'Getting the truth': exploring the material grounds of institutional dynamics in social media

Our research focuses on the fast-changing landscape of contemporary social media (e.g., Facebook, TripAdvisor), where recent technological innovations have facilitated the interaction of large numbers of people across time and space. In contrast to more traditional forms of web usage that focus predominantly on relatively passive, one-way information flow, social media are characterized by dynamic, peer-to-peer interactions and multi-media, user-generated content. Also referred to as Web 2.0, these websites represent new forms of distributed, collective knowledge creation/sharing that defy easy characterization, prompting us to reconsider conventional views of technology. Drawing on Barad’s notion of “apparatus”, we consider the differences in knowledge produced by institutionalized hotel grading schemes such as the AA and VisitBritain on the one hand, and those of TripAdvisor’s dynamic sociomateriality (re)configures the standing of hotels in our study so that previously valued criteria lose their significance. We contrast the purposeful practice of travellers using TripAdvisor with the consternation among hoteliers who raises ethical issues of fairness and honesty. Far from being a neutral channel or passive mediator, the sociomateriality of TripAdvisor is integrally and actively part of knowledge production, creating difference that have wide reaching implications for the relationships between travellers and hoteliers.