Introduction: The language of social media

Abstract

In 1929, the Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy wrote a short story called `Chain-links' in which a group of friends discuss the fundamental interconnectedness of the modern world:Let me put it this way: Planet Earth has never been as tiny as it is now. It shrunk — relatively speaking of course — due to the quickening pulse of both physical and verbal communication. This topic has come up before, but we had never framed it quite this way. We never talked about the fact that anyone on Earth, at my or anyone's will, can now learn in just a few minutes what I think or do, and what I want or what I would like to do. (2007[1929], p. 21)The character who makes this speech goes on to argue that everyone in the world is related to everyone else though a series of chains of acquaintance, and that no-one is more than five acquaintances away from anyone else on the planet. Every individual is only six degrees of separation away from any other.