Social Network Society. New design contexts and new virtual identities

Abstract

In the age of post-truth, the social network society lives in several spaces and times simultaneously. This kind of society inhabits the virtual environment as well as the real one and soon, when they coincide, it will no longer be able to distinguish between one and the other, with the same difficulty as it has today in recognising true from false. The virtual environment, made up of algorithms, bots, filter bubbles and fake news, thus becomes the new context in which we exist, and, as designers, we have a duty to consider it as a new possible context of and for design. The contribution aims to analyse how this new artificial environment affects the life, identity and pathologies of the person/user, considered a key element of the design project. An exploration that therefore aims to understand the new design paradigms of today and tomorrow, throw the analysis of case studies and theoretical reflections.