A Networked Self and Love

We fall in love every day, with others, with ideas, with ourselves. Stories of love excite us and baffle us. This volume is about love and the networked self. It focuses on how love forms, grows, or dissolves. Chapters address how relationships of love develop, are sustained or broken up through technologies of expression and connection. Authors explore how technologies reproduce, reorganize, or reimagine our dominant rituals of love. Contributors also address what our experiences with love teach us about ourselves, others, and the art of living. Every love story has a beginning and an end. Technology does not give love the kiss of eternity; but it can afford love new meaning.

Zizi Papacharissi is Professor and Head of the Communication Department and Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and University Scholar at the University of Illinois System. Her work focuses on the social and political consequences of online media. She has published nine books, including Affective Publics, A Private Sphere, A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (Routledge, 2010) and over 60 journal articles, book chapters or reviews. She is the founding and current editor of the open access journal Social Media and Society.