Mediation and digital intensities: Topology, psychology and social media

Social media are said to offer seemingly endless ways of connecting with people in a variety of online spaces. The mediated form that such communication takes has re-opened many theoretical debates regarding the status of relationships that are organized and managed online. In this paper we seek to explore these issues through the lens of topological thinking, and particularly through the work of Kurt Lewin (1890--1947). Lewin’s topological psychology has recently featured in the social sciences as a way of overcoming some of the, frankly unhelpful, dualistic thinking that features commonly in psychology (e.g. subject-object, mind-body, individual-social). Topological thought focuses on the spatial distribution of psychological experience, and therefore offers a social perspective not reliant on traditional notions of internalized