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SESSION 8-9

SOCIAL NETWORK SITES

DEFININING SOCIAL NETWORK SITES

web-based services that allow individuals to(1) construct a public or semi-public profilewithin a bounded system, (2) articulate a listof other users with whom they share aconnection, and (3) view and traverse their listof connections and those made by otherswithin the system. (Boyd & Ellison, 2)

Pew Internet and American Life, 2007, SocialNetworking Websites and Teens:

A social networking site is an online placewhere a user can create a profile and build apersonal network that connects him or her toother users.

PEW: More than half (55%) of all onlineAmerican youths ages 12-17 use online socialnetworking sites

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Among the key findings of the report:

55% of online teens have created a personalprofile online, and 55% have used socialnetworking sites like MySpace or Facebook.

66% of teens who have created a profile saythat their profile is not visible by all internetusers.

48% of teens visit social networking websitesdaily or more often; 26% visit once a day,22% visit several times a day.

Older girls ages 15-17 are more likely to haveused social networking sites and onlineprofiles; 70% of older girls have used an

online social network compared with 54% ofolder boys, and,

70% of older girls have created an onlineprofile, while only 57% boys have done so.

91% of all social networking teens say theyuse the sites to stay in touch with friendsthey see frequently, while 82% use the sitesto stay in touch with friends they rarely see

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in person

72% of all social networking teens use thesites to make plans with friends;

49% use the sites to make new friends.Older boys who use social networking sites(ages 15-17) are more likely than girls of thesame age to say that they use socialnetworking sites to make new friends (60% vs.

46%).Just 17% of all social networking teens usethe sites to flirt

Older boys who use social networking sitesare more than twice as likely as older girls tosay they use the sites to flirt; 29% report this

compared with just 13% of older girls.

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THE DATABASE AS PANOPTICON

Chris Hughes: We model people's real lives attheir individual schools in a virtual space thatenables them to exchange information aboutthemselves. We are not focused on meetingnew people, dating or anything like that.Instead, we want to manage informationefficiently so that we can provide our usersthe information that matters most to them.

Mark Andrejevic (2004):

The de-differentiation of spaces ofconsumption and production achieved by newmedia serves as a form of spatial enclosure: atechnology for enfolding previouslyunmonitored activities within the monitoringgaze of marketers.

Alexander R. Galloway: The clustering ofdescriptive information around a specific userbecomes sufficient to explain the identity ofthat user. (69)

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Fred Scharmen: If a body is recomposed asinformation, it is all the more subject to thespecialized techniques of control: distributedsurveillance, data aggregation.

folksonomy:

https://www.newsvine.com/http://del.icio.us/http://reddit.com/http://digg.com/http://www.stumbleupon.com/http://technorati.com/frontpage/

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Andrejevic (2004):

Instead of promoting power sharing, thecontemporary deployment of interactivityexploits participation as a form of labor.Consumers generate marketable commoditiesby submitting to comprehensive monitoring.They are not so much participating, in theprogressive sense of collective self-determination, as they are working bysubmitting to interactive monitoring.

DIGITAL GARDENING?

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M. Andrejevic, 2004. Little Brother is Watching: The WebcamSubculture and the Digital Enclosure, In N. Couldry and A.McCarthy (editors), MediaSpace: Place, scale, and culture in amedia age. New York: Routledge.

P. Bourdieu, 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgmentof taste. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

A.R. Galloway, 2004. Protocol: How control exists afterdecentralization. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

d. boyd, d. 2006. Identity Production in a Networked Culture:

Why Youth Heart MySpace, athttp://www.danah.org/papers/AAAS2006.html, accessed 28August 2006.

d. boyd and H. Jenkins, 2006. Discussion: MySpace and DeletingOnline Predators Act (DOPA), athttp://www.danah.org/papers/MySpaceDOPA.html accessed 28August 2006.

A. Williams, 2005. Do You MySpace? New York Times (28August), p. 9.1

A. Wittel, 2001. Toward a Network Sociality, Theory Culture& Society, volume 18, number 6, pp. 51-76.