Who are the quintessential theorists about New Media and Social Media and/or Identity formation?

You are probably ahead of any academics. It’s more likely people that write for Wired or The New Yorker that are addressing social media, peoplelike Malcolm Gladwell.

There is a lot of disagreement about Gladwell, but at least he is bring the topic up for discussion.

@zenvelo I know that some people have done some work in the field of New Media and Web 2.0 stuff like Lev Manovich, but I think Malcolm Gladwell is a great choice! Thanks!

You might want to go on Google+ and look at techie journalists like Craig Kanalley from the Huffington Post. Although they are not theorists, there have been many interesting discussions about social networking on there.

Also, this book about how the Internet is changing our brains could be of use.

@janbb I was thinking about reading that book! I am glad that I may be on the right track.

I recently read Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains and found it interesting but seriously flawed. I thought the historical perspective was valuable, and the author does have some thoughtworthy observations about parallels in our time.

But he greatly overgeneralizes from his own apparent habits and practices (not all of us have IMs and Tweets and RSS feeds and other interruptors popping up on our screens every few seconds) and thus draws some unfounded conclusions. I’d read it for background and point of view but not take it seriously as research.

A much more enlightening and solidly grounded title on a closely related topic is The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry), by Siva Vaidhyanathan, which is not off topic for the very same reason that “Everything” is in the title. It’s even more pertinent now that I can’t open a Google search page without a blue arrow leading my eye up to the new menu heading ”+You” and an invitation to join.

@Jeruba I just finished reading the first couple of chapters of Copyrights & Copywrongs and found it enlightening. I was thinking of reading that book as well.