Behold the metaverse: Facebook’s Meta imaginary and the circulation of elite discourse

Abstract

Despite pushback from regulatory and non-governmental entities, Meta’s control over the public narrative remains consistent. Using a method of corpus analysis, this study investigated the company’s sociotechnical imaginary as it circulates in media artifacts (428) responding to Zuckerberg’s 2021 Metaverse announcement. Analysis of how these artifacts respond to issues related to identity, security, and connectivity revealed that the majority amplify Meta’s corporate messaging, empowering its elite discourse and solidifying its socio-technological power. As it relates to user privacy, however, this study uncovered a limited number of artifacts in which journalists challenged rather than repeated Meta’s rhetoric. As an implication of this finding, future tech journalism should consider privacy as a starting point for critiques that also interrogate the underlying logic of surveillance capitalism and user exploitation. Ultimately, this article addresses the rhetorical functions deployed in the circulation of elite discourse while acknowledging the dynamism of sociotechnical imaginaries.

Analyzing the Impact and Prospects of Metaverse in Learning Environments Through Systematic and Case Study Research

“…These universities will also be delivered 3D headsets for students to use in the courses. Although such immersive experiences empower student learning and pedagogy, the inexorability of user privacy issues related to corporate surveillance and user protection mechanisms against it will be a critical point of reference [52]. It also leads to the ongoing debate of surveillance capitalism that rapidly encroaches on users' personal and mental space collecting more data on individual behavior and social interaction than previous databases for developing machine learning and other predictive algorithms [53].…”