Facebook. Taina Bucher

Acknowledgements

      The writing of this book is hugely indebted to senior editor at Polity Press, Mary Savigar. If Mary hadn’t approached me at the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference in late 2017 to pitch this project to me, I would never have embarked on it in the first place. I never envisioned myself writing an entire book about Facebook. Like so many of my peers, I was already quite fed up with Facebook. What more was there to say, I thought? As it turned out, quite a lot. Once I distanced myself from thinking of Facebook as a social media platform or social network site only, entire swathes of infrastructural activities became apparent. Sometimes chance encounters that plant the right seeds can be quite life-changing, as my brief meeting with Mary demonstrates. Mary, thanks for thinking of me for this project and for allowing me to prove myself wrong: Facebook is an immensely fascinating phenomenon. It has been an absolute pleasure to write this book, keeping me company amid some happy and challenging life events as Facebook calls them: childbirth, change of jobs, moving countries, pandemic. Thank you to Ellen MacDonald-Kramer and the rest of the Polity Press team for guiding me through the editorial and production process.

Status update: Thank you to everyone who has either explicitly or implicitly contributed to developing the ideas in this book. Thank you: Anne Helmond, David Nieborg, my colleagues in the ‘Don’t take it personal’ project team, and the participants from the Media Aesthetics seminars at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, for reading drafts at various stages of completion and providing critical feedback. Your comments have greatly improved the final product. Thank you also to the anonymous reviewers for their time and efforts in making this a better book. I am grateful to the many people I have met at conferences, workshops, and seminars, who have provided crucial insights into different aspects of Facebook. I am especially grateful to the informants from various NGOs and human rights organizations whose input and generosity helped to shape my understanding of Facebook. Thank you also to research assistant Louise Bechmann Ødegaard Jensen for her research in the early stages of book writing. This book benefited from financial support by the ‘Digitization and Diversity’ project funded by the Research Council of Norway. Thank you to project leader Anne-Britt Gran for granting the time and resources to work on this book as part of the project.

      Finally, my immense gratitude goes to friends and family. You deserve so much more than a status update. Georg, your patience and support means everything. I dedicate this book to Alvar.