I've been a bad blogger recently, and hardly a functional human being- this state of total liminality is both extraordinarily liberating and incredibly frustrating. I graduate on Sunday. If you would like to experience the fruits of my yearlong labors, I encourage you to check out the electronic version of my thesis, which I plan to add interactive features to in the future (I'm thinking more along the lines of a wiki than this rather average website). If you do read it, drop me a line and let me know what you think! I'm always eager to hear fresh perspectives and related stories.
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Wesleyan University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Anthropology.
Based on five years of participant-observation on the social networking sites MySpace, Facebook, and Tribe.net, The Virtual Campfire
explores the increasingly blurred boundaries between human and machine,
public and private, voyeurism and exhibitionism, the history of media
and our digitized future. Woven throughout are the stories and
experiences of those who engage with these sites regularly and
ritualistically, the generation of "digital natives" whose tales attest
to the often strange and uncomfortable ways online social networking
sites have come to be embedded in the everyday lives of American youth.
Over the past two years of conducting online ethnography, I've collected quite the bevy of resources I've come to think of as the cyberanthropologist's toolkit. Adjust your bookmarks accordingly:
Alexa Web Information Inc; is the definitive source for website traffic data. Besides providing more general statistics such as world traffic ranking and total hit count, the site also breaks down the percentage of visitors by country, changes in ranking over the past three months, and average number of page views per visitor. Great tidbit for a footnote when introducing a website in your research.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has been conducting surveys and analyzing online trends since 2000. Their extensive reports are archived on the site, and encompass the following categories: online activities & pursuits; demographics; Internet evolution; technology & media use; health; family, friends, & community; major news events; public policy; e-gov & e-policy; education; and work. I would recommend this site for anyone interested in changing attitudes over time, or merely as a source of inspiration for those searching for a controversial issue to explore.
Providing an historical overview is critical to any in-depth research. Nicoe Ellison and danah boyd have put together a fantastic history of social network sites, which details the evolution of Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook, among others. Additionally, Facebook provides an official, month-to-month timeline of important events in the site's history. Though I can't vouch for its credibility, I was able to locate a blog post that details the evolution of MySpace.
Finally, my blog WebnographY contains a plethora of literature reviews on the topic of online ethnography, as well as links to my past research projects and assorted random musings. Find links to a variety of pertinent articles on my Resources page. Cheers!
This past month, I've sought to nourish myself through what is, for me,
the most difficult period of the year. January. And I made it! I'm
okay! And I've written a lot of things.
Having
shaken myself free from the noxious syndrome of reading "research" and
creating headers beneath which I can conveniently categorize the
perspectives of others into "anxieties" and "utopias", I have now
reached what will be the butter on the bread of my thesis. That is,
that which makes the dry foundation delicious. Not that ethnography is
ever dry. My first chapters are rife with the stories, anecdotes,
personalities, ideas that propelled me to do this research in the first
place.
But now, allow me to be indulgent. I embark on a chapter
I've hesitantly entitled "A Phenomenological Exploration of Online
Social Networking." This is where I tell my own story, where I deeply
investigate my own integration of anxieties toward and utopic visions
of the Internet and its potentials and failures.
And everything else.
The
past week has consisted of moving into a new apartment (where I will no
longer bother touchy neighbors with my entirely nocturnal rhythm and
proclivity toward human interaction and [god forbid!] music), sleeping
10-12 hours a night, and battling the obvious onset of ill health with
my finest vegetarian cooking, isolation, and relaxation.
I sit
before the screen now resolved to put forth a testimony founded on
inner truths, desires, sadnesses, attempts to bridge the increasing
divide I see between individuals and community. The Internet, for me,
is the "final frontier" in which we may remake ourselves, and in so
doing, contribute to the remaking of this severely damaged world.
Though,
as severely damaged as it is, it is because of my overwhelming love of
the stories, personalities, and lives of others that I have become so
enamored with the potential for anthropological research to promote
human understanding, empathy, and that elusive yet all-empowering
ultimate pursuit: community, connection, the sense of belonging and the
extension of selfhood.
This has been a manifesto.
For the past two years or so, I've been conducting field research on
online social networks (MySpace, Facebook, and Tribe.net in
particular), and am now in the midst of writing up my
ethnography/thesis (tentatively titled "Webnography: An Ethnography of
Online Social Networks"
. Hopefully, by May I will be once again
walking to a podium, this time to receive my master's degree in
anthropology from Wesleyan University.
Cyberanthropology, as it's often called, is a relatively new field. Nevertheless, I'm entirely overwhelmed by the vast amount of information and research available online. For those interested in the field, I've put together a fairly well-organized assortment of links to past studies, pertinent blogs, and must-read books on the subject. You can get to it by clicking here.
I
chose to conduct my research in an area of human life that I felt I was
already a part of. I've little desire to study the "exotic other," as I
believe true knowledge starts with an intrinsic understanding, which is
then expanded through conversations with others, situating the topic
within the broader context of history and philosophy, and engaging in
dialogue with other researchers of the subject. While there are empirical studies out there, my own research is anything but. The only true claim to authority I have is over my own experiences.
"Language is a virus from outer space."
-William Burroughs
In the words of Marshall McLuhan, "the medium is the message". In other words, we're not really saying anything new - how could we? What is changing, however, are the tools for communication. Each new medium takes on qualities of those which came before it, and extend our possibilities for communication. Thus, in the case of communication on the Internet, we experience the permanence and distantiation from time and space that print media has allotted for, as well as the immediacy and convenience afforded to us by the telephone. We are furthermore enabled to broadcast ourselves in a way that television could never quite encompass, even with "reality" programming. Unlike any previous private communications medium, our experiences on the Internet are enhanced by images, video, and sound.
"Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories."
-Laurie Anderson
Perhaps the greatest danger to writing about the Internet is that of technological determinism- the belief that technology determines
changes in society. On the contrary, societies develop technologies
that are always being shaped by the culture they're embedded in. We are
not a society being altered through our technologies- rather, we are
human beings engaging in the same activities through the use of
evolving tools (hence the "campfire" metaphor, above). The modern age, however, has arguably transformed humankind's way of thinking and perceiving in ways that have yet to be fully determined. Understanding where we are, where we've come from, and where we are going is an important endeavor, I believe, if we are to understand the implications of modernization and the future of this planet.
