Aram Sinnreich

Whither Facebook? Whither Society?

I spent a very interesting 45 minutes on the radio today with MPR Midmorning host Kerri Miller and Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray, talking about Facebook, privacy, society, and our changing ethics and expectations about what it means to "participate" in an always-on culture. I love being on Kerri's show, because she gives her guests lots of opportunities to ramble, argue, and otherwise break away from the standard talking points.

Here's an archived stream:

The teen social networks gospel (according to danah)

My friend danah boyd, who recently received her doctorate from Berkeley's Information School, just made her dissertation available online. I haven't read it yet, but I've spent a lot of time reading her past work, and sharing panels with her at conferences, so I'm confident it's a doozy. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that this will very likely emerge as the definitive academic work on social networks from the Web 2.0 era. I can't think of anyone else (except maybe her mentor, Mimi Ito) who's done so much solid ethnographic work on teens and online community.

I have a feeling I'll be assigning sections of this in many classes to come...

Here's the details:

"Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics"

http://www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf

Abstract: As social network sites like MySpace and Facebook emerged, American teenagers began adopting them as spaces to mark identity and socialize with peers. Teens leveraged these sites for a wide array of everyday social practices - gossiping, flirting, joking around, sharing information, and simply hanging out. While social network sites were predominantly used by teens as a peer-based social outlet, the unchartered nature of these sites generated fear among adults. This dissertation documents my 2.5-year ethnographic study of American teens' engagement with social network sites and the ways in which their participation supported and complicated three practices - self-presentation, peer sociality, and negotiating adult society.

My analysis centers on how social network sites can be understood as networked publics which are simultaneously (1) the space constructed through networked technologies and (2) the imagined community that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice. Networked publics support many of the same practices as unmediated publics, but their structural differences often inflect practices in unique ways. Four properties - persistence, searchability, replicability, and scalability - and three dynamics - invisible audiences, collapsed contexts, and the blurring of public and private - are examined and woven throughout the discussion.

While teenagers primarily leverage social network sites to engage in common practices, the properties of these sites configured their practices and teens were forced to contend with the resultant dynamics. Often, in doing so, they reworked the technology for their purposes. As teenagers learned to navigate social network sites, they developed potent strategies for managing the complexities of and social awkwardness incurred by these sites. Their strategies reveal how new forms of social media are incorporated into everyday life, complicating some practices and reinforcing others. New technologies reshape public life, but teens' engagement also reconfigures the technology itself.

Granovetter (1985). Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness. The American Journal of Sociology, 91(3), 481-510.

Notes

All behavior is embedded in networks of interpersonal relations

- necessary to avoid under- and oversocialized views of human action

claims the prerogative to discuss market relations (usually sociologists cede this to economists)

criticizes ‘psychological revisionism’ – abandonment of rational choice models. While the assumption is problematic, it is still a good working hypothesis and should not be dismissed lightly.

- goals such as sociability, approval, status and power can be understood rationally as well.

Existence of small firms in a consolidated, vertically integrated market dominated by oligarchs is usually seen as a result of large corporations’ need to shift risk and R&D onto smaller parties. However, MG argues that it could be a school-of-fish situation, where the firms don’t need to integrate because they have dense social networks. Very relevant to record label market

Quotes

“all market processes are amenable to sociological analysis and . . . such analysis reveals central, not peripheral features of these processes.” (505)

“What looks to the analyst like nonrational behavior may be quite sensible when situational constraints, especially those of embeddedness, are fully appreciated.” (506)

“I suggest here that small firms in a market setting may persist . . . because a dense network of social relations is overlaid on the business relations connecting such firms and reduces pressures for integration.” (507)

Watts, D. J. (1999). Networks, dynamics, and the small-world phenomenon. The American Journal of Sociology, 105(2), 493-527

Notes

Full-length theorization of small-world networks (SW)

SW is counterintuitive and remarkable, because the world is vast, clustered and decentralized, and we have few contacts relative to the size of the total network.

L = avg. diameter between all pairs in network (global measure)

C = clustering coefficient, average fraction of the maximum possible local connectivity across the network (local measure). In other words, the probability that u and v will be connected, given a mutual connection, w.

r = range (2^nd shortest path between two connected vertices)

Definition: a “shortcut” is any edge with a range r > 2.

Definition: Phi [Greek symbol] is the % of all edges in graph that are shortcuts

RQ’s revolve around relationship of L to C.

“connected caveman graph” = a large, low density, clustered graph – separate cliques, connected in a loop. High L, high C.

Random graph = lowest theoretical L for a connected network. In sparse random graphs, C is also very small.

Intuition would thus suggest that L and C vary together – when one is high, the other is too. Not so, says DW. SW graphs interpolate between these two extremes. (High C, low L). what about the inverse interpolation – graphs with low C and high L? I guess dense random graphs might fit this bill.

SW definition (high C, low L) exists regardless of construction mechanism interesting

SW happens principally for small Phi (in other words, a small number of shortcuts). This is because of Phi’s disproportionate impact on L compared to C.

Uses same real-world examples of SW networks as Watts & Strogatz (1998).

Quotes

“significant changes in global structure can result from changes in local structure that are so minute as to be effectively undetectable at the local level.” (498)

“There exists a class of graphs . . . for which characteristic path length is small but clustering is high. Thus the small-world phenomenon can be cast in graph-theoretic terms as the coexistence of high clustering and small characteristic path length.” (508) thesis statement. his demonstration of this is brilliant but too complex to describe in these notes

“small-world architectures . . . by virtue of their short characteristic path length and high clustering coefficient, can support the rapid dissemination of information without necessarily compromising behavior that is individually costly but beneficial when reciprocated” (523-4)

“it is highly likely that the phenomenon exists in the real social world” (524)

Watts, D. J. & Strogatz, S. H. (1998). Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks. Nature, 393, 440-442.

Notes

“small world networks” are highly clustered, like regular lattices, but with small characteristic path lengths. Examples include:

• Neural network of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans
• U.S. power grid
• 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, Erdos numbers, etc.

small world networks have enhanced diffusion speed (hence computational power, or synchronizability). This has consequences for epidemiology.

SWNs are created by introducing randomness into regular networks, thus connecting vertices that would otherwise be far apart (consequently connecting their entire “neighborhoods)

Quotes

“the small-world phenomenon is not merely a curiosity of social networks nor an artefact of an idealized model – it is probably a generic for many large, sparse networks found in nature” (441)

McNeill, J. R. & McNeill, W. (2003). The Human Web: A Bird’s-eye View of World History. New York: Norton.

Notes

Networks approach to human history. General argument is evolutionary – societies (like organisms) became increasingly complex and adept at transferring latent resources into usable energy, and squeezed out simpler societies.

Initial observations:

1. all      webs combined cooperation and competition.
2. subgroups      with more efficient internal communication thrived, leading to a natural      selection process creating a more organized, and ever larger, society not sure I buy this
3. as      webs became denser, information flowed more efficiently and faster, thus      exerting an increasing influence on the development of society
4. human      webs affect the environment as well as society (they call this the anthropocene      era, for obvious reasons)

language (40k years ago?) was likely the key to humanity’s success in proliferating, because it allowed us to organize, etc. probably, it was also behind the rapid rise of tool use, because language allowed us to posit problems with existing systems.

Agriculture changed everything by drastically increasing the amount of energy humans (and domesticated animals) could recognize from the earth’s resources.

“old world web” – thick interspersion of civilizations throughout Eurasia and much of Africa by 200 C.E.

- communities remained vital, but became less autonomous.

- Development of subservient peasantry and webs of elites.

- Growing tension between village traditions and metropolitan luxuries

- “portable religions” compensated for the psychological damage inflicted by the loss of agrarian life

- Metropolitan webs:

o Nile-indus corridor (3,000 BCE)

o East asia (3-2k BCE)

o Meso-America (1300-400 BCE)

200-1000 CE

- India and SE asia increase in wealth and power. First priestly class, then warriors prevail.

- OWW extends to new areas of Asia, Africa and Europe

- Growth of universal religious throughout these regions

- Meanwhile, increasing web between peru and mexico.

1000-1500 CE

- consolidation of the old world web (and of the American web)

- growth and consolidation of capital, death of agrarian communalism

- genghis khan, bubonic plague

- rise of Aztecs and Incas

1450-1800 CE “worldwide web”

- increasing globalization and growth of world culture

- increasing growth and consolidation of capital (rise of bourgeoisie)

- religious reformation and rise of science

- fewer, more powerful states

- printing press (Europe and korea only for a few centuries) – lowered information costs, democratized debate, accelerated distribution of memes

- military revolutions (navies, guns, standing armies, logistics)

- global economy

- nonetheless, by the end of this period, 85% of the worlds population were still illiterate farmers

1750-1914 CE

- industrial revolution (use of fossil fuels, globalized trade of food and fuel)

- telecommunications and railroads

- population explosions

- political reorganization (republicanism, communism, nationalism, imperialism, abolition of slavery)

- changing nature of labor, and lower quality of life for workers, change in family structures

- major ecological change

1890-PRESENT (the cosmopolitan web)

- expansion of globalization (except between world wars)

- modern telecommunications and mass media

- modern transport (cars and planes)

- scale free distribution of cultural memes this is my short-hand for their longer description of language, dress, custom, etc.

- marriage of science and technology

- massive extension of life expectancy and thus global population boom

- shift of population majority from rural to urban

- ecological change at crisis levels

Quotes

The development of “song and dance” were essential to human social development because “its great advantage was that larger bands could hold together, resolve quarrels, and defend territory more effectively” (13) this would be nice to drop into my argument re: the centrality of music to human experience

“in effect, sedentary villages replaced roving bands of hunters and gatherers as the basic cells of human society. Within each village the web of face-to-face communication was intense” (39)

“what Muhammad did was to inject a powerfully attractive new message into the web, one that resonated far and wide.” (89)

“the dense webs of interaction that few up in favored locations produced the same kinds of pressures to regulate and defend agricultural societies, producing broadly similar outcomes [in eurasia and america 200-1000 CE]” (115)

“the Old World Web was poised by 1500 to ensnare the rest of the world with catastrophic force and suddenness.” (119)

“more and more human beings were affected by intensified long-distance exchanges in great or small degree, since the circulation of ideas and skills inevitably accompanied the circulation of people and goods” (119)

“in the three and a half centuries after 1450, the peoples of the earth increasingly formed a single community.” (155)

“with the creation of a single web, it is as if history speeded up. Innovations and inventions, booms and depressions, pests and plagues rippled through a unified system, spreading wherever local conditions allowed . . . as human history grew more unified, it grew more unstable and chaotic than ever” (178)

“the transition to fossil fuel-powered industry – rather suddenly – locked us into a high-energy society, in which we must continue to mobilize, transport, and use vast quantities of basic items” (214) while probably true, this perspective seems a bit overdeterministic.

“the rise of the United States to economic and military preeminence after 1945 made globalization often appear as Americanization” (268)

“through the international success of (mainly) American and British popular music, West African-derived rhythms percolated into music in Japan, Algeria, and indeed almost everywhere.” (271)

“the ever-tightening web helped concentrate wealth and power and highlight the differences between those who had it and those who did not.” (318)

“human history, like the history of the universe and the history of life, shows an evolution towards complex structures, created and maintained by energy flows [shades of castells here], the sizes of which correspond to the degree of complexity and structure in question.” (320) The postmodernist in me can’t help but see the ideological biases inherent in this interpretation.

“the selective pressure for complexity has been stronger [in human society] than in biological or cosmic evolution, because the complex societies left little room for the simple.” (321)

“cultural evolution is Lamarckian” (321)

“human history is an evolution from simple sameness to diversity toward complex sameness . . . at present, human society is one huge web of cooperation and competition, sustained by massive flows of information and energy” (322) this is an interesting take.

“perhaps the most critical question for the human future is how cell-like primary communities can survive and flourish within the global cosmopolitan flows that sustain our present numbers, wealth and power” (326)