Social Software and the Transcultural Mediasphere

presentation:
youtube:
privately public / publicly private
Differentiation:
1. people connected to the content presented
2. people without such a connection

Jürgen Habermaas . Die Öffentlichkeit
Publicsphere
Burgeoisie could participate in society
(19th century) –> through media, salons
Works through exclusions: women, blacks, jews
Today: immigrants have to adopt cultural expressions
–> fractalization

News is more narrowcasted:
Fragmentization of public discourse (infos discussed are less broad)
-> no common pool of information anymore (tagesschau)
generally: tribalization, fragmentation, creating tight user groups

Newspaper:
http://jungle-world.com/redirect/2.php

Videos
Marc Bousquet
“Faculty on Food Stamps”
Youtube used to distribute scientific findings at university

„Virales Marketing im Todesstern Stuttgart“

„Eddie Izzard – lego“

Henry Jenkins
Founder of Fan Studies in the US

red vs. blue
computer games used to create comedy
–> machinima

Methodologies
New Media Phenomenon
Example: MMORPGs

Ways of approaching
- Literature (Wikipedia, specialized/game publisher’s websites, magazines, articles, books)
- Digital Artefacts (Press releases, fan fora, message boards, interviews, podcasts, [youtube-]videos)
- Ethnographic methods (interviews, virtual ethnographies)
- Quantitative data (polls, questionnaires)

Difficulties: language, status as a researcher, expertship

Nick Yee – Norrathian Scrolls
http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/home.html

Publicly Private and Privately Public, an article by Patricia Lange, deals with social networking via YouTube. Growing ever more common, social networking replaces forms of communication and gives birth to new phenoma associated with it. When we take a look at YouTube, we do not only see a page that offers a plethora of user created videos. Instead, we discover a whole new network of communication on the basis of video-creation, so-called ‘friending’, commenting on and linking to videos through that particular channel.

But not every individual found there pursuits the same goals or level of participation. Some want to be „YouTube Celebreties“ with thousands of subscribers and fans, others just want to share video media with their close circle of friends. Hence the differentiation through the terms „ Publicly Private“ and „Privately Public“. Publicly private means, that single individuals are publicly know and share a considerable amount of „fame“ whithin this community while still being able to conceal most of their private details. On the other hand, privately public means those, which post private information on YouTube via video that is also widely and publicly available.

On this basis, the article discusses the „varying degrees of engagement“ of YouTube users and how they maintain all sorts of social relations through it. Therefore, my presentation will give us a short insight into the research depicted in this article and its several case studies. Futhermore, I will offer a glimpse into my personal experience I have made with the online-sharing of videos as well.

Additionally, a short overview of the topics covered:
-Maintaining Social Networks Through Media Circuits

-Interrogating the Public/Private Dichotomy

-The Fractalization of the Public and Private

-Creating and Negotiating Social Networks Through Video Sharing

-Fractalized Public and Private Dynamics Reveal Different Social Networks

-Privately Public / Publicly Private

The author Lee Humphreys examines in his article the social implications of the mobile social network system (MSNS) “Dodgeball”.

Dodgeball was launched in 2004 and acquired by Google in 2005. In its beta phase Dodgeball was available in 22 U.S. cities.
It is meant to be used on mobile phones and similar devices with sms-capability but it has also an online component. The service shows characteristics of a social networking system like Myspace, Facebook etc. but ultimately works similar to a mailing list. Users can set up a network of friends and by sending a text message to Dodgeball it will be distributed among the members of this network and even “friends of friends”.

Common uses in practice:

• check-in to announce one’s location
• invite friends
• jokes, situation reports

There are several other ways Dodgeball can be used. But these three basic uses can already have a tremendous influence on how urban communities function.
To examine these influences the author interviewed 21 enthusiastic dodgeball users.

Some of the phenomena he identifies are:

• different ways to set up meetings
• broadening of the circle of friends
• discovering new places
• creation of “third spaces”

In general people changed their perception of and interaction with the urban environment they are living in.

The article analyzes the use of MySpace profiles in matters of taste performances. MySpace is an online social community that was in the beginning shaped to support bands and fans.

Liu differentiates between four types of taste statements. Those that convey prestige, differentiation, authenticity and theatrical persona. There are several ways of expressing ones taste on MySpace. This can be done by text, photo, the look and feel of the profile, friend connections.

Influences on taste:
1. Socioeconomic influences:
money,
social class,
education
2. Aesthetic Influences:
paradigms of personality (e.g., degree of sarcasm)
sentiment (e.g., utopian vs. dystopian)
identity (e.g., degree of fashionableness)

different characterizations of taste:
tendency to consume cultural goods in bundles around lifestyles and brand images

Liu then describes his results about MySpace user demographics and site-wide top interests. He examines profiles, counts and sums his results up. He gives top 20 lists of the several interest topics (music, books, movies, tv shows, heroes, general interests). Based on 127,477 profiles you can see for example, that radiohead is the most frequently mentioned band (mentioned by 5812 people), followed by the cure (mentioned by 4722 people).

In my presentation about Nicole B. Ellison’s article on Social Network Sites (SNS) I will follow its line of argumentation through putting the main focus on the history of the SNS phenomenon.

Consulting the provided timeline, a rough overview on development and reception will turn into a more detailed examination of the three – if this distinction is allowed – major SNSs regarding their individual history, the shape of the user profile, features and statistics: Friendster, MySpace and Facebook.

Taking the preceding information as a background, we may try to arrive at a definition of SNSs that exceeds, undercuts or lies close to Ellison’s definition, which lists 3 ‘key features’, or at least arrive at a critical point-of-view on defining SNSs.

If there is further interest and time available there might also be the chance of looking at existing scholarship on SNS, although the following presentations will do their bit to draw a rough picture of the existing research landscape.