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.
I knew the day would come: I've received my first real robot-spam on Facebook just a few minutes ago. Funnily enough, I was just this evening writing about Facebook's slippery history with fucking over it's core users- ever since the News Feed was introduced in the fall of 2006, followed by the site opening its doors to everyone, including third-party developers and advertisers, and of course we can't forget Project Beacon- in my thesis.
The Spam:
Orality and visuality converge and merge into the online medium, reaching simultaneously for both the hearth and the cosmos. This hearth is the realm of the domestic, where we feed our desire for the security of our intimate relationships and the capacity to be our “true self.” At the same time, there is the desire for belonging to the cosmos, the sprawling landscape wherein we accumulate status and perform our identities, which are the products of the various cultural and institutional systems within which we are embedded.
What makes the online medium unique, then, is its capacity to bridge the gap between the realm of the hearth and the realm of the cosmos, reversing what has been called “the disintegation of the public sphere.” However, the transparency and permeability of the online medium renders the private sphere susceptible to public visibility. With the popularization of online communication came an inevitable “moral panic,” inciting both a discourse of fear regarding the transgressive nature of virtual intimacy as well as corporate interest in exploiting the Web for its economic potential. Nevertheless, for the most part the intangible dangers of being held accountable to largely invisible audiences are considered secondary to the convenience of instantaneous access to this public “global village” from the comfort of the home.
This post inspired by:
The struggle to effectively communicate one's "true" self is not particular to online social networking; rather, the tension between one's inner sense of self and outward portrayal of that self had been a subject of concern in Western culture long before the advent of the Internet. From the dawn of recorded language, Plato spoke of the "great stage of human life." If, as Shakespeare mused, "All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players," then what happens when the curtains close and we go backstage? In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman (1956) elaborated upon this dramaturgical approach in crafting a sociological theory that has come to be known as "symbolic interactionism." Once backstage, "the impression fostered by the presentation is knowingly contradicted as a matter of course (112)." From the symbolic interactionist perspective, one performs a certain role on the public stage that is often subverted in the private sphere ("backstage"
. This private sphere allows for a more "truthful" performance of self, but is nevertheless still a performance tailored to a specific audience. The question then becomes: may one understand the "true self" when no audience is present?
Paul Ricoeur, an eminent scholar in the field of hermeneutics and phenomenology, challenges the notion that the self is transparent to itself. Rather, he theorizes that the hermeneutic self is revealed to that self through the 'other'- immediately and directly through two interlocuters. Furthermore, this face-to-face, intersubjective encounter is a relation that is "invariably intertwined with various long intersubjective relations, mediated by various social institutions, groups, nations and cultural traditions (Kearney 2004: 4)." One continually attempts to define the self as an individual with a unique "personality," however this process is itself co-constructed through one's everyday interactions with others as well as the subjective appropriation of various cultural markers of identity. From this perspective, online social networks mirror the process by which individuals construct their identities by extending interpersonal communication and providing fields in which they may articulate their cultural tastes and group affiliations.
Mika, a friend from high school, had been going through a "Facebook-identity crisis" over the past couple of days; each time I had logged into Facebook during this time, the "Recently Updated" tab indicated that Mika had changed several elements of his profile. Often, his changes would include a reference to the Facebook medium itself. At one point, his profile was exceedingly honest and somewhat vulnerable, his "About Me" declaring himself to be a "nice, open-minded guy," inviting others to talk to him and get to know him more. However, this brief display of stark honesty was quickly deleted, to be replaced by a more minimal, utilitarian profile.
Curious, I sent him an IM (instant message) and struck up a conversation. Though he admitted to occasionally "giving Facebook a shot," in
assessing these attempts at honest self-portrayal he put himself in the
position of someone else viewing his profile and came to the conclusion
that "I would think I'm a loser." He noted the inadequacy of Facebook profiles for truly getting to know others, particularly those he had recently met but had yet to develop a good friendship with, and expressed his desire to be able to connect "directly to people’s brains."
His observations, spurred by his experiences with Facebook, can be applied to virtually every medium of human communication- beginning with language itself. As the early 20th-century philosopher-poet T.E. Hulme puts it: "Language is by its very nature a communal thing; that is, it expresses never the exact thing but a compromise—that which is common to you, me, and everybody." From face-to-face conversations to modern technologies of communication, our experiences of the world are mediated by language. Through language, humans develop mutually understood symbols by which we define ourselves, our worldviews, and reality itself.
Yesterday, the Facebook team announced their plan
to help users battle "application spam," describing recently-added
features they've added that many of you should find pretty appealing.
It's a good thing, because the bevy of e-mails and invitations I've
received in the past few months has been a real turn-off for the vast
majority of "veteran" users. High school students and MySpace converts
enthusiastically SuperPoke one another, adorn each others' profiles
with "Graffiti," and rank the "Hotties" amongst their Friends
(capitalized because Friendship on online social networks is quite
distinct from friendship). Other Internet enthusiasts and thinkers
promote charitable organizations, ask Questions of their profiles'
visitors, and incorporate their various online presences (on MySpace,
SecondLife, Twitter, etc. However, those who've been with Facebook
since the beginning (older college students and recent alumni) have a
very different relationship with the site. Sure, we may SuperPoke and
turn you into a vampire every once and awhile, but for the most part,
Facebook serves to keep in touch with college friends scattered across
the globe, see what's come of our high school classmates, take
nostalgic journeys through the hundreds of pictures tagged with our
names (de-tagging when appropriate), and keep our various networks of
old friends informed about our post-college lives.
When Facebook began allowing anyone and everyone to join the site back in 2006 and added the News Feed, thousands of college students virulently protested: some quit the site completely, many joined Facebook Groups protesting the move, and practically everyone I know complained. In response, Facebook added a slew of privacy features, such as Limited Profiles (which I use liberally) and News Feed controls. With the advent of Applications, a similar wave of protest made itself evident through such groups as "fuck off... i don't want to be a pirate/vampire/werewolf/zombie." Nevertheless, the number of Application exponentially increased, growing increasingly manipulative and tricksy. Many applications, particularly quizzes, practically force users to invite friends in order to see their results, resulting in the rise of groups protesting viral applications. Once again, Facebook has responded.
Here's a run-down of the new ways you can control your "Application-Spam:"
1. Block Applications instantly. Now, when you get an invitation for the latest useless, viral Application, you can check "Block Application" directly within the invite. Nevermore, you vampires and zombies! Go bite someone who cares!
2. Clear all "Requests." I'm not the only one who simply ignores every invitation sent my way, allowing them to build up steadily on my homepage (currently, I have 64 pending invitations). Why spend the energy rejecting every single invitation? You can be sure I'll be clicking the "Ignore All" button (located on the "Requests" page, at the top) as soon as I finish this post.
3. Applications must now inform you ahead of time if you're obligated to invite Friends in order to get information or access content. It's so very irritating to spend 15 minutes filling out a quiz, only to be told afterwards that you must invite Friends to see your results. Sneaky Applications are no longer allowed to do this.
4. Forcing users to send Invitations is no longer allowed. Did you install an Application, only to find yourself forced to send invitations to your Friends in order to use it? Report it by clicking "This Application is forcing me to invite friends."
5. Opt-out of e-mail sent by Applications. New Requests will automatically present you with this option, and you can control e-mail sent by Applicatios you've already installed by going to the "Edit Applications" page.
6. Help Facebook weed out the garbage from the good stuff. Getting a lot of e-mails from one of your Applications? Mark it as spam, and Facebook will take note. Did an Application break the rule I mentioned in #3? Go to the App's "About" page and report it to Facebook.
Though it took them awhile to get around to it, I must commend Facebook on once again listening to their users and providing tools for protection against this latest version of viral marketing. Now to spread the news and help empower you Facebookers out there!
For those of you who think "Facebook Activism" is only good for whining about the company's latest invasions of your privacy, or expressing support for Stephen Colbert's "presidential race," check it:
Over 270,000 Facebook members, mostly Central American youths, have joined a group called "One Million Voices Against FARC," which was established one month ago. The group leaders organized a rally, using Facebook as a means to gather support both within Columbia as well as globally. This past Monday, between 500,000 and 2 million Columbians marched in the streets, with thousands joining them in over 133 countries worldwide.
FARC, which in English stands for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia-People's Army, considers itself to be a guerilla movement for Columbian communism. Most of the rest of the world, including Columbia, prefers the term "terrorist organization". The movement is specifically geared toward halting the ubiquitous kidnapping tactics employed by FARC, claiming that thousands have been wrongly imprisoned by the group for over a decade.
Nevertheless, some Columbians feel that the movement may serve only to polarize the country. Though they acknowledge the importance of standing up to unethical practices such as kidnapping, protesting FARC itself is a bit more nuanced. From The Christian Science Monitor:
"While few Colombians support the Marxist insurgent army that has been fighting the Colombian state for more than 40 years, many people are uncomfortable with the message of Monday's rally. They would prefer a broader slogan against kidnapping and in favor of peace and of negotiations between the government and the rebels to exchange hostages for jailed rebels. The leftist Polo Democratico Party said it will hold a rally in Bogotá in favor of a negotiation but would not march. Some senators say they will march against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and other participants say they will be marching in favor of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe."
The group's discussion board is probably the best insight into the myriad issues and sentiments the struggle evokes amongst Central and South American youth, reflecting struggles against racism, classism, and corrupt governments. Thanks to Claire-bear for keeping her finger on the pulse of Free Speech Radio!
A repost from my other blog, WebnographY, where I track changing attitudes and past research on online social networking. I thought it a pertinent topic for Iggli, as well. Enjoy
The following was initially a comment on danah boyd's recent post discussing Facebook's "slippery slope" of betraying its users, most recently with Project Beacon. Please share your thoughts if you have them!
"Trusting
Facebook users" are generally older folk- I think they're more open to
publicizing their online profiles because they're seeking to make
connections, they're gaining from the public exposure and excited by
all the novel possibilities. My ethnography of social networking sites
primarily re/presents the voices of college students- particularly
veteran Facebook users. The site started out as being a great little
niche environment, so people could exchange intimate messages and
upload photos from that crazy party where everyone was on a ton of
drugs and so on. Then it opened up, everyone was pissed, and that's
when attitudes toward Facebook started to shift.
Most
first-generation Facebookers have some degree of distrust/disgust for
the site, often a great deal of it. Yet they continue to use it because
it's become so firmly integrated into campus social life- it's a way to
easily invite people to parties and share photos from said parties, to
visually organize one's social network and keep track of alumni and old
high school buddies, to find out the sexuality or relationship status
of that boy you've been admiring from afar. It's crucial. If you're not
on Facebook, you're going to be somewhat out of the loop.
Such
important social practices generally take precedence over the egregious
invasions of privacy that most are highly suspicious of. The trend is
not abandoning Facebook- it's far too useful. However, the site's
reputation is definitely tainted, and some Facebookers are using the
site to form or join groups that promote awareness of Facebook's
privacy policies and petition for change. Most, however, are simply
becoming more savvy and protective of their online personas; it's
become increasingly common for me to be unable to access the profiles
of those I'm not friends with because of that practice. Others have
simply taken to deleting much of their profiles, leaving just an e-mail
address, a witty or ironic comment, and maybe a funny picture. There's
also a huge trend to apathetically accept that nothing can be done
about it, much like how a lot of young people feel about our government.
Again,
these are just observations of the changing attitudes among a specific
subset of Facebook users. They know what's going on (though I would say
that only the Tech-savvy blog-readers have even heard about Project
Beacon- but they know their information is being used for capitalist
endeavors), they're disgruntled that so much of what they do on
Facebook is publicly broadcast and forever archived. Regardless of how
they talk about it, however, they're still using it regularly for
everyday social practices. For many, it's become as habitual to check
Facebook as it is to check e-mail.
Over the past few months, I've been discovering ways in which the
dead live on on the Internet. The project was a rather emotional one; I
was besieged by the guilt of voyeurism, morbid late nights spent
transfixed by the raw humanity of it all, and at times so overwhelmed
by the heartbreaking significance of remembrance of the deceased that I
could not hold back tears. What follows are bits and pieces of the
final research paper, entitled Online Social Networks As Vehicles of Individual and Collective Remembrance. The full paper can be found here, if you're interested!
This past winter, my grandmother was
diagnosed with the cancer that led to her eventual death the following
spring. A devoted mother of 14 children, they together grappled with
many difficult spiritual and medical decisions throughout her illness.
One evening, I witnessed firsthand the incredible unity and strength
that comes about in the toughest of life’s challenges, and the capacity
for technology to extend our possibilities. Ten of my aunts and uncles
took part in a conference call to discuss plans and options: my mother,
a nurse, gave medical advice; my uncle Joe, manager of a medicinal
supply company, arranged the delivery of a special bed; my aunt Mary,
who works for an insurance company, discussed insurance options; my
uncle Jack, a devout Christian, had been researching spiritual healing
centers; my grandmother herself interjected often with words of love,
faith, and strength. However, it became apparent to me that some voices
were not being heard, and my father later commented on the high expense
of conference calls. Fueled by a desire to help, I realized that I
could tap into my specific area of expertise, online social media. In a
matter of hours, I set up a public wiki and encouraged my family
members to write in the communal blog, help in the creation of an
extensive address book, and arrange visits on a digital calendar .
The wiki was quickly adopted by a substantial majority of my
family, including the many out-of-town grandchildren. It became a
source of ongoing updates about my grandmother’s condition, and the
calendar proved particularly useful for organizing a continuous stream
of visits and appointments. When she passed away this past spring, my
family continued to regularly update the blog with tales of their daily
struggles, fond memories of the past, inspirational quotes and Biblical
passages. They also posted photographs and videos. The site became a
living memorial in some ways. Fundamentally, however, the wiki remained
a tool for ongoing communication pertaining mostly to present
circumstances, as well as a convenient address and phonebook. For the
past six months, it has been the source of daily updates about my
grandfather and his care, my grandmother’s presence relegated to
archived posts and photo albums. Such a shift exemplifies the need to
move on, to collectively heal through renewed emphasis on what is
happening in the present moment, while also preserving and
commemorating the past.
The Internet is a complex new medium that allows for the intimacy,
interactivity, and convenience of speech as well as the permanency,
permeability, and immateriality of writing. The principal aim of this
project is a phenomenological exploration of the ways in which these
unique facets of the Internet have expanded the process of remembering
the dead. Specifically, I have examined examples of “online shrines” on
the social networking sites MySpace, Facebook, and Tribe.net,
positioning them as vehicles for individual and collective remembrance
of the dead. Each of these three sites differs significantly in terms
of demographics, site features, and normative practices, and thus each
will be analyzed in its own section. My analysis of this phenomenon is
supplemented by online news articles, Internet forums, conversations
with my friends, and literature from a variety of disciplines
(philosophy, media studies, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and
cognitive psychology). Furthermore, this analysis incorporates a
variety of perspectives in the aim of providing a more complete
framework for understanding the complexities inherent to new
technologies, which blur pre-existing boundaries of space, time,
privacy, communication, representation, and memory.
The increasing ubiquity of online social networking in the
everyday lives of the youth has resulted in the public archival of
personal information as a normative practice. Despite popular discourse
that perpetuates a distinction between “virtual” cyberspace and “real
life”, it is evident that people are integrating technologies of the
Internet into their lives as extensions of everyday communication and
identity performance. By virtue of its embeddedness in the everyday
interactions of young people, the Internet is in some respects a “cool”
medium (Levinson 2000: 113). To invoke another McLuhanism, “the medium
is the message”- that is, media develop as extensions of ourselves,
shaped by changing cultural conditions that are in turn affected by
these new technologies. In his book discussing the impact of electronic
media on social behavior, Joshua Meyrowitz (1985) writes that “one of
the reasons Americans may no longer seem to ‘know their place’ is that
they no longer have a place in the traditional sense of a set of
behaviors matched to physical locations and the audiences found in them
(7)”. Electronic media have altered our perceptual fields by extending
them beyond the realm of direct, face-to-face interaction. In turn, the
relationship between physical place and our social environment has been
considerably weakened, allowing for the emergence of new pathways and
horizons of experience.
Though death is a universal inevitability of humankind, and though
it may come at any time, it is precisely for these reasons that we go
about our everyday lives without consciously factoring in its imminent
possibility. If we did, we would forever be locked in existential
stasis. To act is to direct oneself toward some future possibility- of
happiness, reward, prestige, love, security, and on and on. Thus, when
we “type ourselves into being” online, we are motivated by such
possibilities and often fail to factor in that we are creating traces
of ourselves that will outlive their creators. However, just as traces
of a deceased individual persist to exist in the remembrances of others
and through objects such as graves and photographs, so too do they
persist in the ethereal realm of the Internet. Like traditional
memorial services, the sites of these traces can serve to connect
previously unaffiliated individuals through their shared grief. The
Internet expands this possibility of connection, for it is in many ways
easier to articulate deeply felt feelings to strangers through the
anonymity, convenience, and immateriality of online communication.
Though it is not particularly pleasant to ponder the traces we leave of
ourselves after death, this project has hopefully illuminated the ways
in which online profiles evolve into ongoing sites of commemoration,
suggesting that we take into consideration how we choose to represent
ourselves through them.
This redhead is getting pretty pissed off- not only at the increasingly exploitive surveillance of people around the world, but also with widespread apathetic acceptance of blatant privacy violations. Get a grip, people! Stop bitching about spam on MySpace or dysfunctional applications on Facebook and learn a thing or two about user controls! You're not being nearly as victimized as you'd like to believe.
Lesson #1: No, you can't track who views your profile on Facebook. Not even Trakzor will help you- it's just another useless Facebook application. I get a high proportion of hits to my blog, WebnographY, from those seeking to find the answer to this question. The answer is no. The only way you could possibly ever tell was if whoever was reading your profile just happened to have installed the same dumb application. Odds are slim it's someone you were hoping would be "stalking" you... sorry!
... oh, and don't worry- no one can tell you're refreshing their profiles every two minutes unless you click on a Trakzor link.
Lesson #2: Craft a Limited Profile on Facebook, and use it for family members, co-workers, and anyone else you'd prefer not to be exposed to photos of your most recent debacles. A few months ago, my father assured me not to worry about my Facebook, 'cause "there's nothing too bad on there". Turns out my sister had left herself logged into her account on his computer, granting him free reign to scour through the little details of our college lives. Craft a Limited Profile and check "Show Limited Profile" to any Friend Requests from those who are even the least bit untrustworthy, including your little sis.
Lesson #3: Regularly browse through all tagged photos of yourself. This one is really important, especially for all you high school MySpacers who don't see a problem with posting photos of that last kegger. You just don't know if your principal's created an account and is jotting down your names, as my high school principal did before he called a dozen kids into his office. And, though you may be quite proud of your latest nude photo shoot, I assure you that you are being judged. Harshly. At the very least, make such photos "Friends Only" instead of revealing your titties to the world at large!
Unless you're into that sorta thing, you little exhibitionist, you.
Lesson #4: You've got more control than you realize. Tired of reading headlines about high school friends you haven't spoken to in 5 years? You can control what updates are shown to you- all it takes is a bit of fiddling around with settings and preferences. Sick of getting bitten by vampires and having your brains eaten by zombies? Click on the invitation, scroll down the page a bit and click "Block Application" on the right-hand side of the screen. Poof! No more blood/brain loss! On MySpace, you can choose to moderate your comments, meaning that you get to review what's being posted on your profile and accept or decline messages. Friend tagged an embarrassing photo of you? De-tag it. Don't want just anyone to find you? Change your name to an alias.
Lesson #5: Take a note out of Tribe.net’s book: lean on intimately-established networks of trust. Find smaller social networking sites where you can engage in thoughtful discussion about your eclectic interests with those of equal passion and intelligence. Smaller sites ensure you won't get spammed, phished, and friended by the bitch who talked shit about you in high school. Remember, it's up to you to control how you spend your time on the Internet. You can waste it in the underwhelming pursuit of diminishing your self-confidence through comparison to others, or you can engage your mind and creativity by chasing after the most whimsical of fascinations.
Thought I'd keep it short and limit it to 5 tips; please post comments and/or questions below, and I'll address them in a follow-up post!
