online sociability, consumption and new media technologies

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Katholische Universitt Eichsttt-Ingolstadt

Fakultt fr Soziologie

Vorlesung: Media Sociology

Prof. Dr. Joost van Loon

Wintersemester 2011/2012

Online Sociability, Consumption and New Media

Technologies

Datum der Abgabe: 31/03/2012

Stephannie Melo das Neves

Avenida Sucuri, Santa Genoveva.

74674 300 GoiniaBrasil

[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]



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Table of Contents

1. Introduction S. 3

2. New spaces, old frontiers. S. 4

2.1Online Sociability: Community Model x Consumption Model S. 4

2.2New Media Technologies: the case of Instagram. S. 5

2.3Brand: the Apple product S. 6

2.4Advertising as Myth S. 6

2.5 Electronic Reproduction. S. 7

3. Conclusion S. 7

4. Literature S. 9



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1. Introduction

According to the 2011 Mobile Media Report from the global marketing and

advertising research company Nielsen, nearly half of mobile subscribers in the U.S

own a smartphone device. The most used is the Apple IPhone. In Germany nearly

30% of the mobile users aged 16+ own smartphones, 85% are touchscreen. This

media has taken its place as socially organized processes (Van Loon, 2008).

In April 2011 I got a gadget from the American company Apple. It is an

iTouch, a music player with a touch screen, camera, and loads of other functions.

Soon the device became so much more than a way to actually listen to music. A

few days later I downloaded an application from the iTunes Store. It soon became

one of the most used functions on my gadget, the photo sharing social network

Instagram; only available for mobile gadgets from Apple. Instagram has 15 million

users and is the 4thapp most downloaded in iTunes Store. Instagram was the first

social network, displacing the 845 million users Facebook.

This very particular invasion of Instagrams world made me think about the

boundaries that exist between the two models of social use of the internet

proposed by Maria Bakardjieva; the community model and the consumption

model. The question I will develop in this essay, using Instagrams example as

background, is in the context of how internet consumption practices mingle with

communitarian practices, making invisible the real purposes of capital behind

production, the sharing of content and users involvement.

According to Van Loon (2008), media enframes the world, and creates the

need to be understood not as instruments or tools butas agents of political,

social and cultural processes. The media order the political, social and cultural

processes in a double sense of providing a structure and commanding specific

actions. According to the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard the transformation

of all relations and meanings into sign, appropriated and consumed, has become

a defining model of our civilization.

According to the authors above, this essay has as starting point at the idea

that the relation between users and media and consumptions totalizing aspects,

understood as myth (Kellner, 2009), has brought consumption values and needs

into what Bakardjieva called the qualitative distinction between the consumption

model - the presence of users involvement with each other. Through the example

of the rise of mobile devices and more specifically, Instagrams case, this essay



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wants to construct some meaning of social reality, revealing through the practices

around Instagram, other possibilities of social use of internet that mingle inter-

subjectively between users and the social reproduction of the capital.

2. New spaces, old frontiers.

2.1 Online Sociability: Community model x Consumption model

Maria Bakardjieva, in her book Internet Society (2005), points out two

different modelsemerged in the last decadeto understand the social use of

the Internet: the consumption model and the community model. The first one has

its roots in the first professionals and users of the Internet. Their goal at the time

was to make research centers, libraries and other information generation and

storing institutions available for online user. With the growing adoption of the new

medium, especially by the middle class, the internet turned into a place of retrieval

of goods and services. Also the enhancement of computers higher speed and

capacity of transmission, graphical interfaces, speed and visual appeal but also

privacy, anonymity and reliability resources, made industries and individuals

embrace the use of internet as a place of consumption.

The community model has its roots in the later internet builders and users.

Through platforms like Usernet, IRC and mailing lists for instance, these people

exchanged and shared files. When internet achieved a broader audience the

platforms changed but the idea of producing something of value for others stayed

as this models particularity. A discussion around the concept of community is

undertaken in Bakardjievas book, the author say that the debate around the

community model lies especially in the vague normativity of the concept of

community, which defects attention from the fact that a continuum of forms of

being and acting together (Virtual Togetherness) is growing from the technology of

the internet.

From the enthusiastic perspectivethe internet as a place to generate

ideas, deliberate and act collectivelyto the skeptical perspectivecommunities

destroying the intellectual tradition of technological criticism, confirming the

triumph of commercial model over community modelthe concept of community

was appropriated differently by every social actor. Bakardjieva assumes a

relativistic perspective pointing out that every user generates a rich repertoire of



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use genres of the medium, which is approached from a variety of situational

motivations, needs and ideologies. Therefore, the qualitative distinction between

the consumption model and the community model lies in the presence/absence of

usersinvolvement with each other.

Bakardjievas perspective to close the range of possibilities within a

phenomenon in only two models remembers the parsonian structural-

functionalism. Despite of the authors relativistic perspective within the use

genres she still stuck in a kind of normatively-regulated perception of users

agency. In my opinion a further investigation on consumption issues could solve

the problem without decreasing the importance of the conceptualization of

community already developed.

Using Instagrams example this essay intends to bring more information for

the discussion around consumption and to give the conceptual basis for the thesis

proposed here.

2.2 New Media Technologies: the case of Instagram.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary online, the word application in

computer use means a computer program that is designed for a particular

purpose. Instagram is an application designed exclusively for Apple mobile

devices (such as the iPhone) whose prospective usersritual will be to: make

photos or use those that you already have in your iPhone, choose within 20

different vintage filtersor noneand share it. Its description says:

15 million users love Intagram! Its free, fun, and simple way to make and share gorgeous photos

on your iPhone. Pick from one of several gorgeous filter effects or till-shift blur to breathe a new life

into your mobile photos. Transform everyday moments into works of art youll want to share withfriends and family.

The description shows that the builders have a prospective behaviour of the user

within the Application. Instagrams interface is very simple; itscomposed by a

main display and a task bar below it. There are four different buttons on its

taskbar: Feed, Popular, Sharing and Profile. Feed and Sharing are the central

windows in comparison to the windows we cycle through (Turkle, 1995) in the



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PCs -, in the first one you see what others shared and in the second one you

produce your own content.

2.3 Brand: the Apple product.

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard extended his understanding of

communication to practice of consumption (Van Loon, 2008) and worked with the

Brand phenomenon. Baudrillard argues that objects do not exist as being isolated,

but instead being in relation to others. Even though many objects have a utilitarian

aspect, what is essential is their capacity to signify a status. Economic needs are

not the basis of social life, like in the Marxist tradition, but rather the values we

hold true make up the basis.

The brand for instance, is nothing but pure connotation; it denotes nothing

and can be attached to anything (Van Loon, 2008). A brand becomes real in so far

as they solidify their status as myth. Still according to Baudrillard, the

transformation of all relations into sign, appropriated and consumed, has become

a defining model of our civilization.

2.4 Advertising as Myth

According to the French anthropologist Jean Lvi-Strauss, the Myth is a

narrative which unites antagonistic poles. The elements of the myth acquire

meaning from the way they are combined rather than from their intrinsic value.

When we associate for instance the technological resources and design within a

mobile phone, with life-style and values of sophistication or beauty, we

associate very distinctive poles, beginning from the dichotomy of

materiality/immateriality.

For Lvi-Strauss, once contradiction is an inassimilable aspect of human

societies, the myth is a constant attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. The mythic

narrative of the contemporary consumption world is advertising (Kellner, 1995) and

it keeps creating and re-creating itself every moment, reproducing the capitals

values and logic. Our world has been commoditized and the replication of its

myths testifies the victory of the simulacrum (Van Loon, 2008).

Advertising appeals to the University of Products Value. The famous

campaigns from the Italian clothing retailer Benetton, showing ethnic, gender and

generation diversity exemplifies advertisingswish to be universal; to transpose all



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cultural boundaries in the name of one practice: consumption. If we take a look on

the current furor around Apple products on their webpage for instance, we will not

see an abundance of visual appeal nor aggressive incursion into other mediums

such as television, but rather a kind of sobriety; patronized products and

decentralized marketing strategies that directly involve the users. The Apple

product is a door to other correlated products, but once you cant afford an

iPhone for instance, youre automatically excluded from all the processes. From

consumption emerges differentiationenhanced by its system of signsrather

than equality (Lechte, 2010)

2.5 Electronic Reproduction.

The content in Instagram is made for sharing. The main purpose of its

existence is to generate content according to their style and then share it.

Everyday life is the main theme around the photos taken and thats whyit is only

available for mobile devices. Like the description says, their purpose is to turn a

photo of something ordinary into an artistic work. For Bakardjieva we negotiate

constant levels of anonymity in our virtual agency, taking photos of your ordinary

everyday experience seems intrusive and reveals many aspects of ones life. But if

we take Baudrillards reflection on the simulacra in media and consumer society

we wont find a negotiation of anonymity levelsbecause rather than the subjects

agency on negotiating, the reality there is a loss of contact with the real, in which

everything becomes fragmented and dissolved. Individuals are confronted with an

overwhelming influx of images, codes, and models, in which one becomes a pure

screen a pure absorption and re-absorption surface of the influent networks(cited

in Van Loon, 2008). Still according to Baudrillard, consumption undermines the

distinction between true and false needs and the artificial and real.

5. Conclusion

The fragmentation of pluralism and values in capitalism, seen with the rise

of post-Fordism, shows that capitalism, more than ever, became a flexible

ideology that will adapt to changing conditions. Capitalism is empty of meaning in

a way that it will seek to co-opt many social forms to reproduce the capital. Thats

why I believe Bakardjievas model plays an important role in an understanding of



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present-day internet society. To focus first on the continuous forms of being and

acting together online is, to reveal the structures on which consumption will act.

Bakardjievas book Internet Society was published in 2005. By that time

smartphones were not around and the possibilities of connection between internet

and mobile devices were taking their first steps. Online consumption was at the

time, mostly an extension of shopping in physical stores. Users rituals followed

the same logic, beginning with the infiltration inside the store and the products

available, and finishing with the payment.

I believe the qualitative distinction on consuming online lays on the fact that

consumption became also a continuous process, in which the inter-subjectivity

among users and the production and sharing of content became a central part to

the ritual.

The structures of the so-called social network seems to encourage the

permanent sharing of every action one takes online: the films one sees, the music

one hears and the things one buys. Within Instagram we see the ownership of a

specific media technology as the starting point of the interaction.

We went from consuming on theinternetto consuming the internet;

and consuming the internet undertakes itself as a constitutive part users needs

and values.

This essays critic on Bakardjievas reflectionlies on her proposal that the

production of meaning from one person to another escapes the consumption logic.

Unlike Baudrillard, who believes that the simulacrum has undertaken all human

social construction, I believe, just like Bakardjieva, that we still have onlineor

offlineforms of resistance, that are successful to escaping that logic. Even

though Bakardjieva didnt build, at the first moment, the user genres perspective

to contemplate also the spaces where consumption ideologies push itself inside

communitarian practices; I believe they are worthwhile for this understanding.



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6. Literature

BAKARDJIEVA, Maria (2005): Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life.

1. publ. London [u.a.]: Sage, 2005.

BAKARDJIEVA, Maria (2003): Virtual Togetherness: An Everyday Life Perspective,

Media, Culture & Society 25(3), retrieved in 10 March 2012,

.

KELLNER, Douglas (2009): Lendo Imagens Criticamente: Em Direo A Uma

Moderna. In: SILVA, T.T. (org.) 2009. Aliengenas em sala de aula. 8. Ed.Petrpolis,

RJ: Vozes, 2009(Coleo Estudos Culturais em Educao) P. 104 131.

LOON, Joost van (2008): Media Technology: Critical Perspectives. Maidenhead, England:

Open University Press, 2008.

LECHTE, John (2010): 50 pensadores contemporneos essenciais: Do estruturalismo

Ps-Modernidade. Traduo: Flvio Fernandes. 5. ed.Rio de Janeiro; DIFEL, 2010.

Nielsen, US, The Media Report: State of Media (Q3 2011), retrieved in 10 March 2012,

TURKLE, Sherry (2004): Our Split Screens, in: Feenberg, Andrew/Barney, Darin (Hrsg.),

Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice, Lanham, MD: Rowman and

Littlefield, S. 101-117.

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