An exploration of various impacts of social media usage: The philosophical and sociological perspectives of Jacques Ellul's 'technique'

This thesis aims to unearth insights about the relevance and degree of applicability of the concept of "technique" as defined by the French philosopher and sociologist Jacques Ellul in his seminal work, "La Technique" (translated as "The Technological Society", published in 1964). Specifically my aim is to examine how Ellul's dialectical methodology can be used to examine the degree in which "technique" interacts with the world of internet and social media usages to produce particular global-scale changes in the way people communicate and use language. To what extent have recent developments in social media and internet-based communication, confirmed or contradicted Ellul's ideas and concepts of "technique"? Dialectics is central to Ellul's works as a whole, and can clearly be seen in the dialectical tension between human choice of action and technique. When humans use techniques, to what extent do such established techniques in turn, use human beings? Do humans use social media as a tool in a freely chosen or "neutral" way? Or does technique rigidly control the possible ways in which people can interact with such technology on a meaningful sociological level? This thesis will be referring primarily (though not exclusively) to Ellul's 1981 book "The Humiliation Of The Word" which adopts both theological and sociological analyses as part of its argument that modern life prioritizes the visual and the image over language and "the word". He argues that the word has been turned into an object and made subordinate to the image which represents the world of reality, action, technical application and objectivity as opposed to the world of truth, the theoretical, the abstract, and of human subjectivity which language represents. In light of this, what has social media done to language generally? Has it made communication more efficient through rationally applied technical methods? What is the price of this efficiency? Perhaps this efficiency is only apparent and results in an inefficient form of communication? What about the role of 'freedom' and 'necessity' with respect to the human subject? Does language and the word become more free as a result of social media technology? I shall be exploring several case studies concerning communication on the Internet that might help provide answers to such quesitons or produce new questions and problems with respect to Ellul's dialectic of Technique and Freedom, as well as the sociological and philosophical understanding of language and images in general.