KTub8

Digital Solidarity
If this tension spells doom for social networks
– imploding as users feel alienated by the
commercialisation of their social spaces – or, if this
represents a sustainable extension of the commercial
logic even deeper into the social fabric remains to be seen.
For now, they contribute to establishing co-operation
and sharing, in some limited, possibly distorted way, as
a normal social experience within a society otherwise
dominated by competition and atomisation in the
markets.
Culture of Solidarity
Across these new social forms, even if they not only
differ from one another as ideal types but that each
of them exists in a near infinity of concrete shapes,
sizes and flavours, there is something like a common
culture emerging: a culture of autonomy and solidarity.
Autonomy can be defined
as the capacity of a social actor to become a subject by defining
its actions around projects constructed independent of the
institutions of society, according to the values and interests
of the social actor. 70
In the present context, the social actors creating new
spaces for autonomy, as we have seen, are collective
or, better, connective ones, utilising the capacity of
digital networks to coordinate people horizontally.
Sociologically speaking, the people that make up these
actors tend to be educated, often young and competent
in their use of digital media, yet alienated from
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