DISM20S06 - HackMD

## Digital Identities and Social Media // S06 <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elretron/penna-retro-bluetooth-keyboard-starting-as-low-as" target="_BLANK"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/2Uagslc.png" width=35%></a> Pablo Velasco // Information Studies // [pablov.me](https://pablov.me) --- ## Plan for the day: * The digital and the social * Networked self: goups/communities * Express fieldwork  --- ## Digital (again)  ---- Digital blue imaginary: "sterile-tech"  "'Digital' simply means that something is divided up into exactly countable units – countable with whatever system one uses, whether zeros and ones, decimal numbers, strokes on a beer mat or the digits of one’s hand (...) "Analog" conversely means that something has not been chopped up into discrete, countable units. But it consists of a signal that by itself has no discrete units but is gradually and continuously changing, such as a sound wave, light, a magnetic field such as on an audiotape but also on a computer hard disk, the electrical flows in any circuit including computer chips, a painted color gradient"(Cramer, What is post-digital) ---- ### Digital Sociology The digital does not solve sociology problems "to the contrary, it unsettles and exposes the troubles and difficulties of social research" (Marres 2017, 22) Digital as: * topics of social inquiry * instruments and methods * platforms Device-aware research: "digital data cannot be interpreted independently of the technologies through which they are imprinted" (Lewis 2015)  --- ## Networked self ---- #### SNS (Ellison and boyd 2013): 1. Have uniquely identifiable profiles 2. Can articulate connections viewed/traversed by others 3. Can consume, produce, and interact with streams of user-generated content (provided by connections on the site) ---- ### Networked Privacy * From privacy/individual rights/groups (public/private binary based) to privacy in terms of networks (relationships between people). * **networked publics**: "spaces constructed through networked technologies and imagined communities that emerge as a result of the intersection of people, technology and practice” (boyd 2014) * sharing != lack of privacy "many teenagers conceptualize privacy as an ability to control their situation, including their environment, how they are perceived, and the information they share" (Marwick and boyd 2014, 1056)  ---- ### Groups and communities 5 qualities in groups/communities (as identified by Baym) 1. Space * *third places*: neither work nor home 3. Shared practice * with norms of appropriate use of communication  “displayed, reinforced, negotiated, and taught through members’s shared behaviour” (Baym 2015, 89) ----  "In this group we are ants. We worship The Queen and do ant stuff. Welcome to the colony" <img class="fragment" src="https://i.imgur.com/BT8nBsK.png" width="60%"> <img class="fragment" src="https://i.imgur.com/eAtkkvk.png" width="25%"> ---- 4. Shared resources and support: * Social capital (accumulated resources)(Putnam 1995): * a. Bridging (among weak ties) * b. Bonding (among strong ties) * Support: emotional, esteem, informational, tangible aid, feeling of being needed (Cutrona and Rusell 1990) **Shared identities** * Common roles: “local experts, answer people, conversationalists, fans, discussion artists, flame warriors, and trolls” (Welser et al 2007) ----  "A mode of knowing and a method of being" (Goriunova 2017) "There are many parallels between anthropological fieldwork and espionage. Both involve looking, listening, eavesdropping, taking notes, recording conversations, snapping photos, and establishing trusted confidants. We call it participant-observation; they call it spying" (Borneman and Masco 2015) ---  ### Field 1: *observe use of technology* Group work 4-5 people. **Use of masks is recommended.** Choose your prefered order as a group: **ABC** or **BAC**. [Groups here](https://hackmd.io/@dism20/BymxmjKUv/edit). **A** (30 mins) 1. Locate a social situation (Spradley’s step 1) in a non-digital setting. Identify place, actors, and activity (you can also use the extended list provided in step 4: object, act, event, time, goal, feeling). 2. Identify what type of participation (Spradley’s step 2) is possible in the social situation you identified? 3. Depending on your selected setting, identify which questions are possible to be asked, according to Spradley's matrix (step 4, p. 82) **B** (30 mins) 1. Observe (30 mins) ---- **C** (30 mins, individual work) 1. Write a small account. Select to focus on description, dialogue, or characterization (Emerson ch.3). Follow Spradley's (step 3) principles: language identification, verbatim, and concrete principle. *Both Emerson and Spradley provide many examples of fieldnotes, feel free to revisit the texts or your notes on them.* Remember to consider Goodall (2003) recommendations for interpretive ethnography: * don't assume an objective distances, politically removed relationship * don't ignore the influence of your personal history, gender, race, ethnicity, age, spiritual beliefs * do not Write in the omniscient 3rd person * be intimate/vulnerable, evocative, narratively interesting, multi-voiced, dialogic   <style> .reveal{ font-family:mono; font-size: 25px; } .reveal .censor{ background:black; color:white; } </style>