Abstract

This article employs the concept of McDonaldization introduced by George Ritzer in his Weberian analysis of the processes of formal rationalization characteristic of late modern consumer society to reflect on the social and cultural implications of the most recent wave of communication technologies – social media. It argues that social media smuggle formal rationality into the elementary forms of social interaction, most clearly illustrated through the way they redefine the notion of friendship. In an attempt to lay the ground for a “multiperspectivist approach” to this phenomenon, the article enters the Weberian argument into a conversation with other styles of theorizing social media such as Marxism, Critical Theory and sociological phenomenology.