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Surveillance on Reality Television and Facebook: From Authenticity to Flowing Data
Abstract
Aligning reality TV (RTV) with social networking sites (SNSs) enables the development of a geneology in the use of surveillance for displays of the self. By moving from "older" media such as TV to "newer" such as SNSs, we gain insight into how issues at stake for critical scholars studying surveillance practices shift when the spaces (and practices) of surveillance change. We bring into conversation work in surveillance studies, critical media studies, RTV, and new media, emphasizing the necessity of seeing connections between types of surveilled subjectivity in popular media as these contribute to a larger ethos about surveillance, subjectivity, data, and our engagement with the world. We suggest that Facebook brackets practices for synthesizing the contextualizing.
... Consistent with quality assurance activities (National Health and Medical Research Council, 2014) and studies which examined medical (Jain & Slater, 2013;Lichak & Olympia, 2022;Painter et al., 2020) and immigration (Farias et al., 2021) reality television, ethical approval was not sought. Dubrofsky (2011) argues that subjects in reality television desire to be on television, and to share their life, thoughts and feelings with a public audience. While reality television is a public space (because it is accessible to anyone), the names of the nurses and doctors in Emergency have not been included in the reported results to maximize privacy. ...
Aim
The aim of this study was to describe how nurses' dialogue compares with that of doctors in the Australian reality television program Emergency and to explain how this dialogue and the use of narration and direct‐to‐camera monologues contribute to the portrayal of nurses. The final aim was to outline how these findings can inform the actions of nurses, nursing organizations and writers and journalists.
Design
A descriptive study conducted in 2021 and 2022.
Methods
Character network analysis was used to describe the verbal interaction of nurses and doctors and identify major, minor and background characters. Narration and direct‐to‐camera monologues were analysed through frequency counts. Cultivation theory was used to interpret the results.
Results
Fifty‐four characters were identified, with 19 of these being nurses. Doctors spoke 87.9% of the dialogue. Most of the dialogue (43%) was monologue by doctors directly to the camera. All major characters were doctors, and only one nurse was a minor character. The mean number of mentions by the narrator of a nurse per episode was 4, and 30 for a doctor.
Conclusion
The portrayal of nurses in Emergency is inaccurate and the production methods are used to privilege the role of doctors. This finding comes after decades of research showing inaccurate images of nursing in television. Drawing on recent Australian inquiries and the challenges experienced by mental health and aged care nursing, several approaches for collaborative action to improve these images are suggested.
Impact
This is the first study of the portrayal of nursing in reality television. These results suggest that much effort is still required even in contemporary reality television to accurately reflect the work and contribution of nurses. It is the shared responsibility of individual nurses, nursing organizations and writers and journalists to accurately portray nurses in the media.
No patient or public contribution
This network analysis of a postproduction television program did not allow patient or public involvement in the design or analysis.
... Voyeurism, in its classic form, which involves viewers who are careful not to intrude on or alter the subject of their viewing pleasure, would not in itself meet most definitions of surveillance (see Introduction to Section 1). However, surveillance products are consumed increasingly in a voyeuristic manner and have become a component of a sociocultural phenomenon that has propelled voyeurism to being a premier form of popular entertainment, with the rise of celebrity culture and in particular the dominant genre of "Reality TV" (Dubrofsky 2011;Palmer 2003). This has gone far beyond the "synoptic" surveillance identified by Thomas Mathiesen (1997;excerpted in Section 2). ...
... However, users' knowledge that such performances are mediated, structured, and recorded has a particular impact upon how they live their day-to-day lives. Dubrofsky (2011), for example, finds that Facebook normalizes surveillance as part of daily life: ...
... Ello en razón de tres principales fenómenos. Primero, subsiste una clara paradoja: se está en una sociedad de la inmediatez y de la observación, donde los ciudadanos ceden sus informaciones y datos de manera voluntaria a través de redes sociales o inclusive programas de tele-realidad (Dubrofsky, 2011). Además esa inmediatez es inclusive favorecida por las nuevas tecnologías como los celulares, desde los cuales se sacan fotografías y vídeos (Timan y Oudshoorn, 2012) modificando el concepto de vigilancia. ...
The use of drones in Latin America is facing two main dilemmas. On one hand, the confusing regulatory framework in many countries, on the other hand, both public and civil policies increase the use of said tool, increas-ing the need to establish both limitations and conditions for the proper use of drones. The successful utilization of drones in both control and infrastructure or territory management puts in discussion the rewards and hazards which arise from uncontrolled use of drones. This article elaborates a contextualiza-tion of regulatory frameworks in Latin America to then, proceed to analyze the limits and discussions linked to the hypothetical usage of drones in Latin American urban security politics, confronting them with surveillance cameras
... Figure 1 shows one of three clusters of capturing devices that are positioned near the riders, each cluster consists of 11 cameras (amounting to 33 cameras per coaster). This impressive visual apparatus, which allows instantaneous display of riders' images (which can be further modified at the consumer's request), constitutes the digital mediatisation of the ride's experience: the ride is not only about (high-)speed, but also about riders as visual spectacle (Dubrofsky 2011;Dubrofsky and Magnet 2015). I note in passing that these technologies have been adapted from closed-circuit television and surveillance contexts, now lucratively serving financial conglomerates in the entertainment industry. ...
The omnipresence of screens in contemporary life presents an unprecedented variety of ways of displaying as well as ways of seeing, reacting to and consuming images. This paper focuses on commercial and mediatised leisure spaces in the shape of theme parks and on on-site procedures of production and display of images of roller-coaster riders. Contemporary roller-coaster machines combine speed with high-resolution photography, to supply an enmeshed, mobile-cum-visual product, and the study asks how the images are displayed – by the corporations who run the theme parks and how they are received – by the consumers. First, the material settings in which images of roller-coaster riders are produced and displayed are explored, and then the ‘work’ that viewers engage in when they see themselves is addressed ethnographically in detail: What discursive actions and reactions are publicly performed when consumers face their images? I conceptualise the activities of viewing, and specifically of viewing images of oneself, as ‘work’, a concept which I borrow from Erving Goffman (as in ‘face-work’) and, more recently, from Mark Andrejevic (‘the work of watching’). By using qualitative and ethnographic methods, the study supplies up-close observations and analyses of the media spaces and logic in contemporary amusement parks, and the ‘work’ that viewers undertake when confronted with their images. This study contributes to our understanding of the proliferation of images of oneself in leisure and tourism, of the mediatisation of consumer publics, and of consumers’ activities of viewing their images and reacting to them when the latter are displayed commercially on public screens.
... Although people tend to enjoy talking about themselves and disclosing their opinions and attitudes (Tamir & Mitchell, 2012), reality shows tend to encourage extreme self-disclosure. These shows often put great pressure on participants to tell the audience more about themselves than they would normally wish to, including negative information (Aslama & Pantti, 2006;Dubrofsky, 2011). Not surprisingly, in an Australian survey (Australian Communication and Media Authority, 2007) 54% of respondents agreed that reality shows exploit the people who participate in them. ...
The increased popularity of reality shows has been followed by criticism that they rely on viewers’ enjoyment of the humiliation and degradation of participants. This study included 163 Israelis who reported on their own willingness to participate in reality shows and how they would react if family members were to participate. Positive correlations between these responses and reported viewing enjoyment dispel the myth that viewers’ enjoyment comes primarily from watching others suffer and being humiliated.
... 46 Goodell announced that his final decision would "be based on reports from outside professionals, [Vick's] probation officer, and others charged with supervising [his] activities" as well as "concrete actions that [Vick] take[s] that are consistent with [his] representations to me." 47 Goodell's concern over possible discrepancies between Vick's words and actions commonly serve as justification for surveillance: Surveillance is necessary because sincerity requires consistent behavior across time and context. 48 Under constant watch, a subject might be caught acting "two-faced," 49 revealing their "true" self in an "unpremeditated" or uncontrolled moment. 50 Potential or possible violations to come, in other words, prospectively function as warrants for around-the-clock monitoring. ...
In April of 2009, near the end of National Football League (NFL) quarterback Michael Vick's prison term for dog fighting, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell proposed Vick might resume his career if he could demonstrate “genuine remorse” for his actions. At the same time, Vick was mapping out a plan, with the help of public relations professionals, for how he would perform in interviews and public appearances. The result was an orchestrated campaign whereby Vick was both imposed upon by and performed through a surveillance-based program of social testing designed to prove that he was forgivable on the grounds of genuine remorse. I maintain that the Vick case represents the power of popular institutions like sports leagues to shape and test conditional standards for forgiving through frameworks of surveillance, therapy, and confession that affirm racialized ideals about social order and authentic interior reform. Through an analysis of the NFL's monitoring and surveillance program, as well as a series of highly publicized interviews, I demonstrate the importance of distancing forgiveness from politics, and examine potential alternatives to conditional forgiveness from within rhetorical studies.
... They flag the importance of situating the features of social media surveillance within broader 'large-scale social and cultural shifts that both inform and are informed by them'. This echoes similar claims regarding modes of surveillance and representations of surveillance that are symptomatic of broader cultural and political logics (Andrejevic, 2005; Dubrofsky, 2011). Social media surveillance is one aspect of what David Lyon calls 'liquid surveillance', in which surveillance technologies are no longer static or unitary but rather 'malleable and adaptive' (Trottier and Lyon, 2012: 91). ...
In this article the authors explore the ways in which social media and social network sites (SNSs) are mediating the new urban environment. Many analyses of these technologies highlight the ways in which they are predicated on surveillance techniques and how the self is increasingly entwined within them. The authors examine the processes of surveillance, and the surveillant assemblage, and how the self interacts with these technologies to produce an authentic self in mediated urban spaces. They argue that SNS technologies privilege a version of the contemporary self, limiting choice to ‘pro-sumer’ activity, and a mandatory self-surveillance. Instead of constructing an open public sphere, these technologies operate to build a ‘second city’ of commodified urban space in which the recording of banal activities in an everyday setting is the authentic lived experience of people using this technology.
The relationship among different media types is a long and exciting subject for researchers. It can not be denied that the rise of online media has contributed to the decline of traditional media consumption. Despite their conflict, traditional media can take full advantage of social media’s user base for their benefit. At one point in this relationship, the Covid-19 pandemic occurred as a massive event that changed the world beginning in 2020. In the new situation, people’s emotions, information seeking motivation, and intention change, ultimately affecting their choice of mediums to acquire information. The study found differences in people’s emotions, motivation, and medium’s re-use intention during the Covid-19 outbreaks and after they were controlled. Furthermore, the results illustrate that one medium’s re-use intention is affected by its credibility and other medium’s credibility and re-use intention. These impacts could signify the complementary effect in a multiplatform context.
Мета статті — з’ясування специфіки національної адаптації реаліті-шоу як транснаціонального телевізійного формату та вагомого чинника трансформації, як умов та практики телевиробництва, як символічних форм та соціокультурних уявлень на локально-національному рівні. Результати дослідження. Застосування методології культурного виробництва уможливило розгляд реаліті-шоу не тільки як аудіовізуальної жанроформи, а і як транснаціонального телевізійного розважального формату й символічної форми, що використовується адептами неоліберальної економіки для зміни культурного ландшафту країн та національної аксіосистеми. Доведено, що реаліті-шоу, навіть з урахуванням національної адаптації, реартикулюють місцеві культурні атрибути в межах чітко продиктованих норм і логіки символічно-культурного виробництва в транснаціональному телевізійному сценарії. Наукова новизна дослідження полягає в тому, що в статті вперше на прикладі Індії та України розглянуто реаліті-шоу як показник транснаціонального культурного капіталу та чинник трансформації умов і практики телевиробництва, що на національному рівні переорієнтовує соціокультурні уявлення глядачів. Висновки. Спроба поглянути на реаліті-шоу саме під таким кутом зору окреслює потенціал культуральних студій, що позначають точку відходу від популярних студій про реаліті-шоу та його соціальні наслідки, актуалізуючи методологію культурного виробництва та зосереджуючись здебільшого на виробничих практиках. Попри критичні оцінки, які пов’язують ідеологічне підґрунтя реаліті-шоу з неоліберальною соціальною ідеєю та допомагають концептуалізувати її як символічну форму дослідження, сам формат рідко виходить за межі текстової площини у виробничі контексти і практики. Це ще одна важлива прогалина, яка обмежує розуміння реаліті-шоу як «культурної технології», що розвиває підприємницьку культуру до рівня абстрактної сили, яка формує індивідуальні суб’єктності та може бути (критично) інтерпретована.
Since Zaya Wade came out as transgender, she has continued to take up prominence in popular culture and press coverage of Zaya has centered on her fashion. In this article, we analyze press coverage of Zaya to examine the intersections of Blackness, femininity, trans identity, and child celebrity. Building on scholarship about trans representation and performing Black femininity in popular media, we focus our attention on how Zaya is presented as authentic—a core theme in this scholarship. In our analysis, we illustrate how these representations appear seemingly positive by shedding light on Zaya's unique perspectives about family, beauty, and activism. Yet, we find the press coverage only promotes Zaya's unique identity to the extent her performance of authentic Black femininity upholds transnormativity. This article unpacks how authenticity is used as a strategy of transnormativity that is animated by Zaya's Blackness, femininity, and status as a child celebrity and activist.
We analyze RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs The World (UKVTW), part of the larger RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise—one of the most popular current media representations of queerness. UKVTW features participants from different countries competing to be “Queen of the Mother-Tucking World.” We examine the intersection of queerness and whiteness, exploring the tension between national identity, racialization, and drag performance. Building on scholarship about reality TV and authenticity, we argue the series queers conventional notions of authenticity in reality TV by privileging fluid gender identities. Developing the notion of “strategic Westernness” we examine how the series presents a postracial imaginary that obfuscates race by foregrounding nationality: seemingly progressive representations of gender ultimately privilege white and Western participants.
Este estudio examina las representaciones de la familia en la serie Dahmer (2022), la cual se basa en los crímenes perpetrados por el famoso asesino en serie. Se emplea una metodología de análisis textual para abordar esta cuestión. Los resultados destacan una representación sesgada de la familia del asesino en comparación con la de sus víctimas. La conclusión principal del análisis sugiere que se enfatiza que las familias que parecen estar en “desventaja” son las que realmente logran integrarse en la sociedad, mientras que el modelo de familia liberal estadounidense es propenso a la aparición de disfuncionalidades, hasta el extremo de dar origen al asesino en serie que se examina en este estudio.
En los días anteriores y posteriores al fallecimiento de Francisco Franco Televisión Española emitió una serie de trece capítulos titulada Este señor de negro (Antonio Mercero, 1975-6) y protagonizada por José Luis López Vázquez. En ella el personaje principal se enfrenta a una sociedad cambiante donde toman especial protagonismo las variaciones en la masculinidad hegemónica vigente. El presente texto analiza cómo esta fcción seriada televisiva detectó y representó dichas variaciones en la diégesis.
For decades, social perspectives, and even academic studies of language, have considered clichés as a hackneyed, tired, lazy, unthinking and uninspiring form of communication. Authored by two established scholars in the fields of Systemic-Functional Linguistics and Discourse Studies and Pragmatics, this cutting-edge book comprehensively explores the perception and use of clichés in language from these complementary perspectives. It draws data from a variety of both written and spoken sources, to re-interrogate and re-imagine the nature, role and usage of clichés, identifying the innovative and creative ways in which the concepts are utilised in communication, interaction, and in self-presentation. Observing a rich, complex layering of usage, the authors deconstruct the many and varied ways in which clichés operate and are interdependently constructed; from the role they play in discourse in general, to their functions as argumentative strategies, as constructs of social cognition, as politeness strategies, and finally as markers of identity.
The sessions that combined the projection of images, the recitation of texts and the interpretation of musical melodies reached between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries an important socio-cultural relevance at the international level. For their aims, these sessions used a new device that adopted names such as fantascope, megascope, solar microscope or projection lantern, and that gave the name to a very popular social media known under the term ‘magic lantern’. Despite its undoubted influence, the presence of the magic lantern in the academic field has always been residual. Fortunately, for the last two decades, there has been a change of trend enhancing its cultural relevance, largely thanks to the renewal and the thrust introduced by ‘media archeology’. Given the growing scientific interest in an object of study as extensive as the magic lantern, the authors make two fundamental contributions: (a) a brief historical introduction of the magic lantern in Europe based on ten textual references; (b) a theoretical approach from the genetic-cultural in the terms proposed by L.S. Vygotski so as to be able to integrate the magic lantern into a hypothetical ‘mediation archeology’.
Vote-canvassers are a central part of Thai elections and this role has been integrated into the digital age. The relationships among the election candidates, vote-canvassers and voters are fundamental in managing the network of communication during election campaigns. Adapting the idea of the traditional vote-canvassing network for the analysis of electoral politics in the digital arena and using the concept of two-steps flow, this paper explores the way in which Facebook was used to establish and develop ‘digital vote-canvassing networks’ during the 2013 Bangkok gubernatorial election campaign, with the use of multimodal analysis and interviews election candidates and their public relations personnel for data collection. This paper argues that vote-canvassing systems become ‘digital’ when a candidate’s public relations personnel acted as core vote-canvassers to manage and transmit campaign messages on the candidate’s Facebook page on behalf of the candidate, while the candidate’s followers interacted and spread the candidate’s campaign message to their own networks, enabling more SNSs users to be exposed to the campaign content. The mediation of election campaign is no longer only dominated by candidates or political parties, but public relations personnel who demonstrated their value and skills in managing as well as personalising the dissemination and interaction of messages that candidates aimed to communicate to their followers. The development of relationships among people connected to the digital vote-canvassing networks was integrated through the coordination and dissemination of campaign content on Facebook to enhance the electoral ties between candidates and voters. Thus, the spreading of content on Facebook in part mirrors the traditional ‘vote-canvassing system’ in terms of the importance of networks. Both the networks of SNSs and traditional ‘vote-canvassing system’ involve the idea of network expansion, influential communication and development of relationships between people connected on the network. The core idea of digital vote-canvassing networks is to make campaign messages on SNSs reach as many SNS users as possible.
Adapting the idea of the traditional vote-canvassing network for the analysis of electoral politics in the digital arena and using the concept of ‘two-steps flow’, this paper explores the way in which Facebook was used to establish and develop ‘digital vote-canvassing networks’ during the 2013 Bangkok gubernatorial election campaign, which was the latest and a completed election in Thailand. This paper attempts to answer the question ‘How was the relationship among the individuals who were part of the candidates’ networks on social networking sites developed during the 2013 Bangkok gubernatorial election campaign?’ This research used multimodal analysis to determine the two main contenders’ strategy in expanding their Facebook network during the 2013 Bangkok gubernatorial election campaign. This research also conducted a total of 14 semi-structured interviews with Thai politicians, election candidates and their public relations personnel to examine the significant of relationship, interaction and spreadability of content on SNSs during the election campaign. This paper argues that the development of relationships among people connected to the digital vote-canvassing networks was integrated through the coordination and dissemination of campaign content on Facebook to enhance the electoral ties between candidates, their followers and followers’ friends, who might or might not be voters of the election. Vote-canvassing systems become ‘digital’ when a candidate’s public relations personnel acted as core vote-canvassers who manage and transmit campaign messages on the candidate’s Facebook page on behalf of the candidate, while the candidate’s followers interacted and spread the candidate’s campaign message to their own networks, enabling more Facebook users, who are connected to candidates’ Facebook page, in one way or another, to be exposed to the campaign content. However, there is no guarantee of votes in the digital vote-canvassing network.
This article examines the film Catfish and the corresponding television program Catfish: The TV Show to articulate how genres of the real create entertainment paradigms built on shame and derision as acceptable modes of programming particularly focused on bodies. Understanding these texts as visual culture narratives grounded in shame produced through “failed” classed, fat, and gendered bodies, I argue that when genres of the real focus on shame as entertainment they implicate individuals, rather than systemically enforced normative identity positions, as wholly complicit in their own sociocultural failure.
With the development of information technologies companies can interact much easier and efficiently with their customers. In many cases; such as social networks, companies have the chance to create unique products / services for each customer where the information provided by users are actually essential part of the service. This is useful to maintain customer satisfaction and / or interaction, but on the other hand, there are concerns about privacy of personal information. In this paper we try to develop a model to demonstrate how personal information can turn into money on social networks and talk about privacy issues. We argue that privacy issues
are an important barrier among social networks’ money making efforts.
This paper investigates whether or not corporate social networking services (SNS) possess the potential to act as surveillance tools within contemporary society and, as a corollary, operate as coercive and exploitative technologies for the individuals who employ such devices in their daily lives. By relying on an interdisciplinary framework, this investigation argues that exploitative surveillance practices are indeed evident within the digital world of SNS platforms, along with how a performativity pressure (in the form of continuous self-surveillance) has been engendered within the user of such platforms. This has resulted in the creation of coercive digital structures that are then exploited for commercial gain. As such, these SNS technologies can be said to facilitate the expansion of what Foucault terms a disciplinary society, which has then also led to the proliferation of certain “free-floating” forms of control which play a significant part in Deleuze’s societies of control. Furthermore, this paper argues for the continuing relevance of both Foucault’s insights regarding the panoptic schema, and Deleuze’s commentary regarding mechanisms of control, in order to attain a critical understanding of how the practice of online surveillance occurs and from where it is that such an invasive practice derives its impetus.
This book explores the way today’s interconnected and digitized world--marked by social media, over-sharing, and blurred lines between public and private spheres--shapes the nature and fallout of scandal in a frenzied media environment. Today’s digitized world has erased the former distinction between the public and private self in the social sphere. Scandal in a Digital Age marries scholarly research on scandal with journalistic critique to explore how our Internet culture driven by (over)sharing and viral, visual content impacts the occurrence of scandal and its rapid spread online through retweets and reposts. No longer are examples of scandalous behavior “merely” reported in the news. Today, news consumers can see the visual evidence of salacious behavior whether through an illicit tweet or video with a simple click. And we can’t help but click.
This article interrogates the cultural work of “old” media texts that take social media use as a narrative focus. Using the MTV reality show Catfish: The TV Show as a case study, I argue that, in this program, the specific conventions of reality television—authenticity, confession, and self-realization—work to produce and circulate normative scripts of “appropriate” and “inappropriate” ways to articulate the self on social media, which align with reality TV’s established investment in the concept of the “authentic” self. Furthermore, I argue that the show’s representations of social media use valorize the primacy of connecting with and accepting one’s “real” self, making legible a subject position that speaks particularly to young people—the program’s target demographic—in the contemporary juncture of 2010s “crisis” neoliberalism, by transposing political questions into personal crises.
This article analyzes the issue of degradation of data accuracy in large-scale longitudinal data sets. Recent research points to a number of issues with large-scale data, including problems of reliability, accuracy and quality over time. Simultaneously, large-scale data is increasingly being utilized in the social sciences. As scholars work to produce theoretically grounded research utilized "small-scale" methods, it is important for researchers to better understand the critical issues associated with the analysis of large-scale data. In order to illustrate the issues associated with this type of research, a case study analysis of archival Internet data is presented focusing on the issues of degradation of data accuracy over time. Suggestions for future studies are given.
In 2014, Facebook will have existed for a decade. The site has become embedded into everyday life for many users, and for some young users, significant parts of their social lives have been played out on social network sites. As spaces in which social exchanges, identities and systems of belonging are articulated and made visible, these sites also act as archives of transition for young people, effectively capturing ‘growing up’ stories through a chronicle of mediated, transitional experiences. Through the timeline format (the most recent iteration of the profile at the time of writing), Facebook has begun to draw attention to and capitalise on the archival nature of the site. By emphasising its role in mediating these social exchanges and recalling status updates made or images uploaded years earlier, Facebook becomes both the site upon which narratives of transition are played out and organised, and also the site through which these variously public and private disclosures are recalled and reflected upon.
Most studies of media focus on production, representation, or audience. Using rhetorical analysis and ethnographic field methods, my article offers one way to study media production contexts, representations, and audience interactions in relation to one another. For this project, I conducted a narrative rhetorical analysis of the reality docu-series Cathouse that takes place in a legal brothel in Nevada, the Moonlite Bunny Ranch. In addition, I visited the brothel and used ethnographic field methods of participant observation and interviewing to investigate the lived experiences of the women working at the Ranch. My analysis revealed a web of intertextual discourses of prostitution that I could not have accessed had I not used these methods in conjunction with one another. By bringing perspectives from rhetorical inquiry, cultural and media studies, and ethnography into conversation with one another, I provide a framework for analyzing production, representation, and audience for the Cathouse series, while attending to both the content of the women’s stories and how these participants rhetorically constructed and performed their identities. Finally, my analysis offers insights into ethnographic and textual “crises of representation” in relation to the concept of “rhetorical authenticity” in media representations, the relationships between audience members, production, and representation in reality television, and material impacts for the women who work at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch that I could not have accessed without using these methods together.
This paper reports on research into how first-university students communicate with peers and professors and their general study habits and to examine the possible relationship between students’ use of digital technologies. The research is positioned in the interpretive paradigm. We conclude that most students feel comfortable with digital technologies and they see Facebook/MySpace as more about connecting and interacting with friends than for academic communication. Results show that students prefer face-to-face communication for both academic/school and social communication. Regarding study habits, students prefer to learn by themselves, work independently and to study at home.
Surveillance is changing nowadays alongside new surveillance technologies and practices. ‘New’ surveillance is reframing the relationship between the ‘surveillant’ and the ‘surveilled’, while creating misconceptions about the way surveillance interacts with and impacts on society. Similarly, criminal surveillance is strongly influenced by these dynamics and paradigms of social deviance and dangerousness are subject to new tensions. This contribution illustrates the changes surveillance, crime, deviance and resistance are undergoing. Most of all, it shows that new surveillance has a huge impact on the ‘old’ categories of deviance and social dangerousness and tends to turn resistance into criminalisation. These considerations arise when looking at new, potential forms of surveillance that could be exercised using social media like Facebook.
This article develops understanding of consumer work at the primary level of sociality in the context of social networking sites. Drawing on ethnographic interviews and netnography, we reveal these sites as distinctive spaces of consumer-to-consumer work. To explain this work in consumption, we introduce the concept of social labour which we define as the means by which consumers add value to their identities and social relationships through producing and sharing cultural and affective content. This is driven by observational vigilance and conspicuous presence, and is rewarded by social value. This draws attention to the variety of work consumers enact within their social lives, indicating that consumer work is broader than previously acknowledged.
Television networks are increasingly using social-networking sites to promote programs and to interact with the audiences of those programs. Through a content analysis of 1,656 tweets from the Twitter sites of 20 popular programs featured on U.S. television networks, this study examined how television networks used Twitter and the relationship between the extent of their Twitter use and the ratings of television programs. Analyses revealed a significantly positive relationship between TV networks’ extent of Twitter use and television ratings. Additionally, this study found significant differences in the Twitter usage among television networks. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are also discussed.
There has been a recent surge in artistic designs to conceal oneself from ambient surveillance in public places. These center on the masking of identity to undermine technological efforts to fix someone as a unique entity apart from the crowd. Ranging from fractal face paint and hairstyles, to realistic resin masks, to reflective underwear, anti-surveillance camouflage ostensibly allows people to hide in plain sight. These designs, however, enact an aestheticization of resistance premised on individual avoidance rather than meaningful challenge to the violent and discriminatory logics of surveillance societies.
The rapid evolution of information, communication and entertainment technologies will transform the lives of citizens and ultimately transform society. This paper focuses on ethical issues associated with the likely convergence of virtual realities (VR) and social networks (SNs), hereafter VRSNs. We examine a scenario in which a significant segment of the world's population has a presence in a VRSN. Given the pace of technological development and the popularity of these new forms of social interaction, this scenario is plausible. However, it brings with it ethical problems. Two central ethical issues are addressed: those of privacy and those of autonomy. VRSNs pose threats to both privacy and autonomy. The threats to privacy can be broadly categorized as threats to informational privacy, threats to physical privacy, and threats to associational privacy. Each of these threats is further subdivided. The threats to autonomy can be broadly categorized as threats to freedom, to knowledge and to authenticity. Again, these three threats are divided into subcategories. Having categorized the main threats posed by VRSNs, a number of recommendations are provided so that policy-makers, developers, and users can make the best possible use of VRSNs.
Television networks are increasingly using social networking sites to interact with the audiences of their programs. Through a content analysis of the Twitter sites of some popular television programs from three big television networks, this study examined the relationship between Twitter use of television networks and television ratings of specific programs, and how these networks used Twitter. One finding was that overall there might be a significant relationship between Twitter use of television networks and television ratings. In particular, the relationship was positive for CBS’s and FOX’s programs, and also for comedy and drama programs. Besides, the relationships between Twitter use and television ratings varied based on different television networks (CBS, ABC and FOX) and program genres (comedy, reality and drama).
This comparison between Bahrain and Australia shows how the main impact of social and mobile media has been in the form of facilitators of rapid political mobilization, as well as tools for everyday socializing and entertainment. Social media are both contributors to, and symptomatic of, a blurring of the boundaries between politics and entertainment, and public and private spheres, whether their users are in Australia or Bahrain, but they are not in themselves the makers of material sites of democracy or even agency.
As one of the most popular entertainment genres in the US, food media continues to attract significant attention from communication and cultural critics. In an effort to complicate conversations regarding the relationship among food media, identity construction, and power, this paper examines Food Network's reality-based series, The Chef Jeff Project (TCJP). TCJP is a seemingly “groundbreaking” series featuring ex-con turned chef Jeff Henderson who attempts to change the lives of “at risk” youth through the power of food. We argue that, despite its altruistic appearance, TCJP appropriates normative politics surrounding kitchen culture, “good taste,” and food service in ways that reinforce participants’ Otherness, the privileged normalcy of their clientele, and the viewing audience. We argue that TCJP represents the evolving subgenre “rehabilitative cooking,” a form of makeover media that aims to normalize so-called “at-risk” subjects through highly supervised unpaid (or underpaid) culinary labor under the guise of philanthropy.
As the Internet permeates almost every aspect of our daily lives, some argue that the benefits of its use are diminished by threats to personal privacy. Privacy concern is a desire to keep personal information out of the hands of others. Online privacy is becoming an increasingly important policy issue as consumer groups rally to protect what they perceive to be basic privacy rights whereas others argue for freedom of information. This article presents an overview of the literature on privacy studies and examines survey results relating to Internet users’ demographic characteristics using data from 1998 online Internet surveys conducted at the Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Results indicate that there are small differences among degrees of Internet privacy concerns across groups divided by sex, education level, income level, and race, with all groups preferring privacy to convenience.
Not all Facebook users appreciated the September 2006 launch of the `News Feeds' feature. Concerned about privacy implications, thousands of users vocalized their discontent through the site itself, forcing the company to implement privacy tools. This essay examines the privacy concerns voiced following these events. Because the data made easily visible were already accessible with effort, what disturbed people was primarily the sense of exposure and invasion. In essence, the `privacy trainwreck' that people experienced was the cost of social convergence.
Social network services such as Facebook provide new data for social science research into, for example, the role of individual characteristics in friendship formation and the diffusion of tastes in social networks. This article assesses the potential of social network services for social science research in two ways. First, it is argued that social scientists conduct hyperlink analysis differently to applied physicists and researchers from the library and information sciences, and face constraints (relating to theory, methods and availability of appropriate tools) that are not encountered in the other disciplinary approaches. However, the constraints regarding theory and methods are less likely to be faced by researchers of online social networks, and for this reason, the rise of Facebook and other similar services is a potential boon for empirical social scientists interested in networks. The second part of the article focuses specifically on the availability of research tools, and it is argued that social network services may eventually serve as e-Research platforms for delivering social network analysis tools.
Since 1999 blogs have become a significant feature of online culture. They have been heralded as the new guardians of democracy, a revolutionary form of bottom-up news production and a new way of constructing self and doing community in late-modern times. In this article I highlight the significance of the 'blogosphere' as a new addition to the qualitative researcher's toolkit and some of the practical, theoretical and methodological issues that arise from this. Some of the key ethical issues involved in blog data collection are also considered. The research context is a project on everyday understandings and experiences of morality.
The warranting principle pertains to impression formation in Internet communication. It posits that perceivers' judgments about a target rely more heavily on information which the targets themselves cannot manipulate than on self-descriptions. Two experiments employed mock-up profiles resembling the Internet site, Facebook, to display self-generated clues and to display other-generated clues about a Facebook user. The first experiment (N = 115) tested perceptions of extraversion. Although warranting was supported, rival explanations (negativity and additivity) also pertained. The second experiment (N = 125) tested perceptions of physical attractiveness. Friends' comments overrode self-comments, supporting warranting theory exclusively. Implications concern boundary-setting research for warranting, and potential effects of social comments on a variety of new information forms.
This article will argue that the `reflexive project of the self' (Giddens) has become an explicit form of labour under post-Fordist capital in the form of `self-branding'. Here, work on the self is purposeful and outer-directed; self-production is heavily narrated, marked by the visual codes of the mainstream culture industry, and subject to the extraction of value. The article will explore inflections of self-branding across several different mediated forms. Contemporary marketing literature identifies the construction of a branded persona as a central strategy in the negotiation of increasingly complex corporate environments. Recently the practice and logic of personal branding has moved out of the boardroom and into the television studio. Television shows such as The Apprentice and American Idol invent a narrative of self-branding and simultaneously produce branded personae. Websites such as 2night.com extract value from partying young people; photographers take pictures at nightclubs and link them to advertisements online, blurring the distinction between product and consumer, private self and instrumental associative object. The logic and practice of self-branding is inflected differently again on social network sites such as facebook.com or myspace.com, which are inventories of various types of `selves'. These forms of self-branding, found across several different kinds of media, illustrate the erosion of any meaningful distinction between notions of the self and capitalist processes of production and consumption.
The purpose of this study was to explore how student motives to communicate (i.e., relational, functional, participatory, excuse making, sycophantic) with their instructors are influenced jointly by perceived instructor socio-communicative style and student socio-communicative orientation. Participants were 225 students enrolled in a variety of introductory communication courses at a Midwestern university. Results indicate that (a) the relational and sycophantic motives to communicate are related to both student and instructor assertiveness and responsiveness, (b) the functional, participatory, and excuse making motives to communicate are related to student assertiveness, and (c) the participatory and functional motives are related to instructor responsiveness and student responsiveness, respectively. Moreover, it was found that (a) female students communicate more for the functional motive than male students and (b) male students communicate more for the relational and the sycophantic motives than female students.
There are over 300 multi‐user games based on at least 13 different kinds of software on the international computer network known as the Internet. Here I use the term “MUD “ to refer to all the various kinds. All provide worlds for social interaction in a virtual space, worlds in which you can present yourself as a “character,” in which you can be anonymous, in which you can play a role or roles as close or as far away from your “real self as you choose.In the MUDS, the projections of self are engaged in a resolutely postmodern context. Authorship is not only displaced from a solitary voice, it is exploded. The self is not only decentered but multiplied without limit. There is an unparalleled opportunity to play with one's identity and to “try out” new ones. MUDS are a new environment for the construction and reconstruction of self.
This study explores factors that influence the development of a “privacy concern” in adolescents and whether the development of such a privacy concern leads to the adoption of behaviors that can help teens protect themselves from risks associated with divulging private information when using the Internet. Results of the analyses indicate there are a number of predictors significantly associated with the development of a privacy concern in adolescents. Furthermore, results of the analyses suggest that heightening adolescents' concern for their privacy will lead to a greater likelihood that they will use a number of different privacy-protecting behaviors.
This research explores how cues deposited by social partners onto one’s online networking profile affect observers’ impressions of the profile owner. An experiment tested the relationships between both (a) what one’s associates say about a person on a social network site via “wall postings,” where friends leave public messages, and (b) the physical attractiveness of one’s associates reflected in the photos that accompany their wall postings on the attractiveness and credibility observers attribute to the target profile owner. Results indicated that profile owners’ friends’ attractiveness affected their own in an assimilative pattern. Favorable or unfavorable statements about the targets interacted with target gender: Negatively valenced messages about certain moral behaviors increased male profile owners’ perceived physical attractiveness, although they caused females to be viewed as less attractive.
This study examines the relationship between use of Facebook, a popular online social network site, and the formation and maintenance of social capital. In addition to assessing bonding and bridging social capital, we explore a dimension of social capital that assesses one's ability to stay connected with members of a previously inhabited community, which we call maintained social capital. Regression analyses conducted on results from a survey of undergraduate students (N=286) suggest a strong association between use of Facebook and the three types of social capital, with the strongest relationship being to bridging social capital. In addition, Facebook usage was found to interact with measures of psychological well-being, suggesting that it might provide greater benefits for users experiencing low self-esteem and low life satisfaction.
Abstract Social network,sites,(SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic,and,industry researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach.,This special theme section of the,Journal,of Computer-Mediated,Communicationbrings ,together scholarship on these emergent phenomena.,In this introductory article, we describe features of SNSs and propose a comprehensive definition. We then present one perspective on the history of such sites, discussing key changes and developments. After briefly summarizing existing scholarship concerning SNSs, we discuss the articles,in this special section and conclude with considerations for future,research.
A central feature of the online social networking system, Facebook, is the connection to and links among friends. The sum of the number of one's friends is a feature displayed on users' profiles as a vestige of the friend connections a user has accrued. In contrast to offline social networks, individuals in online network systems frequently accrue friends numbering several hundred. The uncertain meaning of friend status in these systems raises questions about whether and how sociometric popularity conveys attractiveness in non-traditional, non-linear ways. An experiment examined the relationship between the number of friends a Facebook profile featured and observers' ratings of attractiveness and extraversion. A curvilinear effect of sociometric popularity and social attractiveness emerged, as did a quartic relationship between friend count and perceived extraversion. These results suggest that an overabundance of friend connections raises doubts about Facebook users' popularity and desirability.
Social network sites (SNSs) provide a new way to organize and navigate an egocentric social network. Are they a fad, briefly popular but ultimately useless? Or are they the harbingers of a new and more powerful social world, where the ability to maintain an immense network - a social "supernet" - fundamentally changes the scale of human society? This article present signaling theory as a conceptual framework with which to assess the transformative potential of SNSs and to guide their design to make them into more effective social tools. It shows how the costs associated with adding friends and evaluating profiles affect the reliability of users' self-presentation, examines strategies such as information fashion and risk-taking, and shows how these costs and strategies affect how the publicly displayed social network aids the establishment of trust, identity and cooperation - the essential foundations for an expanded social world.
Based on literature from the domains of organization science, marketing, accounting, and management information systems, this review article examines the theoretical basis of the information overload discourse and presents an overview of the main definitions, situations, causes, effects, and countermeasures. It analyzes the contributions from the last 30 years to consolidate the existing research in a conceptual framework and to identify future research directions.
The emergence of a relatively new genre, `reality television', has helped to break down the division between text and audience in significant ways, and this presents us with interesting questions for cultural studies. In this article we consider one such text, the enormously successful `reality gameshow' Big Brother, and explore the extent to which it challenges or helps to reconfigure current conceptualizations of the audience and the `television text'. We outline some of the issues involved in analyzing Big Brother and situate the program within the context of the complex history of cultural studies' attempts to `think the audience' for popular media.
The explosion in social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and Friendster is widely regarded as an exciting opportunity, especially for youth.Yet the public response tends to be one of puzzled dismay regarding a generation that, supposedly, has many friends but little sense of privacy and a narcissistic fascination with self-display. This article explores teenagers' practices of social networking in order to uncover the subtle connections between online opportunity and risk. While younger teenagers relish the opportunities to recreate continuously a highly-decorated, stylistically-elaborate identity, older teenagers favour a plain aesthetic that foregrounds their links to others, thus expressing a notion of identity lived through authentic relationships. The article further contrasts teenagers' graded conception of `friends' with the binary classification of social networking sites, this being one of several means by which online privacy is shaped and undermined by the affordances of these sites.
States, and in July 1998, there were 130 million users worldwide (see NUA Surveys 1998). In keeping with these phenomena, there has been a dramatic increase in research about the ways in which users of cyberspace act and interact. This work has been conducted by social scientists, scholars in the humanities, and legal scholars, among others (e.g., Spears and Lea 1994; Lea and Spears 1995; Marvin 1995; Turkle 1995; Herring 1996; Jacobson 1996; Mnookin 1996; Parks and Floyd 1996; Walther 1996; Parks and Roberts 1997). At the same time, social scientists and others have begun to express concern about I wish to express appreciation to several people for discussions we had during the time I was researching the issues addressed in this article and for their comments on an earlier draft of it. My thanks to Amy Bruckman, Robert Canary, Mary Davis, Samantha Herdman, Elizabeth Hess, Lois Jacobson, Roberta Nary, M
Drawing on cultural theory and interviews with fans, cast members and producers, this book places the reality TV trend within a broader social context, tracing its relationship to the development of a digitally enhanced, surveillance-based interactive economy and to a savvy mistrust of mediated reality in general. Surveying several successful reality TV formats, the book links the rehabilitation of 'Big Brother' to the increasingly important economic role played by the work of being watched. The author enlists critical social theory to examine how the appeal of 'the real' is deployed as a pervasive but false promise of democratization.
The emergence of a relatively new genre, ‘reality television’, has helped to break down the division between text and audience in significant ways, and this presents us with interesting questions for cultural studies. In this article we consider one such text, the enormously successful ‘reality gameshow’ Big Brother, and explore the extent to which it challenges or helps to reconfigure current conceptualizations of the audience and the ‘television text'. We outline some of the issues involved in analyzing Big Brother and situate the program within the context of the complex history of cultural studies’ attempts to ‘think the audience’ for popular media.
T he range of communication media available to young people is rich, wide, and likely to continue to increase in the future. As the number and variety of media have increased across U.S. households (Louie, 2003), many questions about individuals' media choice and use remain unanswered (Flanagin and Metzger, 2001). In 2006 about 88 percent of Americans age 12 through 29 went online. Digital Natives is the name of the group that has grown up with Internet technology. Th e Pew Internet Project (2006) found that the Internet's major benefi t is in helping people tap into social networks. One of these networks is Facebook, an Internet site created by Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard undergraduate student, in February 2004. Facebook's primary purpose, according its homepage, is to " share information with people you know, see what's going on with your friends, and look up people around you. " (Facebook.com, 2007) As college students spend more time online than any generation before, it is important to know what gratifi cations they seek and obtain from the new media. As LaRose and Eastin (2004) suggested, the defi nition of Internet usage is too broad. So research in this area should distinguish Internet application (e.g., e-mail vs. online chat), functions or settings. Similarly, Papacharissi and Rubin A survey with 172 students was conducted at Louisiana State University to see what students' motives are for using the Facebook, how individual diff erences relate to motives for Facebook use, and to what extent motives and individual diff erences can predict attitudinal and behavioral outcomes of Facebook use. In light of the uses and gratifi cation theory, the study found that people go to Facebook to fulfi ll needs traditionally fulfi lled by other media but for their interpersonal communication needs fi rst (relationship maintenance). Women were more likely to go to Facebook to maintain existing relationships, pass time and be entertained. On the other hand, men were more likely to go to Facebook to develop new relationships or meet new people.
National identity cards are in the news. While paper ID documents have been used in some countries for a long time, today's rapid growth features high-tech IDs with built-in biometrics and RFID chips. Both long-term trends towards e-Government and the more recent responses to 9/11 have prompted the quest for more stable identity systems. Commercial pressures mix with security rationales to catalyze ID development, aimed at accuracy, efficiency and speed. New ID systems also depend on computerized national registries. Many questions are raised about new IDs but they are often limited by focusing on the cards themselves or on "privacy."
Playing the Identity Card shows not only the benefits of how the state can "see" citizens better using these instruments but also the challenges this raises for civil liberties and human rights. ID cards are part of a broader trend towards intensified surveillance and as such are understood very differently according to the history and cultures of the countries concerned.
This study focused on how individuals used personal home pages to present themselves online. Content analysis was used to examine, record, and analyze the characteristics of personal home pages. Data interpretation revealed popular tools for self-presentation, a desire for virtual homesteaders to affiliate with online homestead communities, and significant relationships among home page characteristics. Web page design was influenced, to a certain extent, by the tools Web page space providers supplied. Further studies should consider personality characteristics, design templates, and Web author input to determine factors that influence self-presentation through personal home pages.
Personal home pages on the World Wide Web make it possible for anyone to be a mass communicator. They represent an unprecedented chance to study the audience as producers of mass communication content rather than as consumers. The current study content analyzed 319 personal home pages and identified their most popular features. In addition, personal home pages were examined as new channels of self-presentation, a topic that has received much research attention from psychologists. Findings indicated that most personal web pages did not contain much personal information. The typical page had a brief biography, a counter or guest book, and links to other pages. The same strategies of self-presentation were employed on personal pages with the same frequency as they were in the interpersonal setting. There were also gender differences in self-presentation that were consistent with research findings from social psychology.
Despite the recent popularity of online social networks, there are few available studies that explain the differences between real life and internet social networks. Authoritative information about the outcomes of using social networking websites is even more sparse. In an attempt to close this literature gap, this exploratory study found that online social networks and real life social networks are significantly different in terms of social network size. The results also show that gender and extroversion are the major predictors of both online social network size and time spent online for social networking. Perhaps the most interesting finding is the negative impact of self-esteem on inclusion of strangers in online social networks. Additionally, directions for future research are provided.
This study provided a comparative analysis of three social network sites, the open-to-all Facebook, the professionally oriented LinkedIn and the exclusive, members-only ASmallWorld.The analysis focused on the underlying structure or architecture of these sites, on the premise that it may set the tone for particular types of interaction.Through this comparative examination, four themes emerged, highlighting the private/public balance present in each social networking site, styles of self-presentation in spaces privately public and publicly private, cultivation of taste performances as a mode of sociocultural identification and organization and the formation of tight or loose social settings. Facebook emerged as the architectural equivalent of a glasshouse, with a publicly open structure, looser behavioral norms and an abundance of tools that members use to leave cues for each other. LinkedIn and ASmallWorld produced tighter spaces, which were consistent with the taste ethos of each network and offered less room for spontaneous interaction and network generation.
Using the reality TV (RTV) shows Flavor of Love and The Bachelor, we ask how the space of RTV is raced. Might the use of surveillance footage and reliance on notions of authenticity create a space where people constructed as a certain race are privileged? Are the qualities valorized in a participant on a White-centered show—comfort with being under surveillance, appearance of not performing—aligned with discourses of Whiteness? How, then, to understand the construction on Flavor of Love of participants self-consciously claiming and performing an identity? We argue that while it is true Flavor of Love animates racial stereotypes, it also allows for fluid and complex understandings of Black identity through active claiming of identities—in contrast to the restrictive naturalized White identities presented on The Bachelor. As RTV shows emerge featuring people of color, it will be the critics' responsibility to identify if RTV becomes a Televisual ghetto where only certain performances of race are allowed or if RTV can be a space where diverse conceptions of race are animated. Scholarship on RTV needs to find new ways to express the complexity of surveillance and notions of authenticity as they intersect in the display of raced identities.
If we are to understand series such as the first U.K. version of Big Brother as events, rather than just as texts or production processes, we need to draw on anthropological theory, for example, Dayan and Katz's theory of media events. This article develops an anthropologically informed argument about the status of Big Brother as event, its ambiguous claims to present social “reality,” and the connection of those claims with its other claim to offer “liveness” in a new web-enhanced form. These ambiguities can be traced not only in the discourse of the program but also in the discourses by producers and others that surrounded it, ambiguities that are ideological in the same way that “myth” was for Roland Barthes.
Much excitement surrounds Facebook, the social networking site based on user-generated content that has attracted 64 million active users since its inception in 2004. This paper begins to out- line a political economy of Facebook in an attempt to draw atten- tion to the underlying economic relations that structure the web- site, and the way in which the site fits into larger patterns of con- temporary capitalist development. Although Web 2.0 has pre- sented a shift away from "old" top-down media models, there remains continuity through change: Facebook continues familiar models of extensive commodification, with surveillance playing a key role in this process. The emerging reliance on general intel- lect and free labour for the purpose of capital accumulation does represent a move away from a more passive conception of the audience commodity, yet it demonstrates the continuous march of capitalism into cyberspace under post-Fordist conditions.
What is the political impact of networked communications technologies? I argue that as communicative capitalism they are profoundly depoliticizing. The argument, first, conceptualizes the current political-economic formation as one of communicative capitalism. It then moves to emphasize specific features of communicative capitalism in light of the fantasies animating them. The fantasy of abundance leads to a shift in the basic unit of communication from the message to the contribution. The fantasy of activity or participation is materialized through technology fetishism. The fantasy of wholeness relies on and produces a global both imaginary and Real. This fantasy prevents the emergence of a clear division between friend and enemy, resulting instead in the more dangerous and profound figuring of the other as a threat to be destroyed. My goal in providing this account of communicative capitalism is to explain why in an age celebrated for its communications there is no response.
The article uses the reality-based television shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette as a lens through which to examine the representation of therapeutic behavior, arguing that a re-articulation of the therapeutic is necessary to understand the coupling of surveillance and the therapeutic on television. The work examines how participants on reality shows, to legitimate themselves under surveillance, must assert what the author terms the “therapeutics of the self,” a pride in displaying a consistent self verified by surveillance. The “therapeutics of the self” builds on the trend observed by scholars studying therapeutic culture in which people are incited to constantly work on, hence change, the self. The author argues that the “therapeutics of the self” promotes as therapeutic the assertion of self-sameness across disparate social spaces (on the shows and in “real” life): stasis. Hence, paradoxically, the unchanged self works to improve—change—the self.
This paper explores identity and interaction with reference to Internet home pages. All home pages reveal identity, whether or not that is the intention of their authors. Identity statements can take categorical, relational, or narrative forms. A survey of home page owners reveals that some home pages are created to maintain relationships formed apart from the Internet (extrinsic pages) and some are created to contact the denizens of the Internet (intrinsic pages). The different motives for creation do not affect home page design and contents, but do relate to differences in overall Internet use and in authors' conceptualizations of the Internet. Both intrinsic and extrinsic pages are analyzed in light of charges that the Internet self is postmodern, transitory, deceptive, and fragmented. The charge of postmodernity is found to be overstated, however, because while the Internet shapes identity statements, it does not determine their form or usage.
Are there systematic differences between people who use social network sites and those who stay away, despite a familiarity with them? Based on data from a survey administered to a diverse group of young adults, this article looks at the predictors of SNS usage, with particular focus on Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, and Friendster. Findings suggest that use of such sites is not randomly distributed across a group of highly wired users. A person’s gender, race and ethnicity, and parental educational background are all associated with use, but in most cases only when the aggregate concept of social network sites is disaggregated by service. Additionally, people with more experience and autonomy of use are more likely to be users of such sites. Unequal participation based on user background suggests that differential adoption of such services may be contributing to digital inequality.
This experimental study examined the effects of teacher self-disclosure via Facebook on anticipated college student motivation, affective learning, and classroom climate. Participants who accessed the Facebook website of a teacher high in self-disclosure anticipated higher levels of motivation and affective learning and a more positive classroom climate. In their responses to open-ended items, participants emphasized possible negative associations between teacher use of Facebook and teacher credibility. Participants offered recommendations for teachers regarding the use of Facebook and other weblog services.
Sherry Turkle is rapidly becoming the sociologist of the Internet, and that's beginning to seem like a good thing. While her first outing, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, made groundless assertions and seemed to be carried along more by her affection for certain theories than by a careful look at our current situation, Life on the Screen is a balanced and nuanced look at some of the ways that cyberculture helps us comment upon real life (what the cybercrowd sometimes calls RL). Instead of giving in to any one theory on construction of identity, Turkle looks at the way various netizens have used the Internet, and especially MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions), to learn more about the possibilities available in apprehending the world. One of the most interesting sections deals with gender, a topic prone to rash and partisan pronouncements. Taking as her motto William James's maxim "Philosophy is the art of imagining alternatives," Turkle shows how playing with gender in cyberspace can shape a person's real-life understanding of gender. Especially telling are the examples of the man who finds it easier to be assertive when playing a woman, because he believes male assertiveness is now frowned upon while female assertiveness is considered hip, and the woman who has the opposite response, believing that it is easier to be aggressive when she plays a male, because as a woman she would be considered "bitchy." Without taking sides, Turkle points out how both have expanded their emotional range. Other topics, such as artificial life, receive an equally calm and sage response, and the first-person accounts from many Internet users provide compelling reading and good source material for readers to draw their own conclusions.
Powers of Freedom, first published in 1999, offers a compelling approach to the analysis of political power which extends Foucault's hypotheses on governmentality in challenging ways. Nikolas Rose sets out the key characteristics of this approach to political power and analyses the government of conduct. He analyses the role of expertise, the politics of numbers, technologies of economic management and the political uses of space. He illuminates the relation of this approach to contemporary theories of 'risk society' and 'the sociology of governance'. He argues that freedom is not the opposite of government but one of its key inventions and most significant resources. He also seeks some rapprochement between analyses of government and the concerns of critical sociology, cultural studies and Marxism, to establish a basis for the critique of power and its exercise. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in political theory, sociology, social policy and cultural studies.