You’re about to join one of the most intellectually stimulating social networks of all: the academic and campus life of UC Berkeley. Discussions fostered by things like this reading list are part of what makes Cal such a vibrant place to be for all of us who study and work here. We welcome you to the conversation. Jennifer Dorner Head, Instructional Services Doe/Moffitt Libraries

The books and articles below offer a means of beginning to examine these types of questions, and they do so in compelling ways. These aren’t homework assignments or readings you need to complete before you arrive on campus. Rather, they’re readings UC Berkeley faculty and staff have found illuminating and essential. We hope that you’ll slow down and engage carefully with some of them, and then perhaps share and discuss them with your friends (and your “friends”) as well. All of these can be found in UC Berkeley libraries and electronic databases. And if the readings on this list don’t capture your fancy, perhaps one from a previous year’s list will: you can find them all at reading.berkeley.edu .

In our rapidly evolving, hyper-connected online social networks, we spend a lot of time “liking” things and flickering past each other, sharing laughs and rants and the latest news, locating ourselves in space and time for others via the disembodied (semi-embodied?) state of cyberspace. This deluge is at once riveting and overwhelming. Quite literally at our fingertips, we have access to more information—public and private—than at any time in the history of humankind. Yet how often do we pause to carefully consider social media in full—where it came from, where it’s going, and where it’s taking us? What effects does it have on the way we communicate with each other, and on our political discourse, our psychological and neurological development, our attention spans, our…um…what were we saying?

As a soon-to-be freshman at Cal, you would probably answer, “An awful lot.” Well, we’d like to offer something else for you to think about, though in a way we hope will be welcome: this year’s Summer Reading List, a fascinating, provocative selection of recommended reading centered around the subject of Social Media.