Date of Award
Spring 12-8-2025
Document Type
Honors Project
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Classics, Philosophy, and Religion
Department Chair or Program Director
Mentore, Laura
First Advisor
Reno, Michael
Major or Concentration
Philosophy
Abstract
This paper critiques social media as a moral architecture that shapes how individuals understand belonging, visibility, and selfhood. Drawing primarily on Nietzsche, with support from Foucault, Dostoevsky, and Zuboff, it explores why users continue to invest digital platforms with authority despite their widely recognized harms, treating social media less as a technological tool and more as a medium of belonging and livelihood. To provide a broader context for this critique, the paper situates social media within a genealogy of moral architectures, tracing developments from the Church, through capitalism as an ideology, and ultimately to contemporary digital platforms. In doing so, it argues that the desire for connection increasingly collapses into a willingness to be governed.
Recommended Citation
Ibrahimi, Mohammad M., "Digital Confessions: A Genealogy of Belonging, Obedience, and Platform Power" (2025). Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects. 673.
https://scholar.umw.edu/student_research/673