Disconnecting with Social Networking Site
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Towards a Theory of Disconnection and Social Networking Sites Professor Ben Light Queensland University of Technology @doggyb
description
Connection and connectivity have become significant areas of emphasis in our definitions of SNS and in our understandings of how these technologies are used. Based on qualitative interviews with a variety of people who engage with a diverse range of SNS I will put forward an alternate reading that emphasises disconnection as integral to our lived experiences of SNS activity. From my analysis, I have developed a theory of disconnective practice. Disconnective practice refers to the potential modes of human and non-human disengagement with the connective attempts made possible with SNS. These modes of disengagement sit in relationship to our experiences of a particular site, between and amongst different sites and with regard to these sites and our physical worlds. Disconnective practice highlights SNS as operationally contradictory whereby connection and disconnection coexist and can be mutually necessary.
Transcript of Disconnecting with Social Networking Site
Towards a Theory of Disconnection and Social
Networking Sites
Professor Ben LightQueensland University of Technology@doggyb
The Connectivity Conundrum
Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.
Capture and Share the World's Moments Instagram is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends and family.
Welcome to LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network with 250 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the globe. Our mission is simple: connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful.
Twitter helps you create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers. Twitter is the best way to connect with people, express yourself and discover what's happening.
YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch and share originally-‐created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.
Reassembling Connectivity• Networked Society (Castells 1996)
• Networked Individualism (Wellman 2001)
• Networked Collectivitsm (Baym 2007)
• Networked Publics (Ito 2007; boyd 2008)
• Personal Connections in a Digital Age (Baym 2010)
• ‘Connect and Create’ (Light, Griffiths and Lincoln 2012)
• Networked Masculinities (Light 2013)
• The Culture of Connectivity (van Dijck 2013)
• Hamlet’s Blackberry (Powers 2010)
• Disconnect.Me (Karppi 2014)
• Delete (Mayer-Schönberger 2011)
Disconnective Power
• 1DV: A has power over B because they can get B to do something they would not do otherwise. (It is made law that men cannot ride public transport in skirts)
• 2DV: Power is exercised where the scope of decision-making is constrained and conflict suppressed. (Men can only wear skirts on public transport if they are made of nylon)
• 3DV: Power is exercised by creating conditions so that conflict does not arise in the first place. (Men would never think of trying to board a bus, wearing a skirt, because they are conditioned to think this is not an option, and this is the case even though they might enjoy it if they did it)
Dislike Buttons Reject Friend
Reject Follower
Retweeting Moderating Use Historical Editing
Censorship Functions Resistance
Geographies of Disconnection
Disconnectors
Disconnection Modes
Ethics of Disconnection
• The exercise of editorial ethics which seeks to prevent harm to oneself and others through the enactment of selective disconnection.
• Privately public and publicly private strategies Lange (2007), the deployment of recontextualisation work and linguistic cover (Light 2014).
• Such acts could even be as simple as not posting about someone or not tagging someone in a photograph with an SNS.
• Questions of how SNS themselves may cause harm where disconnection does not occur are also raised – people’s experiences of uncensored shocking video content for example.
• Ethical judgements may also be tied to notions of disconnection whereby a person choosing not to connect for a given reason (such as not sharing a serious health condition) is written into being as doing the right thing.
Towards a Theory of Disconnection and Social Networking Sites
Disconnective PowerGeographies of DisconnectionDisconnectors Disconnection ModesEthics of Disconnection
Disconnective Strategies of Prevention of Connection
• Not friending
• Not playing Farmville
• Not liking
• Not linking
• Not tagging
• Linguistic cover
(Light and Cassidy 2014)
Disconnective Strategies of Suspension of Connection
• Holding friend requests
• Half viewing
• Friend culling
• Media breaks
(Light and Cassidy 2014)
Disconnection as Socio-economic Lubricant (Light and Cassidy 2014)
This work is based on the following forthcoming publications
• Light, B. (2014). Disconnecting with Social Networking Sites. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan (due for publication August 2014).
• Light, B. and Cassidy, E. (2014) Strategies for the Suspension and Prevention of Connection: Rendering Disconnection as Socioeconomic Lubricant with Facebook, New Media and Society (Forthcoming).
Photocredits authors own except: https://www.flickr.com/photos/122762863@N02/galleries/72157643681239383/
