My work deals with the analysis of contemporary social media from an existentialist lens, which has not been as actively researched since the days of de Beauvoir, Sartre, et al. My work currently challenges the notion of authenticity on social media, and why it runs counter to existentialist philosophy (Cheong, 2023). Also, I’ve a special interest in looking at celebrity on social media (Cheong, 2022).
Collaborators include: Matthew Dennis (Eindhoven); Alfred Archer (Tilburg); Elese Dowden; Digital Worlds Workshop (UTRGV).
References
2023
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Existentialism on social media
Marc Cheong
2023
Social media has become a basis for helping us maintain human contact, especially as our alienation from our phenomenological experiences of ‘being human’ is becoming apparent due to the pandemic. I argue for how existentialist philosophy is crucial, more than ever, to interrogate our social media usage, which is a ‘necessary evil’ in our daily lives. Firstly, Kierkegaard’s critiques of the crowd and of the press are equally applicable to social media, which plays both roles: enabling an anonymous mass of public opinion and doubling-up as an information source, reducing responsibility on the individual. Secondly, social media leads to an intrinsic pressure to objectify one’s self (as portrayed) due to the possibility of an omnipresent Other, based on the technological design of networks. I will link my arguments on social media to other existential ideals and will conclude by suggesting changes that may promote existential ideals in one’s social media portrayal and engagement.
2022
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Ethical Dilemmas for @Celebrities: Promoting #Intimacy, Facing #Inauthenticity, and Defusing #Invectiveness
Marc Cheong
2022
The rise of social media mediated celebrity culture raises several philosophical concerns. It is not uncommon to see, for example, Hollywood actors being placed in the same bracket as YouTube artists and Instagram influencers. The increased perceived ‘connectivity’ afforded by social media allows online celebrities to reach more fans and increases the perceived engagement or intimacy in the fan-celebrity relationship. In the present article I argue that this online relationship, which is beneficial to celebrities (for brand development) and social media companies (in profiting from the high engagement), has the potential to cause harm to both the celebrities as well as their fanbases (and sometimes innocent third parties). Firstly, I argue that celebrities’ attempts to be more intimate or authentic with their fanbase can turn out to be – more often than not – acts of Sartrean bad faith. Celebrities who tend to project a certain self-styled ‘online authenticity’, given the context of social media’s attention economy, can run the risk of treating a fan as a means-to-an-end, rather than an autonomous for-itself. Secondly, I argue that this phenomenon can catalyse real-world harms, by drawing upon network theory and social psychology. I argue that the connectedness of social media, ‘blending into the crowd’, and social media technologies’ ethos of optimising-for-engagement, leads to real harms to human wellbeing when fans do not engage critically and mindfully with online celebrities. Examples include Trump-esque celebrity politicians trying to drum up populist influence; celebrities feuding online encouraging fans’ conduct of harmful trolling and harassment; and vilification of those who do not subscribe to the same perceived worldview of a celebrity’s fandom. Following my arguments within, I shall outline an online celebrity’s ethical duties in their social media engagement, with emphasis on the duties that celebrity status comes with, particularly in preventing harms that transcend the online into the offline.
