Sarah Wilson

Eng. 213/Dr. Newbold

Emerging Media Report

Article Link: http://hdl.handle.net/1961/4433

How many “friendships” does Facebook or Myspace say you have? 50? 150? 500+? Imagine this scenario: you log onto either of the two and a reminder that it is Henry Smith’s birthday pops up on top. Take my advice; if you feel weird writing a simple “happy birthday” on his wall, it’s time to defriend. Although this isn’t the greatest present, it’s the method used by me and many of my friends to determine our “weak ties,” “strong ties,” and “intermediary ties,” as discussed in the article [master’s thesis] “Facebook “Friends” How Online Identities Impact Offline Relationships” by Jessica Marie Vitak.

Vitak’s article explores the line that is currently separating digital relationships and more traditional, offline relationships and discusses how it is beginning to blur, thanks in large part to social networking websites. According to Vitak: “Strength of ties between two individuals can be evaluated according to the amount of time spent together, the emotional intensity of the relationship, the level of intimacy and the degree of reciprocity” (17). However, what if that tie develops outside the physical realm? If you are unlike me and write happy birthday to everyone, than your social networking sites are probably booming with “weak ties.” However, what I found surprising was that weak ties are most important and vital to the social network! These acquaintances or people we’ve never met face-to-face (“weak ties”) create local bridges between members of the network, which provide a person with a larger number of paths and shorter paths to information. Thus, information is much easily attainable and less work and time is spent gathering it. Plus, Facebook publicly displays your links to others, which can strengthen a tie such as between you and someone you have multiple mutual friends with. However, a large amount of links, or friendships, can create an illusion of popularity. Yet, these links can lead to groups where one can find others with mutual interest, such as animal lovers, car enthusiasts, and even Goths. 

Despite this easy access to information on millions, it is important to differentiate between one’s real world identity and one’s virtual identity. Vitak defines one’s real world identity as: “the sum total of that individual’s traits and interactions as presented in a typical social setting, whereas she defines ones virtual identity as: completely constructed through the information presented in his/her profile on the social networking website to which the individual belongs, as well as the communication between that person and his/her online friends. This construction of a virtual identity reminded me of the writing of McLuhan in his book, The Medium is the Massage. He wrote that we aren’t only shaped by our family anymore, but by several varieties of media as well. We have the ability to leave the “front-stage” parts of us behind, offline, and publish the “back-stage” parts of ourselves online. However, this isn’t always a good thing. These two separate identities bring me back to Shirky’s discussion on filtering and publishing.  With technology becoming such a vital part of life, filtering and publishing is becoming just as vital. A large majority of occupations expect a professional demeanor from their employees both inside and outside of work. As a future teacher, I understand this greatly. While close friends and family (“strong ties”) may ignore the misspelled words, incorrect grammar, and drunken pictures on your Facebook page, future employers, and newly established friends (“weak ties”), may not be as accepting.

We have more time to reflect on our thoughts when we use CMC communication. We are not put on the spot, but have time to pause and organize our ideas. I feel like this went against Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”  He states that the internet is taking away our deep thought processes and making us lazy, but as the article I read states: “Those employing interactive strategies through email fond their partners’ rating their communication effectiveness much higher; and when asked personal questions, those communicating via email offered more detailed answers than those communicating face-to-face.” Could more clarity in our words positively influence our friendships in real life, as well as online?

This brings me to the next point discussed in the article: how social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace work and influence the strength of ties of offline and online friendships.  Facebook and Myspace allow anyone to submit their favorite books, movies, music, quotes, and even photos from childhood, Christmas, or last week’s movie night. Depending on each person’s privacy settings, this information might not be readily accessible to new future “friends” or onlookers. However, when the friendship becomes official, both friends can mutually learn about the other by reading their interests and browsing pictures. If a new friend recognizes the clash of the other friend’s virtual identity and real world identity, it might end up putting a dent in the real life friendship. Although, if two friends separated by distance choose to reconnect on a networking site like Facebook, strong ties may be maintained and even strengthened further. However, it is possible if one friend becomes sucked into the virtual world of Facebook and chooses to do a majority of his or her communication through that platform, a higher amount of weaker ties can develop.

Furthermore, the function of social networking sites and their influence on the strength of ties of offline and online friendships reminded me immensely of Chapter 3 of Shirky’s book, Here Comes Everybody. In this chapter, platforms such as Flickr promote “share than gather” activity. From reading this article, I feel as though Facebook and Myspace also promote “share than gather” activity. Not just by befriending each other first and then sharing information about each other, but by then copying and pasting links that pop-up on every friend’s network.  These can include current events, interesting blogs, personal blogs, or any informative information available online. Moreover, this allows every person to become a media outlet, like Shirky discussed in Chapter 3 of his book Here Comes Everybody.

Sarah R's report.

October 20, 2010

Emerging Media Research Report

The author of this current research paper is making the assumption that the reader knows and understands what Facebook is and does as a social networking site.  If the reader does not have this basis of knowledge the author would like to direct you to Neil Selwyn’s introduction in the article below.  Selwyn gives background information on the use, history, and development of the Facebook social networking site.  In the article entitled, “ ‘Screw Blackboard… do it on Facebook!’: and investigation of students’ educational use of Facebook,” Selwyn discusses the academic use of Facebook at the University of London in the United Kingdom. 

Facebook offers perhaps the most appropriate contemporary online setting within which to explore how social software applications ‘fit’ with higher educational settings and communities of educational users and, therefore, investigate the current assumptions surrounding social software and education. (Selwyn)

Facebook is the opportunity that Selwyn had been looking for to see how social networking sites are used in the educational system, more specifically the educational system within universities.  The debate among educators seems to boil down to whether or not these social networking sites actually help the students in their studies or if they really just impede the student’s pursuit for an education.  Selwyn proceeds to do a study to try and make some conclusions in either direction on the matter at hand. 

The group studied was undergraduate students attending Coalsville University in the school of Social Science. With 909 students in the Social Science School only 694 had active Facebook accounts, over the course of a four month period of data collection, and 68,169 wall postings over a five month period of analysis this study appears to have been supported with evidence. 

The evidence directed toward educational-related postings on the 694 profiles within the study brought forth five main themes including:  recounting and reflecting on the university experience, exchange of practical information, exchange of academic information, displays of supplication and/or disengagement, and exchanges of humor and nonsense.  As a college student the author of this paper certainly can agree that these are the most common themes in her own experience with Facebook and the educational posts she herself has made.  If a Facebook user were to log on right now they would very likely find all of these types of postings among their networks. 

Selwyn comes to the conclusion that, “…in terms of education-related interaction, Facebook was used primarily for maintaining strong links between people already in relatively tight-knit, emotionally close offline relationships, rather than creating new points of contact with a ‘glocalised’ community of students from other courses or even other institutions.”

In Marshall McLuhan’s book, “The Medium is the Massage,” he makes the following statement:

At the high speeds of electric communication, purely visual means of apprehending the world are no longer possible; they are just too slow to be relevant or effective. … Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously.  As soon as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. …We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of the experience coexist in a state of active interplay.

Technology, specifically social networking, has given us the ability to be a part of individual’s lives without necessarily investing in their lives.  The Facebook postings that Selwyn observed kept a few strong bonds between close friends.  Visual means of apprehending the world are just too slow; so instead of meeting face to face students are becoming more dependent upon social networking sites.  This transfer to technology based communication could be seen as a good or a bad thing depending upon the circle of critics involved.      

And yet Selwyn states that the data shows that students are doing the exact same thing they have always done only now it is instantly spread to more than just the small group in the back of the lecture hall. Students are still investing in their close friendships only in a new medium. In a sense the data listed shows,

How Facebook has become an important site for the informal, cultural learning of ‘being’ a student, with online interactions and experiences allowing roles to be learnt, values understood and identities shaped. … Facebook should therefore be seen as an increasingly important element of students’ meaning-making activities, especially where they reconstruct past events and thereby confer meaning onto the overarching university experience.

As an avid Facebook user the author of this piece would have to agree with much of what Selwyn states in his article, but cannot say that Facebook has not wasted hours of her time.  As one of the opening remarks to Selwyn’s article states, “We're all going to fail university. It's not because we're stupid, or because we don't do any work. It's because of an uncontrollable addiction to Facebook and msn. When we're not drinking, or being hungover, or thinking about drinking while being hungover, we're talking about drinking and debauchery on msn or Facebook. This has got to stop. It won't, we all know that, but it should,”

Introductory statement from the ‘Facebook is Sucking Out My Soul and MSN is Feeding on the

Remains’.  Although there may be benefits to Facebook such as networking, keeping in contact with classmates, and all the other reasons it is helpful, it seems that the average student is not using Facebook as a medium to pursue those benefits.  Rather Facebook is used as a distraction from the work at hand.  The author of this piece has in the time it has taken her to write this 1,000 word paper has gone on Facebook at least thirty times. 

 But is method of distraction really any different than what students did in the past?  Is this generation ignoring the professor and causing distractions for themselves any different than the students in the ‘90s that didn’t have laptops in their classrooms.  Those students surely made diversions for themselves, procrastinated, doodled, or spaced out in a classroom or lecture hall. The conclusion to the Facebook dilemma is this:  there is no conclusion.  As McLuhan put it on his opening pages,

The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.

Facebook is by no means an exception to this statement.  Academic conversations that happened in the back of the classroom before now happen online and to a much wider audience.  Society will continue to be wrecked by social networking and technology.  Technology will increase, and there will be a time when Facebook will be accepted just like the printing press was accepted. 

People and Social Networks

            In her graduate thesis paper, Jennifer Ryan discusses the far-reaching ramifications that social networks have on human communities. She discusses the history of social networks, the way people use them, the feelings they evoke, and the effects they have on people’s lives. Her research has lead her to the conclusion that social network participants:

Use social network sites to extend their offline communities into online practice in a manner more closely in line with the concept of "networked individualism," which suggests we are expanding our social networks (weak ties in particular) according to our cultural tastes and communities of membership. (189)

            Jennifer’s thesis is interesting in that she makes a bold argument over who is creating a social identity and the reasons for doing it. Unlike McLuhan’s prediction that society would move from an oral culture to a massive online collective consciousness, Jennifer claims that our online presence is used only to enhance our offline lives. Instead of creating whole new communities, we seek out our likes. In this way our offline lives are still more prevalent than online. We’re not using the Internet as this worldwide tool to improve mankind or connect as a whole species; instead we’re simply using it to connect and strengthen existing bonds.

            Jennifer looks at three social networks for her research: Facebook, Myspace, and Tribe. Her study shows that a certain demographic of people connect and use each network. Musicians and high school students have mostly claimed Myspace, Facebook a mixture of college, high school and young adult, and Tribe by the rest of the people leftover. Out of the three, Facebook and Myspace claim spots in the top five of most visited websites. All of the users on these sites manipulate technology to connect with people that exist within their real life communities. Instead of broadening out, social networks help us to focus in to the point where words like “Facebook stalking” are accepted norms. While Jennifer points out the positive ways that we connect and maintain these relationships, she also highlights the loss of privacy that pervades this new social media.

            People using these websites are mainly concerned with social and personal vices. The sharing of information is centralized around likes, friends, and lifestyle niches. If you look back at how Shirky talked about existing institutions losing control over the flow of data, you can see where social networks have helped corrode that control. With people joining sites and sharing information based on their likes and desires, web based technologies have been forced to create applications and feeds centered around their audiences. The information on the Internet is so pervasive that if a certain website doesn’t have the information or capabilities we desire we simply move on to the next available resource. An online social network’s capital gain depends on a large number of people constantly being on their site.

            The idea of spreadable media becoming the new norm for community communication has been a topic that we’ve covered extensively throughout the semester. Jennifer identifies social networks as the mainframe through which media is now being shared. According to Jennifer:

            The Internet provides a platform for the spread of information and ideas that can bring like-minded individuals into contact with one another regardless of temporal or spatial distance. Such perceived potential provides support for utopian ideologies, such as “neotribalism” and “technoshamanism,” that purport to promote the sanctity of humankind- the “sacred” campfire ritual and shamanistic practices described at the beginning of this thesis- utilizing modern technologies to tap into the “collective un/consciousness.” (138)

This idea that the Internet will provide a way for people across the globe to connect and share ideas that will ultimately improve the nature of humankind is an idea shared by Shirky. This idea of neotribalism simply means that the new tribe, the new communities we’re forming are through digital media.

            Jennifer’s thesis is centered on social networks and the way people use them to communicate and form identities. I find myself agreeing with her observation that currently we’re using social networks to help cultivate and maintain offline lives. However, I believe she overlooks the rapidly growing online identities that are being formed along side the offline ones. With every passing year I’ve found that more and more offline faucets of life are being invaded by technology. Academic life is now embedded with the need to have online identities and communities that are a separate entity than our offline ones. There are some people and things that are wholly dependent upon the Internet for existence. Professors can now establish and maintain relationships with others in their field without having to first connect offline. The ease with which the Internet allows people to form social bonds, not just strengthen existing ones, is a vital part of social networks.

            After reading our texts for the semester and Jennifer Ryan’s thesis I feel that the Internet is still largely underused as an educational tool. Most of the points that Selfe made seem to still be largely ignored or unanswered. We still are no closer to figuring out what technological literacy is, or how we should use it. People seem to be focused on personal benefits that technology provides more than humanistic benefits. I don’t think the question is if the Internet is making us stupid, I think the biggest question is what should we be expecting the Internet to do for us? Technology has evolved so rapidly and become so accessible that I don’t think we’ve had time to carefully examine how or what we really want to use it for. It can do anything. Jennifer writes “the Internet is a complex new medium that allows for the intimacy, interactivity, and casualness of speech as well as the permanency and permeability of writing.” (168) People are still too amazed with it that I don’t think anyone’s ready to stop and consider the points that Selfe or Shirky make. We don’t have rules or regulations for using it for business, education, or world markets. What we really need is a way to examine what we have, what technology and the Internet are capable of, and figure out the best way to manipulate it to become a useful tool and not just a social tool.

Ryan, Jenny. (2008). The Virtual Campfire: An Ethnography of Online Social Networking.