Social Media: Uses and Abuses of the Web as a Social Space

Jennifer JonesDepartment of Media and CommunicationsUniversity of Leicesterhttp://jennifr.net

Introduction: Jennifer Jones

Social Media: Uses + Abuses

•The Internet is ...

•Self-defined user.

•Next Steps: Stop talking, start doing.

•“With the fading of hype surrounding virtual reality 10 years ago, we are now in a perfect position to analyse the deep correlation between embodiment and virtuality and also to take stock of how much the virtual has been absorbed into everyday life.” (Hasen, 2006: x)

“The web is not an object...”

Yet..

Sound Familiar?

Utopian and Dystopian Myths of Technology

•Myths are stories that animate individuals and societies by providing paths to transcendence that lift people out of the banality of everyday life. They offer entrance to another to another reality, a reality once characterised by the promise of the sublime. (Mosco, 2006: 3)

Utopian, Dystopian and Normality

Scaremongers Evangelists

looking at the bigger picture

Whilst not losing track of social dynamics

Second Life: A Literal Virtual World

•Myth in the making: An approach where the virtual can only be seen as a fully-immersive self-contained fantasy world.

•Visual, Outsider Perspective: Don’t need to participate (or even enter it) to observe and comment.

•Digital Avatar: Can see it, can generalise it, can talk about it as a “removable” object...

Mixed Reality Paradigm

•“...rather than conceiving the virtual as a total technical simulacrum and as the opening of a fully immersive, self-contained fantasy world, the mixed reality paradigm treats it as simply one more realm among others that can be accessed through embodied perception or enaction. In this way, emphasis falls less on what is perceived in the world than on how it comes to be perceived in the first place.” (Hasen, 2006: 5)

The Self-Defined User

•“We ask not just about where we stand in nature, but about where we stand in the world of artifact. We search for a link between who we are and what we have made, between who we are and what we might create, between who we are and what, through our intimacy with our creations, we might become.” (Turkle, 1984: 2)

The Digital Avatar

•“We marvel at the sights and sounds brought into our homes and places of work and about the Internet’s non-spatial features. We think more about its ability to “take us places” and less about its insertion into the mundane practices of our everyday life.” (Jones, 1997: 12)

What are we seeing:

•No obvious “avatar” - a mix of text, images, video, audio (content) and conversation.

•Fluidity between online and offline relationships.

•Personalised Networks: we are opting in to look at different screens and streams.

Social Media Abuse

Much of the dynamics worth valuing are not going to be reflected in a bird eye view of the system.

Social Media Use:Stop talking, Start doing!

“Social Media, as a platform will only start being useful when we stop talking about it and start using it...”

Embedded Participant Observation

•Using the online tools : twitter, google docs, blog + more

•Connecting and relationship building: online and offline

•Reflection: blogging, conversations

•Self-defined user sample: opt-in

•Attempting to read theory from practice

•learning through practice, being rather than doing

Research Objectives

•Collaboration/Participation

•Attempting to make sense of the “mess” - the non-literal virtual space

•Timelessness

•Reflective

Conclusions

•Similarities in critiques and enthusiasms that we see with any cycle of technological adoption

•Life changes when the myths displace

•Moving targets and social spaces

•Call for innovative methods and embedded involvement

•Dynamics from within - not from a birds-eye bystander

•Understanding the social narrative, not making assumptions as a by stander.