a complete study of this, but its findings points towards and suggests increased integration of different fields of the academia. Sociology, economics, media studies and internetstudies and more, is sorely needed to embrace a larger picture.