Week 2

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Week 2

Contents

[edit] Video

Online Identity by Staticfuror

danah boyd lecture (On your own time)

[edit] Week 2

[edit] Surveying the Field of Online Social Networks

  • Some questions to begin..
    • What can we learn from online social networks?
      • What can we learn about interpersonal interaction?
      • What can we learn about changing privacy and disclosure norms?
      • What can we learn about the role of the computer in our social lives?
      • What is changing as a result of online social technologies?
    • Pew's stats: Surprising?
      • 55% of teens use OSN's (What about the other 45%?)
      • Gender differences
      • 39% of teens create content online (blog, video, etc)

[edit] boyd, boyd and Ellison

Definition of a SNS

  • Profile construction
  • Articulate a friends list
  • Traverse the friends list
  • Q: Why is it important to define/articulate a definition of SNS?
  • Q: What is missing from this list, and why?
  • Q: Are we not "networking" all the time on SNS?
  • SNS are unique not because of relationships, networking, but because of revealed (latent) ties
  • We aren't meeting new people in SNS...or are we?
  • Hargittai's notion of structural separation

Themes in SNS research

  • Impression management/friendship performance
  • Network/network structure
  • Offline/online connection
  • Privacy

Other issues

  • Relationship management
  • Cultural processes
  • SNS in context: Business/Practice
  • What else?

boyd's four properties of networked public

  • Persistence
  • Searchability
  • Replicability
  • Invisible Audiences

What is a "Public"

  • Habermasian notion of the bourgeois public sphere
    • Public spehere consisted of 'origins of information and political debate' - newspapers, journals, political clubs, pubs and coffee shops
    • Private interests were overcome to allow the discovery of common interests and consensus
    • Individuals could shape public opinion and influence practice
  • Challenges of a unary public spehere
    • Media and language subvert public spheres; embedded in power in social systems, ultimately serve hegemonic interests
    • We become spectators of the discourse
  • Multiple public speheres
    • New public speres provide accessible spaces for discourse
    • Networked public spheres - a reaction to spaces of controlled discourse (teens - malls, parks, etc)

Other key concepts

  • Non participants. boyd cits disenfranchised teens and conscientious objectors
    • Q: What is the makeup of NP's?
  • Network segmentation. Who can we see, who can see us, why?
  • Communication behaviors. SNS are unique as they facilitate public-private communication
    • Q: What pct of your SNS communication is public?
  • Profiles as places for interaction
    • Goffman's notions of impression managment
  • Profile building as venue for socialization, acculturation, etc.

[edit] Turkle

The Subjective Computer

  • Constructions of identity in simulated spaces
  • Identity play/Changing contexts/How are we creating and exploring identity in SNS?
  • Subjective/Objective computer, how we search for meaning in the screen
  • Poststructuralist approaches - what does Turkle mean?

Why read Turkle in Week 1?

  • We've become accustomed to opaque technology (we're no longer interacting with machines, per se)
  • We've learned to take things as interface value (an artifact of computing culture only?)
  • We've used our relationships with technology to inflect on the person
  • We've sought out the "subjective computer" (we seek the intervention of computer in our lives)

As science attempts to reveal a programmed self, Turkle sees the computer as a device that allows, even encourages, identity play.

[edit] Questions

  • Is true identity play dead on the social web? Can we still experiment with identity, or is this simply an artifact of a less-technical age?
  • Are large-scale social networks tenable? Will we naturally segment by interest or group?
  • Where does the parent/child technical arms race lead? As teens naturally seek spaces for interaction, how will they continue to avoid the helicopter parents?
  • What are the challenges and risks of contextual identity? What are the risks in constructing a digital identity?
  • What is the subtext of identity? What are we saying when we leave items out of a profile?

[edit] Group Exercise

Four groups, discuss the following three questions:

  • In the age of SNS, can we have multiple identities, or are all of our identity facets findable?
  • What challenges/threats does online identity pose in our various social "realms" - personal, business, academic?
  • Do these tools make your life better? Are they a burden or an aid?

[edit] Quick Links

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