“The social no longer manifests itself primarily as a class, movement, or mob. Neither does it institutionalize itself anymore, as happened during the postwar decades of the welfare state. And even the postmodern phase of disintegration and decay seems over. Nowadays, the social manifests itself as a network. Networked practices emerge outside the walls of twentieth-century institutions, leading to a “corrosion of conformity.” The network is the actual shape of the social. What counts – for instance, in politics and business – are the “social facts” as they present themselves through network analysis and its corresponding data visualizations“

– Gert Lovink in The Social in Social Media

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