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Week 2, January 29 th Social Media & Virtual Communities Before the Internet Slide 2 Logistics If you are enrolled, you should have access to bspace: http://bcourses.berkeley.eduhttp://bcourses.berkeley.edu If you have trouble with bspace, you can get course info at: http://s167.stuartgeiger.com http://s167.stuartgeiger.com Stuart Geiger, lecturer for Module 1 (content) s167@stuartgeiger.com Linus Huang, instructor of record (administration) lbhuang@berkeley.edu Slide 3 Logistics This class is split into three equal modules, each taught independently by a different instructor. Slide 4 Logistics There will be an in-class midterm exam at the end of each module, covering material from only that module, each worth 20% of your grade. There will be an online participation assignment for each module, each worth 5% of your grade. There will be a final paper (not research) worth 25% of your grade, details TBD. Slide 5 Logistics Stuart Geiger: Theories and Institutional Context Jan 29th, Feb 5th, Feb 12th, Feb 19th (exam) Jen Schradie: Digital Democracy and Politics Feb 26th, Mar 5th, Mar 12th, Mar 19th (exam) TBD: Identity and Everyday Life Apr 2nd, Apr 9th, Apr 16th, Apr 23rd (exam) Slide 6 Module 1 participation You must make at least one post to the bcourses discussion forum about a virtual community or social media that you would like the lecturer, Stuart Geiger, to discuss in class. You must either ask one question about the community/media proposed, or try to answer or expand on a question another student has asked. Posts should be from 50 to 100 words and must be in by 11:59 PM on Feb 5th. You can e-mail your assignment to Stuart if you do not have access to bcourses yet. Slide 7 Todays class Last week: digital dualism and the IRL fetish Gladwell / Sellen & Harper McLuhan / Monroe Anderson / Economist Slide 8 Todays class Last week: digital dualism and the IRL fetish Gladwell / Sellen & Harper What is media? What is social media? Paper as a social media Affordances of media technology The Myth of Paperlessness McLuhan / Monroe Anderson / Economist Slide 9 Todays class Last week: digital dualism and the IRL fetish Gladwell / Sellen & Harper McLuhan / Monroe media as extensions of man the medium is the message content vs. form the content of a new medium is an older medium historical ages are separated by technology hot vs. cool media Anderson / Economist Slide 10 Todays class Last week: digital dualism and the IRL fetish Gladwell / Sellen & Harper McLuhan / Monroe Anderson / Economist All communites are imagined The impact of print How print made nations Relevance for us today Slide 11 Last week: digital dualism and the IRL fetish Jurgensons concept of digital dualism: the habit of viewing the online and offline as largely distinct. time spent online means less spent offline. We are either jacked into the Matrix or not; we are either looking at our devices or not. http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-irl- fetish/ Slide 12 Last week: digital dualism and the IRL fetish Jurgensons critique of digital dualism: It is wrong to say IRL to mean offline: Facebook is real life. We arent friends until we are Facebook friends. We have come to understand more and more of our lives through the logic of digital connection. Social media is more than something we log into; it is something we carry within us. We cant log off. Slide 13 Last week: digital dualism and the IRL fetish According to Jurgenson, if we want to really be critical of social media and new technology, we shouldnt be obsessing over whether people are checking Facebook at the dinner table. Digital dualists are blind to how these sites are changing the way we understand each other. Slide 14 Todays class Last week: digital dualism and the IRL fetish Gladwell / Sellen & Harper What is media? What is social media? Paper as a social media Affordances of media technology The Myth of Paperlessness McLuhan / Monroe Anderson / Economist Slide 15 Definitions You are getting an introduction to Virtual Communities and Social Media from someone who does not believe in virtual communities or social media at least those terms! Slide 16 Definitions You are getting an introduction to Virtual Communities and Social Media from someone who does not believe in virtual communities or social media at least those terms! The first thing we will do is to think critically and sociologically about the kind of work that those terms do for us when we casually use them. Slide 17 What makes social media social? Source: The DrumThe Drum Slide 18 What makes social media social? One popular definition of social media: Social Media is a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content. (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010: 61)Kaplan and Haenlein 2010 Cited by >2000 academic articles, and the first quotation in the Wikipedia article on social media. Slide 19 What makes social media social? But what kind of media isnt social, by definition? Slide 20 What makes social media social? But what kind of media isnt social, by definition? Slide 21 What is media? What isnt a medium? Slide 22 Rule #1: media is plural, medium is singular Slide 23 What is media? What isnt a medium? an agency or means of doing something: using the latest technology as a medium for job creation their primitive valuables acted as a medium of exchange Slide 24 What is media? What isnt a medium? a means by which something is communicated or expressed: here the Welsh language is the medium of instruction Slide 25 What is media? What isnt a medium? the intervening substance through which sensory impressions are conveyed or physical forces are transmitted: radio communication needs no physical medium between the two stations Slide 26 What is media? What isnt a medium? the substance in which an organism lives or is cultured: these cells are grown in a nutrient-rich medium Slide 27 What is media? What isnt a medium? a particular form of storage material for computer files, such as magnetic tape or discs: In most cases, magnetic disk storage will be the medium of choice for several key reasons. Slide 28 What is media? What isnt a medium? the material or form used by an artist, composer, or writer: oil paint is the most popular medium for glazing Slide 29 What is media? What isnt a medium? a person claiming to be in contact with the spirits of the dead and to communicate between the dead and the living: in the cities there is a network of spirit mediums who claim to contact the dead. Slide 30 What is media? What isnt a medium? the middle quality or state between two extremes; a reasonable balance: the song soon discovers a happy medium between thrash and catchy pop Slide 31 What is media? What isnt a medium? A tired, boring question with no real answer: Is this really media? We should instead be asking: How, when, and why is this media? What makes something into media? What is this mediating between? Slide 32 What is media? What isnt a medium? How could neck tie be a medium? How could a pair of shoes be a medium? Slide 33 Paper as a social media Gladwell reviewing Sellen and Harpers The Myth of the Paperless Office, written in 2002. Slide 34 Paper as a social media Gladwell reviewing Sellen and Harpers The Myth of the Paperless Office, written in 2002. In many cases, the properties of paper make it more social than its digital replacements. Slide 35 Paper as a social media Gladwell reviewing Sellen and Harpers The Myth of the Paperless Office, written in 2002. In many cases, the properties of paper make it more social than its digital replacements. Excellent case about the dangers of using social media when we mean Internet/digital media Slide 36 Affordances Gladwell writes that affordances are qualities that permit specific kinds of uses. My expanded definition: Affordances are material properties of a media technology that support specific kinds of practices and activities. Slide 37 Affordances Affordances are material properties of a medium that support specific kinds of practices and activities. What do I mean by material properties? Code, software, and platforms are also material What do I mean by practices and activities? Not just actions, but interactions and social routines Slide 38 Affordances of paper vs . Carrying (weight and portability issues) Communicating current activity to others (visibility) Transferring information to someone Storing data, amount of information contained within (capacity) Inscribing (writing or typing) Annotating Revising, Rearranging, Combining text Viewing moving images Use while away from power plug Use in the Dark Use in Bright Daylight Slide 39 The Myth of Paperlessness There is a powerful idea that paper is old and outdated, therefore symbolic of old and outdated ways of thought. Todays narrative assumes something inherently progressive in new technology, specifically the Internet. Slide 40 The link between paperlessness and progress is not even a new narrative! Slide 41 How happy we will be not to have to read any more; to be able finally to close our eyes -- Uzanne and Robida, 1895 Slide 42 The link between paperlessness and progress is not even a new narrative! How happy we will be not to have to read any more; to be able finally to close our eyes -- Uzanne and Robida, 1895 Villemards Villemards 1910 drawings of the year 2000. (both quoted in Ludovico 2013:18) Ludovico 2013:18 Slide 43 TEN MINUTE BREAK Slide 44 Todays class Last week: digital dualism and the IRL fetish Gladwell / Sellen & Harper McLuhan / Monroe media as extensions of man the medium is the message content vs. form the content of a new medium is an older medium historical ages are separated by technology hot vs. cool media Anderson / Economist Slide 45 Media as extensions of man we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man - the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society (3) Slide 46 the content of any medium is always another medium Media are layered and never purely new: The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph. (8) Slide 47 the content of any medium is always another medium Slide 48 The Medium is the Message What we are considering here, however, are the psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing processes. For the "message" of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. (8) Slide 49 The Medium is the Message The railway accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human functions, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure. This happened whether the railway functioned in a tropical or a northern environment, and is quite independent of the freight or content of the railway medium.. (8) Slide 50 The Medium is the Message For McLuhan, what is being transmitted is far less important than how it is being transmitted. Slide 51 New media brings a new age After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. (3) Slide 52 New media brings a new age Are we still living in McLuhans global village? Were we ever? How are contemporary Internet-based media different from the electronic media he analyzes? Slide 53 Slide 54 Google trends: I want it that way Slide 55 TEN MINUTE BREAK Slide 56 Todays class Last week: digital dualism and the IRL fetish Gladwell / Sellen & Harper McLuhan / Monroe Anderson / Economist All communites are imagined The impact of print How print made nations Relevance for us today Slide 57 Imagined Communities Nationalism has four aspects. It is: imagined limited sovereign a community Slide 58 Imagined Communities Nationalism has four aspects. It is: imagined limited sovereign a community We will be thinking about how each of these aspects also apply to social media and virtual communities. Slide 59 Communities are imagined Nationalism is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion (49) Slide 60 Communities are imagined all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined. Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/ genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined. (49) Slide 61 The impact of print Anderson writes on Europes shift from being: Catholic (the Pope is as powerful as a King) Feudal (Kings, Lords, Knights, Serfs, Peasants) Separated by ethnic and racial groups Slide 62 The impact of print Anderson writes on Europes shift from being: Catholic (the Pope is as powerful as a King) Feudal (Kings, Lords, Knights, Serfs, Peasants) Separated by ethnic and racial groups To gradually having: A diversity of religions & secular organizations Constitutions, democracies, parliaments Nations, not exclusively defined by race Slide 63 The impact of print Gutenbergs printing press invented in 1440 By 1500, 20 million books had been printed By 1600, 200 million books had been printed Slide 64 The impact of print Gutenbergs printing press invented in 1440 By 1500, 20 million books had been printed By 1600, 200 million books had been printed Anderson tells this story as the death of Latin Slide 65 The impact of print Luthers works represented no less than one third of all German-language books sold between 1518 and 1525. Between 1522 and 1546, a total of 430 editions (whole or partial) of his Biblical translations appeared. [] In effect, Luther became the first best- selling author so known. (54) Slide 66 How print made nations These print-languages laid the bases for national consciousnesses in three distinct ways. First and foremost, they created unified fields of exchange and communication below Latin and above the spoken vernaculars. Speakers of the huge variety of Frenches, Englishes, or Spanishes, who might find it difficult or even impossible to understand one another in conversation, became capable of comprehending one another via print and paper. (56) Slide 67 How print made nations the printed book kept a permanent form, capable of virtually infinite reproduction, temporally and spatially. It was no longer subject to the individualizing and 'unconsciously modernizing' habits of monastic scribes. Thus, while twelfth- century French differed markedly from that written by Villon in the fifteenth, the rate of change slowed decisively in the sixteenth. [] the words of our seventeenth-century forebears are accessible to us in a way that to Villon his twelfth- century ancestors were not. (57) Slide 68 How print made nations print-capitalism created languages-of-power [] High German, the King's English, and, later, Central Thai, were correspondingly elevated to a new politico-cultural eminence. [] The Thai government actively discourages attempts by foreign missionaries to provide its hill-tribe minorities with their own transcription-systems and to develop publications in their own languages: the same government is largely indifferent to what these minorities speak (57) Slide 69 Relevance for us today a new form of media gives opponents of an authoritarian regime a way to express their views, register their solidarity and co-ordinate their actions. The protesters' message spreads virally through social networks, making it impossible to suppress and highlighting the extent of public support for revolution. The combination of improved publishing technology and social networks is a catalyst for social change where previous efforts had failed. (The Economist, How Luther Went Viral) Slide 70 McLuhan vs. Anderson McLuhan gives us a grand, overarching narrative about how technology impacts society and utterly transforms us. Anderson gives us a more nuanced case of how media can play an important role in social and historical change. Why is this important for us especially? Slide 71 McLuhan vs. Anderson "the almost complete annihilation of time and space between the distant antipodal points of the American continent... produced by the construction of the Pacific Railroad -- John Wesley Clampitt, Echoes from the Rocky Mountains, 1888 Slide 72 McLuhan vs. Anderson "Children in the public schools will be taught practically everything by moving pictures. Certainly they will never be obliged to read history again."! -- D.W. Griffith, 1915 Slide 73 Westward the course of empire takes its way American Progress, John Gast, 1872