People are spending increasingly more time on social media platforms, with Facebook being the biggest and most successful. Historically, media technologies have for long been considered of importance for the structuration and the experience of time in general. In this article, we investigate the technological affordances of Facebook for the temporal experiences of its users. Relying on a case study of a Facebook page dedicated to media memories, we link user experiences to technological and institutional affordances. By doing so, we seek to answer the question of how a business model and an infrastructure that largely build on immediacy and newness are experienced and negotiated by users that engage in a multiplicity of durations and time layers in their everyday lives. Drawing on a platform analysis, in-depth interviews and a survey among the users of the page "DT64 -das Jugendradio der DDR", we develop the concept of "social media time" while considering notions of the archive, flow, and narrative, which contribute to shedding light on how specific media technologies afford specific temporalities. Then we discuss the consequences for the users and society at large.

This paper investigates a paradox in the reception of Web 2.0. While some of its services are seen as creators of a new informational economy and are hence publicly legitimized, other features are increasingly under surveillance and policed, although in reality the differences between these services is far from obvious. Our thesis is that we are currently experiencing a temporary postponement of the law, in the context of Web 2.0. Agamben’s work on the state of exception is here used to theorize the informational economy as an ongoing dispossession, under the guise of ‘networked production’. This dispossession is seen as a parallel to the concept of ‘primitive accumulation’, as a means of moving things from the exterior to the interior of the capitalist economy. This theory lets us problematize the concept of free labor, the metaphor of the enclosure, and puts into question the dichotomy between copyright and cultural commons.

The concept of the Media Welfare State describes Nordic specificity in how media are organised and how they serve a lively and inclusive democracy. This article engages in a dialogue in regards to the contention that this media system has persisted in the midst of rapid social change. We synthesise previous research and documented changes in media policy in Sweden, covering the last three decades, to show the ways in which the Swedish media system has undergone significant transformations. Media use is becoming more polarised and connected to social class. The state is retreating from its involvement in media policy; consequently, the press and public service media are facing unprecedented challenges. Finally, the "consensual" relation between media companies and the state, which is said to be typical for the media welfare state, no longer characterises the media market. While some of the features of the media welfare state system remain in Sweden, the current media system is best characterised as a neoliberal media welfare state. The article discusses tensions and conflicts in the existing model and possible future developments.

The article engages with the notion of the smart prison to develop an understanding of emerging temporalities of digital technologies. The prison context serves here as a magnifying glass that makes certain contradictions and paradoxes of the digital imperative visible. Starting with a brief discussion of smart technology discourses, the article explores the temporalities of real-timeness, prediction and pre-emption that are entangled with digital technologies. Analysing the Spartan RFID tracking tool, the use of algorithms in prison administration and a mobile phone application used in Swedish probation, the article identifies a desynchronization between the temporalities of the incarcerated individuals’ lived experience and the (imagined) temporalities of the smart prison. The findings point to developments that are relevant for the smart, digital society beyond the prison walls.

No abstract